Aussie scientists create killer virus
06:36 AEDT Thursday 11 January 2001 --AAP --
Australian scientists have accidentally created a smallpox-type killer virus which wipes
out its victims' immune systems, sparking fears it could be used in biological weapons.
The virus, created during attempts to make a mouse contraceptive, does not affect humans -
but could act as a blueprint for terrorists wanting to develop a similar killer for
people.
The creation highlights the growing possibility that terrorists could take legitimate
research published in academic journals and adapt it for evil purposes, the latest edition
of New Scientist magazine reports.
"It's a good way to show how to alter smallpox to make it more virulent," Ken
Alibek, former second-in-command of the civilian branch of the Soviet germ-warfare
program, said.
The Canberra-based researchers, Ron Jackson of CSIRO's wildlife division and Ian Ramshaw
of the Australian National University, consulted the Defence Department before deciding to
submit their work for publication. It will appear in the Journal of Virology next month.
"We wanted to warn the general population that this potentially dangerous technology
is available," Jackson said.
"We wanted to make it clear to the scientific community that they should be careful,
that it is not too difficult to create severe organisms."
The researchers created the potential killer by inserting a gene that creates large
amounts of naturally-occurring molecule interleukin 4 (IL-4) into a mousepox virus.
The aim was to stimulate antibodies against mouse eggs to make the animals infertile. The
result was a deadly virus that totally suppressed the "cell-mediated response" -
the arm of the immune system that combats viral infection - and wiped out all the test
animals in nine days.
"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," Jackson said.
"Seeing the consequences of what happened in the mice, I wouldn't be the one who'd
want to do the experiment."
Attempts to vaccinate the mice failed, raising fears that vaccination programs would be of
little use if bioterrorists used the Australian research to create a human version.
"It's surprising how very, very bad the virus is," Ann Hill, a vaccine
researcher from Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, said.
Defence experts have long been concerned about how to preserve the freedom to publish
medical findings while stopping the information falling into the wrong hands.
Blueprints for making micro-organisms more harmful regularly appeared in unclassified
journals, D. A. Henderson, the director of the Centre for Civilian Biodefence Studies at
John Hopkins University in Baltimore, told New Scientist.
"I can't, for the life of me, figure out how we are going to deal with this," he
said.END OF
REPORT
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