What do you get when you cross a paradise seeker with virulent mousepox?
Millions of dead Americans.
Could our knowledge of microbial genomics and skill in genetic engineering
be used to create 'enhanced' bioweapons? Carina Dennis assesses the threat,
and the efforts to counter it.
Ron Jackson and Ian Ramshaw weren't looking for trouble. Jackson, who works
at the Pest Animal Control Cooperative Research Centre in Canberra, and
Ramshaw, who is in the same city at the Australian National University,
were searching for a way to control the mice that are serious pests in
Australia. They wanted to make a contraceptive vaccine by altering the
genes of the mousepox virus.
CSIRO
Accidental architect: Ron Jackson co-engineered a particularly virulent
form of mousepox.
But in January the project gained notoriety after the pair inadvertently
created an unusually virulent strain of mousepox. If a similar genetic
manipulation were applied to smallpox, the scientists realized, this feared
killer could be made even more dangerous.
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v411/n6835/full/411232a0_r.html
Cry havoc and let slip the bugs of war...
