Synthesizing Bioterror - Are mail order pandemics in your future? (Read comment# 1 please.)

Reason ^ | October 30, 2007 | Ronald Bailey

[neverdem]

Want to create a pathogen? Just download its gene sequence information from the Internet and place an order with a gene sequencing company. The genes arrive in the mail a couple of days later. Mix it in your basement lab and then release on an unprotected public. Is this nightmarish vision of mail-order bioterrorism really possible?

Most experts agree that basement bioterrorism is unlikely right now. But rapid improvements in the technologies that allow researchers to generate genetic material starting from just information and raw chemicals could make such bioterror attacks possible in the next decade or so. The synthesis of entire viral genomes—the complete set of genetic information of these microbes—has already been done by legitimate researchers.

For example, in 2002 one team constructed the polio virus us­ing only published DNA sequence information and mail-ordered raw materials. In 2005, another group similarly reconstituted the 1918 pandemic influenza virus that killed tens of millions of people...

[neverdem]

There are two pdf links in the article. You can avoid them by right clicking on a link which will give a pop-up or drop-down menu, and then right or left clicking on "Properties" will give you the URL which will or will not show a terminal .pdf on the address.

[esarlls3]

Reminds me of The White Plague, a 1982 novel by Frank Herbert.

[Lancey Howard]

[ruination]

This is right up my alley. I’ve been doing viral engineering for the past 11 years. These proposed restrictions on DNA synthesis or the required equipment seem absurd to me. It’s getting so simple and so cheap to do this stuff, I can’t see new laws and regulations being very effective. It’s pretty low-tech stuff - **far** less so than making a nuke, for example, and no restricted, or chemically rare or complex materials are needed.

What’s to keep some random lab in China or Mexico or even Bangladesh from doing this? Not too much!

[ruination]

By the way, the last two times I've had commercial gene synthesis done, the companies (one in Canada, one in Texas) were largely run by Chinese expats.

[endthematrix]

I guess humans will have to mutate themselves to keep one step ahead...

[stevie_d_64]

I’m shooting for the Wolverine plan then...

[neverdem]

The Inconvenient Science of Racial DNA Profiling

Poll: Most OK birth control for schools(another BOGUS poll)

FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem. I can see you’ve been giving this a lot of thought... ;’)

[djf]

Some company out there sells PCR technology.

If you have good DNA, you can make quarts of the stuff. Gallons.

I think it would be fairly hard to do without contaminating the sample, though. It would end up being like fruit fly DNA or bread mold DNA or something.

[djf]

Or OJ’s DNA.

;-)