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Pentagon behind the creation of
the "synthetic" poliovirus.
Friday, 12 July 2002
Today, the New York Times report that the work, conducted by scientists at
the State University of New York at Stony Brook, to create poliovirus from
scratch, was financed by the Pentagon as part of a program to
develop bio warfare countermeasures. The Defence Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) said it had provided about $300,000 over the
last three years for the work.
"Understanding the process of viral DNA production is key to
identifying new ways to kill viruses and understand how viruses could
change and escape from vaccines," the agency said in a statement.
Dr. Eckard Wimmer, who is the lead scientist in the study, said
they made the virus to send a warning that terrorists might be able to
make biological weapons without obtaining a natural virus.
"Could someone make a highly pathogenic virus like Ebola?"
asked Dr. Robert A. Lamb, a professor at Northwestern University and
president of the American Society for Virology.
"Could you in fact make that in a rogue laboratory that doesn't need
more than two skilled workers? My feeling is you probably could."
"This just says we're going to have to sustain some immunisation
for the indefinite future," said Dr. D. A. Henderson,
principal adviser on public health preparedness to the secretary of health
and human services.
Stephen S. Morse, director of the Center for Public Health
Preparedness at Columbia University and a former official of the defence
agency, said there was nothing evil about the Pentagon sponsoring such
research.
"Hopefully, this will help people to be realistic about
assessing future threats," he said.
"I think it's inflammatory without scientific justification,"
said Dr. J. Craig Venter. "To purposely make a synthetic
human pathogen is irresponsible."
Dr. Steven Block, a Stanford University expert on the applications
of biotechnology to bio warfare, called the work a stunt. He played down
any threat caused by synthetic viruses.
"This is not the route to new kinds of terrific genetically engineered
bioterror," he said.
The polio virus genome is tiny, consisting of 7,500 chemical units, or
bases, of RNA. Still, even assembling a genome of 7,500 units is
tedious. The machines, which usually make DNA rather than RNA, can reliably
make only 50 to 100 bases in a stretch. So the Stony Brook scientists
ordered numerous 60-base stretches from a company that sells DNA by
mail-order for as little as 40 cents a base. The stretches were then
painstakingly strung together. This means the whole project didn’t cost
more than 3 000 US$ in material costs.
Making the polio took three years, though Dr. Wimmer said it could probably
now be done in six months. His collaborators were Dr. Aniko V. Paul,
another professor in his department, and Dr. Jeronimo Cello, a
postdoctoral researcher.
Dr. Wimmer said many other viruses, especially ones with small genomes like
HIV and hepatitis C, could be made this way. But the smallpox virus
has a genome almost 200,000 base long, putting it out of reach of current
synthesis technology.
"I think that this advance will bring the question of gene
sequences more to the forefront than it was before," said Dr. Raymond
A. Zilinskas, a bio warfare expert at the Monterey Institute of
International Studies. He is organising a workshop next month to advise the
Defence Department on whether certain research should not be published.
Dr. Joseph A. Walder, chief executive of Integrated DNA
Technologies, the company that synthesised the polio base stretches of DNA
for Dr. Wimmer, said his company was now considering checking sequences
ordered by customers against a database of pathogens.
But Dr. Wimmer said polio, as it has done in the past, could spread panic
and that vaccines would have to be stockpiled if not routinely administered.
"In 20 or 25 years, if a good percentage of the world is not immunised
against polio virus, then the virus would be a terrible terrorist
agent."
After reading this one can only ask: is this the next step in the
anthrax story?
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