National Institute for Biological Standards and Control/Photo Researchers
Evidently I’m not the only one who found the genetic manipulation of the H5N1 bird flu virus quite frightening. Last Sunday, the New York Times lead editorial was devoted to “An Engineered Doomsday.” The Times takes the view that the research should never have been done at all, suggests that nothing describing it should be published, and that only a small number of laboratories should be given access to the full research results.
“The Erasmus team [that did some of the work] believes that more than 100 laboratories and perhaps 1,000 scientists around the world need to know the precise mutations to look for [so as to detect a spontaneously occurring or maliciously induced transformation of the virus into a form transmissible through the air to humans],” the Times noted. “That would spread the information far too widely. It should suffice to have a few of the most sophisticated laboratories do the analyses.”
I’m inclined to agree with that recommendation, but counterarguments could be made, ironically, on the basis of presentations delivered on Monday at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday conference in Washington, D.C. Kathleen Vogel of Cornell University and Marie Chevrier of Rutgers University, both well accredited experts on bioweapons, made the following observations:
• malignant viruses are a lot harder to make than you might think; prior to the bird flu (H5Ni) episode, there was an analogous incident in 2003, which one of the speakers analyzed; it turned out only a handful a hugely specialized labs worldwide had the equipment, personnel and know-how to replicate the malignant virus
• there has been no successful attempt to mass-manufacture a biotoxin: the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo signally failed in its efforts to produce anthrax
• nor has there been an attempt to actually commit mass murder with a bioweapon; even the presumed perpetrator of the 2003 anthrax attacks wrote on the envelopes he sent, “Contains anthrax. Take antibiotic.”
•nevertheless, bioweaponry represents a very real and scary threat; biology is now the most popular major among entering college students, because biotech is so hot; it’s the dream of all the smartest and most ambitious entering students to start inventing and fabricating new life forms; some of those students, it is implied, will turn out to be sociopaths
• accordingly, the bioweapons convention talks need to be invested with more urgency
I hope I have all that about right, and I apologize to Vogel and Chevrier if I do not. After eight straight hours of unrelenting doomsday talk, it was hard not be feel doomed and dazed.
