beyond biology
Three disparate things I read recently made me sit up and take another look at the threat biotechnology poses to the future of humanity. The first was an announcement made by scientists at the J Craig Venter Institute about their work on genome transplantation that allowed them to transform one type of bacteria into another type. This is the first time in history that a fully synthetic organism has been created. The second was a statement made by Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and former President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, considered one of today’s most eminent scientists. He states: “I have placed a thousand dollars on a bet: that by the year 2020, a case of bio-error or bio-terror will have killed a million people.” The third was that scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University created the first human/animal chimera (an animal that contains genetic material from parents of two or more clearly different species) by fusing cells from humans and rats.
The first piece of data shows that biotechnology is advancing at breakneck speed and has the potential to change things in fundamental ways. This ability has already translated into the development of drugs and other products: biotechnology now produces 40 percent of the drugs the US Food and Drug Administration approves each year.
The second indicates that scientists of the caliber of Sir Martin Rees believe that it is likely that this ability could be used with bad intentions. Biological weapons are the ideal weapons for terrorists and/or anarchists. The cost of setting up a laboratory for biotechnology research is significantly less than that of developing nuclear or chemical weapons. Manufacturing lethal toxins requires modest equipment, essentially the same as that needed for medical or agricultural programs: the technology is “dual-use.”
Research teams have been able to reconstruct the polio virus as well as the 1918 pandemic influenza virus (which killed between 20 and 40 million people) using only published DNA information and raw material from mail order services. . This knowledge and technology is already dispersed among hospital staff, academic research institutes, and factories. Bioterrorism is therefore a real possibility in the next decade with the invention of ways to kill that previously existed only in the realm of science fiction.
Sir Martin Rees also mentions the possibility of error on the part of the responsible laboratories and agencies. Ed Hammond of the Sunshine Project in Texas, which monitors the use of biological agents, says that laboratory accidents occur far more frequently than the public realizes. In recent years, the spread of foot-and-mouth disease in the UK (2007), the death of a laboratory worker at Texas A&M (2006) due to brucellosis after cleaning a high-containment container, the exposure of 3 researchers in Boston University Medical Center (2004) to tularemia or rabbit fever. All these laboratories are well managed and subject to many regulations. The same cannot be said of other laboratories in different parts of the world. Perhaps the worst biomistake occurred in 1979 in the former Soviet Union when weapons-grade anthrax escaped from a facility in Sverdlovsk, now known as Yekaterinburg, killing 68 people. The accident was covered up by the authorities and only came to light in 1998.
If there is a major outbreak in the future, government authorities may clamp down on the type of research and the agents that can be used in experimentation. However, this would have no impact on research in rouge labs or anti-social elements.
The Human Chimera experiment in China is one that could not have been carried out in any other country in the world. Most do not have, at least at present, the scientific capacity. Those that do, like the US and Western Europe, have strict codes of ethics and regulations that expressly prohibit such experimentation. However, even between the US and Europe, there is a huge difference in the regulatory framework. In the US, biotechnology products have been extensively tested and commercialized. In the EU, few biotech products have received regulatory approval, while most have faced a de facto moratorium.
Many countries do not have any type of regulatory framework related to biotechnology or restrictions on the type of research that can be carried out. Frightening experiments could be carried out, without the knowledge of the rest of the world or the authorities within the countries themselves. These could even attract groups to establish research facilities in the future, the same principle that attracts groups and individuals to tax havens such as Barbados, San Cristobal, Canary Islands, etc.
Advances made in the field of biotechnology have the potential to change the lives of humanity for the better by impacting health, eradicating disease, and creating miracle drugs. But we also need to give serious thought to what we need to do to prevent Sir Martin Rees’s gamble from coming true.