Thread: New Bioterror Fear: Custom-Built Microbes

http://www.newsmax.com/

New Bioterror Fear: Custom-Built Microbes

Terrorists planning an attack with biological weapons might not have to steal stores of deadly pathogens – thanks to an emerging technology, they could simply “build” them in a lab.
And ominously, the building blocks for these new custom-built microbes are already easily available.
Five years ago, Eckard Wimmer – a German-born microbiologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook – stunned the scientific world by creating the first live, artificial virus in a lab. It was a variation of the polio virus, and he built it from scratch.
First Wimmer obtained the entire genetic code for the polio virus; which, along with dozens of other pathogens, is readily available for free on the Internet.
He then placed an order with an American company that makes fragments of DNA, called oglionucleotides. The fragments arrived by mail in tiny vials, according to a report by Joby Warrick in The Washington Post.
Wimmer and his graduate assistants assembled these snippets of material into larger fragments, then they spliced these together until the entire genetic code was complete.
The finished DNA was placed in a culture and began making proteins – then assembled “the trappings of a working virus around itself,” Warrick explained.
Wimmer said he regarded his work as a “wake-up call” about the dangers of manufactured pathogens.
“We consider it imperative to inform society of this new reality, which bears far-reaching consequences,” he stated.
The technology could create new tools for overcoming disease. But it could also be used to transform common microbes into killers, make deadly strains even more lethal or resurrect killers from the past, such as the 1918 influenza virus.
They could constitute a “class of new, more virulent biological agents engineered to attack,” according to an unclassified CIA study from 2003.
“The effects of some of these engineered biological agents could be worse than any disease known to man.”
Last year the Bush administration appointed a panel of scientists to begin a study of the potential problem, and a large laboratory for studying bioterror threats is under construction in Maryland.
Al-Qaida has reportedly sought to obtain biological weapons and has recruited microbiologists.
But the ability of terrorists to pursue this form of bioterror “in the near- to mid-term is judged to be low,” Charles E. Allen, chief intelligence officer for the Department of Homeland Security, told a House committee.
He warned that a more likely source of such a biological weapons attack would be a “lone wolf” – a scientist working alone or in a small group and motivated by ideology or personal demons, the Post noted.
“All it would take for advanced bio-weapons development,” according to Allen, “is one skilled scientist and modest equipment – an activity we are unlikely to detect in advance.”

Oh, this is going to make me sleep better at night!!!

What a wake up call!!!!!

Yeah, me too. They told last week that there is a lab not far from the White House that is making all kinds of virus's for terrorism purposes.
DEADLY VIRUS'S

Gee, you think we could be lucky enough to have one of those virus' be "brains for politicians" :P :P

Hi y'all,

This story actually made the MSM, recently. Don't remember which show.
If I get time, later, I'll try to find it.