Scientists accidentally make more lethal mousepox virus
from the oops dept.
VAB writes "Australian GE researchers accidentally created a more virulent version of the mousepox virus which proved fatal in 100% of mouse infections by adding the IL-4 gene. BBC Article: "Professor John Oxford says he would not have expected this result. He adds though that while rare, it is inevitable that unpredictable events will occur which is why experiments are closely monitored and performed in isolated laboratories."
Researcher Ron Jackson: "It would be safe to assume that if some idiot did put human IL-4 into human smallpox they'd increase the lethality quite dramatically… Seeing the consequences of what happened in the mice, I wouldn't want to be the one who'd want to do the experiment".
The Australian Department of Defense was consulted before publication of the research because of its potential impact in the ability of terrorists and outlaw states to develop biological weapons. Precipitant Research"
January 22nd, 2001 at 11:15 PM
who needs grey goo?
Smallpox is the biowarfare nightmare, because it is highly contagious (unlike, say, anthrax) and frequently lethal, and because, thanks to global eradication, vaccinations are no longer given. According to Ken Alibek's interesting book Biohazard, the Soviets weaponized smallpox in the 1980s and developed strains of enhanced virulence. He says that when he quit the program after the 1991 coup attempt, he had already initiated an effort to apply genetic engineering to further enhancement of the weapon, and he thinks there is evidence suggesting that such work continues in Russia, under the guise of open medical research. We might wonder about our friends Down Under, as well. When I read Alibek's book, I was skeptical of his claims about Soviet biotech successes, but there can be no doubt that advancing knowledge will create new opportunities for the Biology of Doom (the title of Ed Regis' also very interesting book on the US bioweapons program).
We cannot rule out the possibility that advanced biotechnology might create a super-pathogen that could spread rapidly throughout the civilized world and kill a large fraction of the population. I don't think this is something any demented terrorist is likely to be able to do in the near future, but it is something a government might be able to do and might consider as a deterrent (the Soviets obviously could not intend to wage war with smallpox; they held it as part of their Doomsday arsenal).
January 23rd, 2001 at 12:36 PM
Re:who needs grey goo?
The thing to remember is that this is Doomsday technology and no one really wants to use it, since it means the end of the user, too. Nuclear weapons could potentially be deployed against just one nation and not produce global nuclear war. Bioweapons, though, especially diseases like smallpox, spread all over the world. It would be pretty much impossible to keep their own population safe (putting out a vaccine is not an option, since that would tip off the rest of the world as to what is going on, resulting in a massive assult with any kind of weapons on the source country, resulting in Doomsday anyway). As much as people worry about this stuff, there is more chance of an accident wiping out the planet than deliberate use.
January 23rd, 2001 at 1:06 PM
nano-attack
I always wondered what an efficient defense system would be like from well-thought out design of nano-based WMDs (weapons of mass destruction). where would our lines of defense be? maybe the last line would be a lot of synchronized nanocomputers in everyone's blood, designed to attack that offending nanobot in a random way and report any understanding of how the attacking nanobot works. how about earlier lines of defense? where would the first power to have smart dust applications draw the line?
Or maybe an attack with nanotechnology would not be biowarfare at all, but flooding or an earthquake or something of the sort…
January 23rd, 2001 at 1:51 PM
Re:who needs grey goo?
You're assuming that the deployers of such a weapon would be rational. And, most likely, states. Both of these assumptions are completely incorrect. Even some of the U.S.'s home-grown militia might have 'fun' with this one.
January 23rd, 2001 at 11:46 PM
Re:who needs grey goo?
"Weaponizing" a pathogen is intrinsically difficult even if the user is willing to die. Make a super-lethal "bug" and you tend to get something like Ebola, which kills most to all of those infected and then is left with no one to carry it further. The true designer "uber-plague" would have something like: the ease of transmission of something like the Cold or Flu, the incubation period, ability to evade (or attack) the immune system, as well as ability of writing itself into the victim's DNA possessed by HIV, and the lethality of Ebola. The only terrorist group I have seen to even remotely approach the level of competence we are talking about was the Aum Shinri Kyo and even *they* managed to botch an attack with simple (compared to a "designer plague", that is) nerve gas attack in that the death toll was a dozen, rather than the thousands that they hoped to kill. Should we be concerned about terrorists, yes, but let's not be so paranoid that we underestimate the difficulty of cooking up a true pandemic.
January 26th, 2001 at 7:14 AM
Re:who needs grey goo?
A biological weapon with a tendency to "burn out" after reaching epidemic levels in a small area would be an ideal weapon for many uses. For one example, take ethnic cleansing. The US has alleged the use of chemical weapons by Iraq against ethic populations in remote regions of the county. What better way to eliminate such an isolated population than with a strongly virulent GE virus?
As for terrorist groups, you forget groups like the ELF. The ELF is a radical splinter group which emerged from the Earth First! movement in the 1990s. The ELF has taken as its strongest position anti-urban-sprawl. The FBI has profiled the average member of the ELF to be college educated, middle class and white, often with an advanced degree. Most molecular biologists I've met have been middle class, college educated and white, often with an advanced degree. While almost all of the members of the ELF would not engage in murder to further their cause, I'm sure at least one could be found who would at least consider the idea of clearing human influence from the Amazon Rain Forest or the mass sterilization of the population of the City of Atlanta for example through the means of a biological weapon.
There was a rumor in the 1980's that scientists sympathetic to the Earth First! movement had been working on biological weapons to sterilize a large percentage of the Earth's population. The rumor was mentioned in passing in Judi Bari's book _Timber_Wars_. While I personally don't believe the rumor, it's ironic that the suggested topic of research for the EF! scientists in the human population, was the same topic of research that lead to the IL-4 accident in the mouse population.
Interleukin is a very common topic of research. It is often used to stimulate the immune system of humans against cancers. So IL-4 should be easy to acquire and work with.
Further, if you read the press release about the research that I linked under Precipitant Research you'll see that these scientists have been working with immuno-stimulation derived sterilization in mice for a while. Which means that this IL-4 accident probably wasn't an isolated experiment, but the next logical step in a series of such experiments. These scientists may have created virii, meant to be released into the biosphere, which are capable of mutating into the IL-4 variation.
This leads me to wonder if the mousepox IL-4 virus could make a species jump to humans and other mamals (particularly birds which eat mice and travel large distances). And if the mousepox virus was the precursor to the human smallpox virus, or if they are evolutionarily separate virii. I personally know very little about molecular biology.
I think this incident highlights one of the weaknesses of Foresight. Foresight and its memebers tend not to be capable of taking the pathological point of view a "terrorist" would hold. The end result of this flaw is, I think, the fact that the "Arms Race" theory of technology control is a theory with many flaws, yet it is the best foresight has sought to offer.
January 26th, 2001 at 9:01 PM
Re:who needs grey goo?
It's not clear what you mean… why would the bug itself change or "burn out"? Most bioweapons that have been considered are noncontagious and don't survive long in the environment. That seems to fit your requirements automatically.
The use of sarin and mustard against Kurdish civilians by Iraq is extremely well documented, most notoriously at Halabjah where ~5,000 people were killed in March 1988. The US at the time was not particularly concerned. Extensive use of CW by both sides in the Iran-Iraq war is also very well documented.
As we've seen, it isn't necessary. Use of nerve gas would be much less risky. Better yet, stick with plain old-fashioned bombs and soldiers, and if you're Russia (Chechnya) or Turkey (Kurdistan) the US won't even put up much of a fuss.
I'm also college educated, middle class, and white… oops! You've found me out!
Yes, and the gene for IL-4 would not be such an exotic lab animal either, but the fully-equipped biotech lab you'd need even to begin an effort to develop a super-virulent pathogen (to say nothing of facilities for safely and secretly testing your trial bugs) is not something that is available to your average psychopath.
Not to be mean, but it shows. Perhaps if you can admit that you don't know much about the subject, you can give a little more weight to expert opinion and less to your own fears. I'm not an expert either, but most experts would agree that the kind of sophisticated bioterrorism you're talking about is a possible future problem but extremely unlikely to appear in the immediate future; crude bioterrorism is a more likely prospect, and the development of sophisticated bioweapons by governments is either likely in the near future or is already ongoing.
On the contrary, I've discussed this issue with Foresight members and others invovled with nanotech for many years, and nearly everyone seems to feel that demonic, demented terrorists are the only real threat left in the world and the only reason for possible concern about biotech or nanotech weapons.
Arms races are destabilizing and a runaway arms race by definition ends in a war. During the Cold War, the steady pace of technical innovation frustrated efforts to cap the arms race and stabilize the US-SU relationship. Drexler wrote that when he first considered the possibility of nanotech, he was filled with dread. But how quickly we forget. As far as I can tell, I am the only person left who worries about the prospect of a nanotechnic arms race.
January 29th, 2001 at 12:33 AM
Russian brainpox and Australian mousepox
In Alibek's book, you will remember his claim that the Russians had somehow "genetically engineered" smallpox to create something he called a brainpox (yuck!). It is interesting to note that the Australians were working with a mousepox virus, presumably similar to the human smallpox virus. What I gather from all of this is that there is a relatively small number of viruses that could be engineered into a "super" plague (pox being one of them). It would therefor be useful for these viruses (and thier derivatives) be studied so asto create a vaccine, should one be needed.
The problem with extremely virulent agents is that they kill thier host (humans?) very quickly, and do not get a chance to spread widely before they burn out. An agent that caused sterility (which is what the Australians were trying to make in the first place), on the other hand, could spread world-wide multiple times, because it would not kill its host (humans?). Such an agent would only render people incapable of reproduction. Moreover, if such an agent were released, it would be several years before anyone figured it out.