| An influential World Health Organization (news
- web
sites) committee is sending shock waves through the scientific
community with its recommendation that researchers be permitted to
conduct genetic-engineering experiments with the smallpox virus.
The idea is to be able to better combat a disease that is
considered a leading bioterror threat though it was publicly
eradicated 25 years ago.
The WHO had previously opposed such work for fear that a
"superbug" might emerge. Because the disease is so deadly, the WHO
has even at times recommended destroying the world's two known
smallpox stockpiles, located in secure labs at the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (news
- web
sites) in Atlanta and in the former Soviet Union.
The recommended policy shift has reignited a debate over whether
such research will help or hinder bioterrorism defenses.
The World Health Assembly — the ruling body of the 192-nation WHO
— would make a final decision on whether to approve the experiments,
which would include splicing a "marker" gene into the smallpox virus
so its spread can be better tracked in the laboratory. The WHO
committee said inserting the marker gene wouldn't make the disease
any more dangerous, and that allowing such experimentation would
speed depletion of the remaining smallpox virus stocks.
It has been U.S. policy to refrain from genetically engineering
smallpox, but that would undoubtedly change if the WHO endorses such
research.
"It's absolutely the right decision," said Dr. Ken Alibek, a
former top scientist in the Soviet biological weapons program who
said the Soviets covertly developed smallpox as a weapon in the
1980s.
Alibek, who defected to the U.S. in 1992 and now teaches at
George Mason University, said it's now possible to genetically
engineer smallpox to render current vaccines useless.
"The bad guys already know how to do it," Alibek said. "So why
prohibit legitimate researchers to do research for protection."
Other scientist argue that such research has little value and is
too risky.
"We have seen no evidence of a threat that would justify this
research," says Sujatha Byravan, Executive Director of the Council
for Responsible Genetics, a Boston nonprofit. "A decade ago, the WHO
was planning to destroy the world's last remaining samples. Today,
it is proposing to tinker with the virus in ways that could produce
an even more lethal smallpox strain. This is a devastating step
backwards."
Smallpox has plagued humans for centuries, and it's believed to
have killed more people than all wars and epidemics combined. Death
typically follows massive hemorrhaging.
A similar debate was set off last year when researcher Mark
Buller of Saint Louis University announced that he had genetically
engineered a mousepox virus that was designed to evade vaccines.
Buller created the superbug to figure out how to defeat it, a key
goal of the government's anti-terrorism plan. He designed a two-drug
cocktail that promises to defeat the exceptionally deadly virus.
Buller said similar smallpox protections could be developed if
researchers were free to experiment responsibly with genetic
engineering. Mousepox is a close relative of smallpox.
Buller's work improved upon research done in 2001 by Australian
scientists who created a mousepox strain so powerful that it killed
even those mice inoculated against the virus.
The WHO committee that made the genetic engineering
recommendation is the international organization's Advisory
Committee on Variola Virus Research. News of its decision, in a
meeting in Geneva last week, was first reported by National Public
Radio.
The committee said further research should be carried out before
a final decision is made.
"It will go through the bureaucratic process," WHO spokesman Dick
Thompson said. "It will be a political decision."
He said the modified version of the virus would only be used in
testing drugs for people who already have the virus and not for
smallpox vaccines.
Today, the only smallpox vaccine available is unsafe for people
with weakened immune systems, and can even seriously harm some
healthy people, because it is made with a live virus called vaccinia
that can spread through the body.
Smallpox is the only major disease to be successfully eradicated
under a WHO-sponsored vaccination program. The last known case was
in 1978.
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AP writer Sam Cage in Geneva contributed to this report.
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