The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), negotiated in the early 1970s, became the first multilaterally negotiated disarmament treaty to ban an entire category of weapons. However, for a number of reasons, the BWC contained no meaningful verification provisions. Subsequent concerns about Biological Weapons (BW) programs, including in Iraq and the USSR, led to efforts to strengthen the BWC, notably through an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate a legally binding protocol during the 1990s. This lack of success further reinforced the view that the BWC was deficient and of secondary importance compared to the subsequent chemical weapons (CW) disarmament treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The efforts of the negotiators of the CWC, including through a range of capital-based activities and engagement with relevant industry associations are compared with the less creative efforts of the BWC States Parties when negotiating the never-completed BWC Protocol. The Ninth 5-yearly Review Conference of the BWC, convened in 2022, resulted in the establishment of a Working Group on measures to strengthen the BWC, and also, inter alia, to reconsider whether to recommend another attempt to negotiate a BWC Protocol. However, before returning to detailed negotiations, it is recommended that BWC States Parties: undertake a series of capital-based activities to ensure that negotiators are well informed about the technical issues associated with negotiating a Protocol for the BWC; and also undertake a conceptual discussion of compliance to identify the measures, including verification measures, that they would be willing to agree for inclusion in a Protocol.