By tweaking bacterial and viral DNA, a gene terrorist could create an agent far more devastating than the bugs featuring in the post-September 11 anthrax attacks.

Efforts to build a tough verification protocol to the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) have been blocked for years -- ironically, by the United States, which said the secrets of its pharmaceutical industry could be at risk from intrusion. Negotiations resume in Geneva in November.

Among the nightmares: antibiotic-resistant strains of plague, tuberculosis and intestinal germs; a genetically-modified killer flu; and pathogen "cocktails," such as a mixture of smallpox and Ebola.

"In light of the September 11 tragedy, we can no longer afford to be complacent about the possibility of biological terrorism," warns a commentary published next month in the specialist journal Nature Genetics.

"The revolution in biology could be misused in offensive biological weapons programs, directed against human beings and their staple crops and livestock."

The 20th century saw seven countries by known count -- Britain, France, Germany, Iraq, Japan, the Soviet Union and the United States -- embark on programs to identify, manufacture and weaponize killer agents.

But experts worry the next generation of these weapons will exploit knowledge about the genome, with calamitous effect.

A couple of years from now, there may be as many as 70 pathogens whose genetic code has been cracked. The genome of cholera, leprosy, the plague and tuberculosis are already in the public domain, as is a food-poisoning bug, Staphylococcus aureus, that is becoming resistant to antibiotics.

DNA sequencing aims to encourage research into new drugs that prevent, block or reverse those diseases -- potentially, the greatest leap forward in medical history.

But there is also fear that a bioterrorist with an advanced college degree, lots of money and a good laboratory could use this readily-available data, inserting or swapping genes in bacteria and viruses to create new, horrifyingly virulent agents.

These fears pre-date the current anthrax alert.

"Progress in biomedical science inevitably has a dark side, and potentiates the development of an entirely new class of weapons of mass destruction: genetically engineered pathogens," a US scientific thinktank, the JASON Group, warned in the late 1990s.

These arms pose "extraordinary challenges for detection, mitigation and remediation."

There is no known risk of any such attack at present.

But the potential for one certainly exists. Indeed, there are at least two documented cases in which biologists have accidentally created a doomsday bug.

One was a strain of the common intestinal bug Escherichia coli that was 32,000 times more resistant to the antibiotic cefotaxime than conventional strains.

The superbug's creator was Willem Stemmer, chief scientist with Maxygen, a California pharmaceutical research firm, who was exploring the function of resistance genes in bacteria.

He destroyed his invention in response to an appeal by the American Society for Microbiology.

In a case published last January, a pair of Australian scientists, Ron Jackson and Ian Ramshaw, unwitting created a vicious strain of mousepox, a cousin of smallpox, among laboratory mice.

They, too, destroyed the virus and then went public with their findings to draw attention to the potential abuse of biotechnology.

If a new infectious weapon were unleashed, little could be done other than identify new cases and isolate them, itself a huge task in today's open, mobile society.

Claire Fraser, who works at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Maryland, and Malcolm Dando, a peace studies expert at Britain's Bradford University, say in the Nature Genetics commentary that the picture is not entirely gloomy.

"The same advances in microbial genomics that could be used to produce bioweapons can also be used to set up countermeasures against them," they say.

One early advance could be a DNA chip capable of spotting any biowarfare agents, even if they contained genes slotted in from other species, thus providing early warning of an attack.

And fast-growing knowledge about the genome and cell functions could help tailor new vaccines and antibiotics, although such drugs typically need several years of safety testing before being authorized for public use.

International cooperation and ethics training of civilian biologists are vital for strengthening the safeguards against bioterrorism, some say.

Efforts to build a tough verification protocol to the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) have been blocked for years -- ironically, by the United States, which said the secrets of its pharmaceutical industry could be at risk from intrusion. Negotiations resume in Geneva in November.

As for action by scientists themselves, some voices are calling for tougher vetting of research proposals and a greater effort to train students about potential dangers arising from civilian lab work.

"It's time for biologists to begin asking what means we have to keep the technology from being used in subverted ways," says Harvard University molecular biologist Matthew Meselson.

Copyright © 2001 AFP

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