Outcry over creation of GM smallpox virus

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Mon, 24 Jan 2005 16:21:47 -0800

Outcry over creation of GM smallpox virus

 

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=60345

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Outcry over creation of GM smallpox virus

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

22 January 2005

 

Senior scientific advisers to the World Health Organisation (WHO) have

recommended the creation of a genetically modified version of the smallpox

virus to counter any threat of a bioterrorist attack.

 

Permitting researchers to engineer the genes of one of the most dangerous

infections known to man would make it easier to develop new drugs against

smallpox, the scientists said. But the man who led the successful global

vaccination campaign to eradicate smallpox from the wild said he

opposed the

move on the grounds that the scientific benefits were not worth the

risks to

public health.

 

Professor Donald Henderson, of the Centre for Biosecurity at the

University

of Pittsburgh, said he feared that tinkering with the genetic makeup

of the

variola virus - which causes smallpox - might accidentally produce a more

lethal form of the disease.

 

" What I worry about is that there is rather too much done in this area and

the minute you start fooling around with it in various ways, I think there

is a danger, " Professor Henderson said. " I'd be happier if we were not

doing

it and the simple reason is I just don't think it serves a purpose I can

support. The less we do with the smallpox virus and the less we do in the

way of manipulation at this point I think the better off we are. "

 

Laboratory stocks of smallpox are stored at only two locations - one in

America and one in Russia - but there are fears that samples of the virus

may have fallen into the hands of terrorists.

 

Scientists advising the WHO believe that creating a GM form of the virus

would accelerate research into developing new antivirals. The WHO is

due to

consider the recommendations of its scientific committee at the world

health

assembly in May.

 

Four years ago, scientists in Australia genetically modified a mousepox

virus and inadvertently created a highly virulent strain that could not be

stopped by vaccination. But the WHO insisted the latest proposal to

engineer

the human smallpox virus was inherently safer.

 

Professor Geoffrey Smith of Imperial College London, who chairs the WHO

committee for variola virus research, said American scientists simply

wanted

to insert a jellyfish gene, which produced a glow under fluorescent light,

in order to see the virus better under the microscope.

 

" The reason why the proposal was made and the reason why the committee was

prepared to consider it was that it is clear that there is a need to

develop

drugs against the virus, " Professor Smith said. " The quickest way to

screen

a large database of compounds is to have an automated way and if you

have a

virus that expresses the green fluorescent protein you can do the drug

screening in a much more rapid and automated way. "

 

It is understood there are seven recommendations in the proposal,

including

permission to allow relatively large fragments of the virus - up to 20 per

cent of its entire genome - to be shipped from the two secure laboratories

to other research institutes in the world. Another recommendation allows

Russian and US laboratories to snip small fragments of the virus and

insert

them into other members of the same pox-virus family.

 

Smallpox is one of the biggest killers in the history of infectious

diseases. At least 300 million people died of it in the 20th century

alone.

It was eradicated in 1977.

24 January 2005 15:02