Genetic engineering is no trivial matter.
Both items below are of major concern--note that the second one is about the
1918 flu virus that was recently recreated using genetic engineering methods.
TM
=========================================================
Subj: GMW: The bioweapon is in the post/Did U.S. government lie about
deadly virus?
Date: 11/11/2005 4:43:42 PM Central Standard Time
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GM WATCH daily
http://www.gmwatch.org
---
THE OTHER TERRORISTS
1.The bioweapon is in the post - New Scientist
2.Did U.S. government lie about deadly virus? - World Science
They're so prcautionary over bird flu, meanwhile...
"Terrorists could order genes that confer virulence to Ebola, say, and
engineer them into another virus or bacterium" (item 1)
"I don't understand the logic of creating a threat so we can learn to defend
against that threat, that would not have existed in the first place if we
hadn't created it." (item 2)
---
1.The bioweapon is in the post
09 November 2005
NewScientist.com news service
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18825252.900
YOU might think it would be difficult for a terrorist to obtain genes from
the smallpox virus, or a similarly vicious pathogen. Well, it's not. Armed with
a fake email address, a would-be bioterrorist could probably order the
building blocks of a deadly biological weapon online, and receive them by post within
weeks.
That's the sobering reality uncovered by a New Scientist investigation into
the bioterror risks posed by the booming business of gene synthesis. Dozens of
biotech firms now offer to synthesise complete genes from the chemical
components of DNA (See "A dollar a base pair" [below]). Yet some are carrying out
next to no checks on what they are being asked to make, or by whom. It raises the
frightening prospect of terrorists mail-ordering genes for key bioweapon
agents such as smallpox, and using them to engineer new and deadly pathogens.
Customers typically submit sequences by email or via a form available on a
company's website. The companies then construct the specified genes and mail
them back a few weeks later, usually spliced into a bacterium such as Escherichia
coli. New Scientist approached 16 such firms, identified by a Google search,
to ask whether they screened orders for DNA sequences that might pose a
bioterror threat. Of the 12 companies that replied, just five said they screen every
sequence received. Four said they screen some sequences, and three admitted
not screening sequences at all (see Table).
The risks posed by gene synthesis first hit the headlines in 2002, when a
team from the State University of New York at Stony Brook made infectious
polioviruses from synthetic DNA. And just last month, researchers with the US Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, said that they had
used similar means to recreate the virus that caused the 1918 flu (New
Scientist, 8 October, p 16).
In theory, a terrorist group could try to emulate the latter feat, or create
a virus such as Variola major, which causes smallpox. However, the Variola
genome comprises some 190,000 base pairs of DNA, and while some companies will
make sequences 20,000 or more base pairs long, an attempt to order all the genes
necessary to launch a smallpox attack would probably arouse suspicion. "That
would stand out from a technological point of view," suggests Drew Endy, a
bioengineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
A more realistic risk is that terrorists could order genes that confer
virulence to dangerous pathogens such as the Ebola virus, and engineer them into
another virus or bacterium. They could also order genes for a hazardous bacterial
toxin - although many of these are also available by isolating the
microorganisms from the environment.
Virulence genes are typically no more than a few thousand base-pairs long.
Their sequences are publicly available, so screening gene-synthesis orders for
potential bioweapons shouldn't pose a huge challenge. Indeed, a company called
Craic Computing, based in Seattle, has written open-source software called
Blackwatch that does just that. It is used by one of the leading gene-synthesis
companies, Blue Heron Biotechnology of Bothell, Washington.
Robert Jones, president of Craic Computing, says that Blackwatch "casts a
wide net", comparing orders against sequences from organisms identified by the US
government as "select agents" that raise bioterror concerns. But not all of
these sequences are dangerous, and some customers may have the clearance to
work with those that are. So even legitimate orders may be flagged up as
suspicious, and that means companies must employ biologists to carefully examine any
matches that crop up.
The need for expert human checks may be one factor deterring some companies
from screening orders. Others like to reassure customers who may be worried
about commercial confidentiality that their sequence data will remain secret. But
whatever the reasons, some firms freely admit that they run no sequence
screens. "That's not our business," says Bob Xue, a director of Genemed Synthesis
in South San Francisco.
Even if they don't routinely perform sequence checks, some companies say that
they do investigate their customers. But the scope of these checks varies
widely. While some firms say they conduct thorough probes into customers'
affiliations and scientific publications, others are less exhaustive. For instance,
Jennifer Wang, general manager of Bio Basic, based in Markham, Canada, says
that her company examines email addresses to see if orders come from a legitimate
research organisation.
Such a check would have spotted one suspicious order, sent from a Hotmail
address to BaseClear of Leiden, the Netherlands. This was for a modified sequence
from a hepatitis-like virus. BaseClear itself rejected the order after the
would-be customer failed to respond to requests for more information, says
Gerben Zondag, the firm's scientific director.
But email addresses are notoriously easy to fake. And even orders from
legitimate institutions may not be what they seem. Alfred Lasher, who manages
Picoscript in Houston, Texas, says that he turned down one order placed by an
individual at a US biotech firm, after Picoscript's enquiries revealed the gene was
being ordered on behalf of a friend in another country.
Experts are concerned that the checks currently employed by some companies
aren't sufficient to exclude orders placed by terrorists. "We're taking this
very seriously," says Endy. Together with the J. Craig Venter Institute in
Rockville, Maryland, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington DC, Endy's research group at MIT has launched a study into the risks and
benefits of synthetic genomics, and aims to produce a set of policy
recommendations by late 2006. The US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity,
set up last year to advise the US government on which advances in biology could
be exploited by terrorists, is also considering the issue.
Some gene synthesis companies say they would welcome more detailed rules.
John Mulligan, president of Blue Heron, says it would be helpful to have a list
of "select sequences" that are off-limits for gene synthesis without explicit
government permission, rather than having to make difficult judgments based on
the list of select agents. "Tell us what we can't make," he implores.
But with gene synthesis firms springing up all over the world, and the
underlying technology becoming cheaper and more widely available, it is unclear
whether regulations enacted in any one country will be enough. "It's going to be
virtually impossible to control," predicts David Magnus, director of the
Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics in Palo Alto, California.
Endy argues that what's needed is better self-regulation: if researchers only
do business with companies that are diligent in sequence screening and other
security checks, then terrorists would soon find themselves unable to place
orders for dangerous genes. Otherwise, he fears a crackdown that could close
valuable avenues of research. For instance, gene synthesis can be used to make
DNA vaccines, which may eventually provide a means of responding rapidly to
emerging diseases - or bioterrorist attacks.
"As soon as people start dying from a bioengineered organism, there will be a
huge security response and research will be clamped down," warns Endy.
From issue 2525 of New Scientist magazine, 09 November 2005, page 8
A dollar a base pair
Biochemists have long known how to build DNA from its component "bases" - the
chemical letters of the genetic code. By adding the bases in a prescribed
order and carefully performing a series of chemical reactions, they can create
precisely tailored stretches of DNA.
The process became significantly less laborious with the debut of the
automated DNA synthesiser in the 1980s. But a full gene - a DNA sequence up to
several thousand base pairs long - involves a formidable jigsaw puzzle.
Commercial gene synthesis has only really taken off in the past few years
with advances in automating this assembly process. And as the main players jostle
for position, the costs of gene synthesis are plummeting. Prices have dropped
about tenfold in five years, and some firms now supply genes for less than
$1.50 per base pair.
Reconstruction of 1918 flu virus prompts warnings
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18825204.000
Virus synthesised in a fortnight
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4383
How the US crackdown on bioterror is backfiring
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18024201.000
---
2.Did U.S. government lie about deadly virus?
World Science, Nov 9 2005
http://www.world-science.net/home/home34.htm
U.S. officials seem to have quietly reversed an assurance they gave publicly
last month - that a deadly virus, which scientists recently recreated, would
not leave a secure government facility.
Now, authorities acknowledge they perhaps will mail copies of the germ, which
killed an estimated 50 million people in 1918, to qualified laboratories that
apply for it.
The apparent flip-flop suggests the initial assurance might have been a lie,
or deception, meant to calm a nervous public about the risky project, says the
head of an anti-biological weapons organization.
But U.S. officials say they didn’t mislead anyone.
Scientists and government officials announced last month that they had
designed a virus identical in most key respects to the infamous 1918 “Spanish Flu”
virus.
The project’s stated purpose was to let scientists study the virus and
thereby design vaccines against related pathogens, including a bird flu that is
alarming governments worldwide.
But some experts expressed doubts from the start about the venture’s safety.
They said the virus could accidentally escape or land in terrorist hands.
In response to such concerns, officials with the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Ga., a U.S. agency, said the virus would be
held securely at the agency's headquarters, and wouldn’t be sent elsewhere for
research, according to newsreports.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Oct. 6 that Jennifer Morcone, a
spokeswoman for the agency, had given such an assurance. If researchers from
outside the agency want to work with the virus, the paper quoted her as saying, "We
will consider hosting researchers at the CDC if they go through the same
training and clearances required of our researchers."
The research journal Nature reported similar assurances by the officials. The
Chicago Tribune cited CDC Director Julie Gerberding saying the agency had no
plans to share the virus with other labs.
The apparent reversal, when it came, was quiet.
It appeared in the form of a cryptic notice - which the agency was legally
required to publish - in the Oct. 20 Federal Register, the official publication
of federal government notices.
It said the agency would add the virus to a "list of select agents and
toxins" maintained by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Basically, this means the virus can be mailed out, agency spokesman Von
Roebuck acknowledged, according to a news article in the Nov. 10 Nature.
"Labs that are registered to work with select agents—in particular, dangerous
pathogens that are subject to specific handling rules—will be able to request
the virus," Nature reported, citing Roebuck. The parcels could travel via
commercial carriers, the journal added.
A staff member who answered the phone at the CDC's media relations office on
Tuesday told World Science that the agency hasn't announced the new policy
publicly, as far as he knows.
The staffer, who identified himself as Chris Cox, referred further questions
to Roebuck. Roebuck said in an emailed statement to World Science that
the agency didn’t mislead anyone, because officials said only that they were
not planning on sending out the virus.
He didn't deny it would ever happen, though. "Requests to obtain the virus
for investigations at non-CDC laboratories that advance the science and
understanding of influenza pandemics will be considered on a case-by-case basis ," he
wrote, adding that such mailings will follow strict safety procedures.
The policy dismayed the project's critics.
Edward Hammond, director of the U.S. office of the Sunshine Project, a
non-profit group that works against chemical and biological weaponsusage, said he
wasn't sure whether the agency's original statement was a lie.
"Did they lie, as in did they know that they were going to flip this policy
within a week? I don’t know - it's difficult to tell, but they certainly in my
judgement deceived," he said.
On the other hand, he said, any expert on the subject would have known that
the policy as originally stated was "a fiction to begin with." That's because
even without the mailing, anyone with the right equipment could have
reconstructed the virus using the information released as part of the project.
The no-mailing claim "was a red herring from the get-go," he said. "It was
intended to reassure, when they knew that the assurance that
most people would draw from it was based on a misunderstanding."
But the policy change raises the dangers still further, said Jens Kuhn, a
research scholar at the acknowledged Harvard Medical School.
"There's a big risk associated with it," he said. He added that officials
didn’t announce the mailing policy to begin with "probably because they would
have gotten the same kind of heat they're getting now."
On the other hand, it might have been a good idea not to announce it, as this
could further encourage bioterrorists, said Kuhn, who, like Hammond, opposed
the project from the start.
"I don't understand the logic," he said, "of creating a threat so we can
learn to defend against that threat, that would not have existed in the first
place if we hadn’t created it."
Source: world-science.net
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