(Washington Post) Anne Applebaum - According to one molecular biologist who should know, there are already 20,000 labs in the world where a single person will be able to synthesize any existing virus within the next decade. In the same 20,000 labs, five people with $2 million will be able to create an enhanced pathogen - a virus that could infect people who have been immunized with conventional vaccines - and kill perhaps a billion of them. With an additional $3 million, the same five people could build a lab from scratch, using equipment purchased online. The threat, then, is not merely from the diseases we know about - anthrax, smallpox, plague - but from the diseases that haven't been invented yet. It isn't possible to distinguish "safe" lines of biological engineering research from "dangerous" ones, since they are identical.
2004-02-18 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive