X-Message-Number: 15314
From: "Mark Plus" <>
Subject: "Aussie scientists stumble across the Doomsday Bug"
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 19:17:09 -0800

From:



http://asia.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/afp/article.html?s=asia/headlines/010111/world/afp/Aussie_scientists_stumble_across_the_Doomsday_Bug.html

Yahoo! Asia - News World





Thursday, January 11 3:00 AM SGT

Aussie scientists stumble across the Doomsday Bug
PARIS, Jan 10 (AFP) -
Australian gene engineers accidentally created a mouse virus that kills 
every one of its victims by wrecking their immune system, a discovery with 
the potential for making the ultimate terrorist weapon, New Scientist 
reports.

The killer bug was invented quite inadvertently, while the researchers were 
trying to create a contraceptive vaccine for mice as a pest control, the 
British weekly reports in next Saturday's issue.

They inserted into a mousepox virus a gene that creates large amounts of 
interleukin 4 (IL-4), a naturally-occurring molecule that produces 
antibodies in the immune system.

The idea was to stimulate antibodies to destroy eggs in female mice, thus 
making the rodents infertile.

Mousepox, a close relation to smallpox, normally only causes mild symptoms 
among the type of mice being used in the study, and was only being used as a 
vehicle to deliver the IL-4.

But when the IL-4 gene was inserted, the engineered virus ran amok, 
attacking the "cell-mediated response" -- the part of the immune system that 
fights viral infection. All the animals in the study were wiped out in just 
nine days.

Worse, the engineered virus was astonishingly resistant to vaccines. A 
vaccine that would normally protect these mice from mousepox only worked in 
half of the mice exposed to the killer version.

Co-researcher Ron Jackson, of the Canberra-based institute CSIRO, said the 
discovery was a frightening indicator of what could happen if the human 
smallpox virus was similarly modified.

"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," he told New 
Scientist.

"Seeing the consequences of what happened in the mice, I wouldn't want to be 
the one to do the experiment."

"It's surprising how very, very bad the virus is," said Anne Hill, a vaccine 
experts from Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Oregon.

Smallpox has been eradicated as a disease thanks to a global vaccination 
campaign, although two laboratories -- one in the United States, the other 
in Russia -- still have ampoules containing the virus, under an arrangement 
with the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The incident highlights how easy it could be for some with bio-engineering 
knowledge to create a murderous virus for which there would be no cure or 
effective vaccine, New Scientist said.

"Vast amounts of time and effort have gone into policing the military's use 
of biotechnology. But the activities of civilian biologists have been 
ignored," it said.

"Yet genetic engineering techniques are now so widespread that potentially 
dangerous results are bound to emerge accidentally."

It suggests tougher vetting of research proposals; a greater effort to train 
students in biological subjects about potential dangers arising from lab 
work; and encouraging greater openness among biologists to discuss the 
misuse of genetic engineering.


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15314