Newspaper investigation highlights bioterror fears
UK firm unknowingly synthesizes smallpox fragment.
A recent investigation in a UK newspaper has highlighted the gulf between what is utterly routine within the research and biotech communities and what can shock the outside world, including legislators.
In a front-page article in The Guardian on 14 June, the newspaper's science correspondent describes how he arranged for a tiny fragment of the smallpox genome to be synthesized by a mail-order biological-supplies company and delivered to his home address.
Read more here
Comments
This, once again, reminds us how truly disconnected the public at large (including journalists) are from the actual state of science and technology. The purchase of a piece of DNA is an everyday humdrum affair in most biology departments - and yet it is news to the general public? The tools for making nasty concoctions have always been available, and have often not even required advanced knowledge. People having the specialized knowledge to actually put together pieces of nucleic acids into something like smallpox virus can easily dream up easier ways of generating the virus than tinkering with old DNA synthesizers. They probably won't dare because the containment of such pathogens is more difficult than actually creating them.
Posted by: V.K. Viswanathan, Ph.D. | June 14, 2006 08:55 PM
This is an unncessary stunt news.If a terrorist has to make a deadly pathogen for bioterrorism, why would he/she would order small oligos from a company.Why won't they just buy a small nucleotide synthesizer, hire a biochemist and a molecular biologist to have the work done?This type of stunts make those people see what they had not seen earlier or don't understand.
Posted by: D Kumar | June 15, 2006 03:54 AM
James Randerson has a second-day story in which notables talk about the need for regulation up here
Posted by: Oliver Morton | June 15, 2006 11:14 AM
Mary Poppins, All London Theatre Ticket
Book tickets for all London theatres, wide range of theatre...
mytickets.co.uk
This is the Ad on The Guardian homepage. And this is a line from Mary Poppins:
You know, you *can* say it backwards, which is "dociousaliexpiisticfagilcalirupes" - but that's going a bit too far, don't you think?
Terrorists ordering samples of 'whatever' on Internet for terrorism .???..!!!! but that's going a bit too far, don't you think?
The best prescription for frayed nerves is to watch Mary Poppins!
Posted by: Dr Jayanth G Paraki | June 15, 2006 03:25 PM
Rob Carlson has his say here, and points to the correspondence between Drew Endy and James Randerson here (pdf).
Posted by: Oliver Morton | June 16, 2006 10:20 AM
I wonder why newspapers highlight stories that may create fear in some readers. The Guardian as the name implies ought to protect the larger interests of the readership. Is it time it is re-christened The Custodian...!
Posted by: Dr Jayanth G Paraki | June 16, 2006 11:05 AM
I am glad the pair of articles in Wednesday's Guardian has stimulated discussion within the research community and more widely.
As the articles state, building a genome from scratch would not be easy to do. We point out that the variola virus genome is some 185,000 bases long and so would be much more difficult to make than polio.
Prof Eckard Wimmer who led the team that made polio virus from scratch in 2002 described that experiment as "fairly trivial". He said that in a few years he expected the costs of DNA synthesis to have dropped so far that a researcher could make the virus for "a few cents".
I would argue that hiding behind the "it would be difficult to do at the moment so we need not worry" argument is not good enough. Surely regulators should think ahead at what might be possible months and years hence.
Any regulation though would have to balance restrictions on scientific progess - which is of course what will protect us against diseases and the actions of a putative bioterrorist - and the need to prevent technology being used for malign ends. As the articles clearly state, synthetic biology has great potential for medicine and other fields and custom-made DNA has many legitimate uses in research.
In the run up to the Synthetic Biology 2.0 conference in Berkeley and for an entire day during the conference (one third of the total) delegates discussed measures the community could take to limit the field's misuse. One concrete proposal - which was discussed in the second of the Guardian's articles - was to encourage researchers effectively to boycott gene synthesis companies which do not screen their orders for DNA from so-called "select agents" such as ebola virus and variola virus. At present, some companies (such as Blue Heron) screen their orders, but others do not and the community felt that it could use economic pressure to force companies to comply without formal regulation.
http://openwetware.org/wiki/Synthetic_Biology/SB2Declaration
John Mulligan CEO of Blue Heron told me that he had three reasons for screening his DNA orders. Firstly, he felt it was his social and professional duty to know what he was sending out. Second, issues of potential corporate liability meant he had a duty to his shareholders to know. Lastly - and least importantly he said - he did not want his picture on the front of the New York Times as the man who unwittingly helped a terrorist build a bioweapon.
My hope is that the Guardian's articles may help achieve the same end that the synthetic biology community is driving at. After reading the articles, CEOs of companies providing gene and oligo synthesis services that do not screen their orders may now think twice about that policy. Like Dr Mulligan's fear of bad publicity, others may decide to begin screening on the grounds that they might also be the target of a journalistic sting.
There will be more discussion of the issue on the Guardian's weekly science podcast which goes live on 19th June at around 15:00 BST.
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/podcasts/science/
Posted by: James Randerson | June 16, 2006 12:07 PM
From James Randerson "As the articles clearly state, synthetic biology has great potential for medicine and other fields and custom-made DNA has many legitimate uses in research".
Sensitive information must be isolated from mainstream media. Some risks are not worth taking. However i have a soft corner for children. AUTISM is one condition that must be solved and solved pretty quickly.
It is now necessary to create an exclusive GLOBAL ONTOLOGY REPOSITORY FOR AUTISM and share the data uniformly across the research community.
Posted by: Dr Jayanth G Paraki | June 16, 2006 01:47 PM
The Guardian printed a response today from a researcher called David Winder
Posted by: Oliver Morton | June 28, 2006 02:08 PM
I would argue that hiding behind the "it would be difficult to do at the moment so we need not worry" argument is not good enough. Surely regulators should think ahead at what might be possible months and years hence.
Good works
Posted by: tatil | July 10, 2007 10:36 PM
I wonder why newspapers highlight stories that may create fear in some readers. The Guardian as the name implies ought to protect the larger interests of the readership. Is it time it is re-christened The Custodian
Posted by: gazeteler | July 15, 2007 03:48 PM