The pox may be on you - GM resurrection of deadly scourge

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GMW: The pox maybe on you - GM resurrection of deadly scourge

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Sun, 24 Apr 2005 11:47:01 +0100

 

 

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FOCUS: The pox maybe on you

By K. T. Chelvi

New Straits Times, Malaysia, April 24 2005

http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Sunday/Features/20050424094456/Article/in\

dexb_html

 

A WHO committee wants permission to allow genetic modification of the

smallpox virus. Some scientists and physicians are gravely concerned,

K.T. CHELVI reports.

 

Next month, if the World Health Assembly (WHA) says yes - to the

recommendations of its scientific committee - the world may see the

resurrection of the deadly scourge of the past - smallpox.

 

WHA's Variola Advisory Committee (VAC) is seeking permission to allow

the genetic modification of the smallpox virus. WHA, the decision-making

body to the World Health Organisation (WHO), will decide on these

recommendations at its 55th meeting in Geneva, starting on May 13.

According

to the committee, genetic modification would aid and accelerate the

development of new vaccines against the Variola virus - the cause of

smallpox

 

Officially, smallpox had been declared eradicated on May 9, 1980, after

a successful global vaccination campaign led by WHO. The acute and

highly contagious disease which not only kills but also maims, blinds and

leaves unsightly scars, had killed an estimated 300 million people in

the 20th century alone. Renowned British explorer, translator and

orientalist Sir Richard Burton called it the most dangerous epidemic,

which

sweeps like a storm of death over the land - wiping out towns, villages

and towns.

 

It took the world health body an unprecedented 10 years and a US$300

million (RM1.1 billion) campaign in over 30 nations to eradicate this

disease. Presently, the last known strains of smallpox (Variola virus)

are

kept in two high security laboratories: the Centre for Disease Control

and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, US, and the Russian State Centre for

Research on Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo in Russia. Soon after

eradication, all remaining Variola virus had been slated for

elimination. The world health body had on numerous occasions

(1993,1994,1995 and

1996) ordered the remaining virus be destroyed but the labs in US and

Russia did not do so.

 

And now comes the genetic modification proposal. NGOs are crying foul

saying that there is no reason for keeping the virus unless it's for the

development of biological weapons.

 

According to Sujatha Byravan, the executive director of the Council For

Responsible Genetics (CRG), if these recommendations were allowed, WHO

would set an ominous precedent which could trigger the prospect of a

biological race. This sentiment is shared by the man who in 1967 headed

the WHO smallpox Eradication Team, Professor Donald Henderson.

 

Henderson, now attached to the Centre for Bio-security at the

University of Pittsburg, feared that tinkering with the genetic

make-up of the

Variola virus might accidently create a more virulent form of the

disease. " I'd be happier if we were not doing it and the simple reason

is I

don't think it serves a purpose I can support, " said Henderson who had

witnessed the ravages of the disease in the 60s. However, members of

WHO's scientific committee insist that the proposed modification is

not as

risky as many believe it to be.

 

Professor Geoffrey Smith who chairs the WHO committee for the Variola

virus research was reported to have said that American scientists were

merely proposing to insert a neon marker from jellyfish into the virus,

making it easier to track the virus. " If you have a virus that

expresses green fluorescent protein, you can do the drug screening in

a much

rapid and automated way. " Smith, of the Imperial Colleg of London, added

that it is clear there is a need to develop drugs against this virus,

hence the reason for the recommendations and the readiness of scientific

committee to consider them.

 

Why the urge only now to find a cure for this dreadful disease that had

purportedly been vanquished 25 years ago? According to reports,

concerns about smallpox as a possible agent for bio-terrorism

resurfaced after

the 2001 anthrax attacks which killed five people in the US. More so,

when it was discovered that a large batch of smallpox virus from the

Russian lab went missing after the Soviet Union fell apart. And as a

result, there has been increased concern about the availability of

vaccine

stocks.

 

Lim Li Ching of Third World Network (TWN), a non-government

organisation involved in development, Third World and North-South

issues, said:

" For WHO, which seemed to have forgotten the smallpox's deadly sweep

across the world, allowing GM on the virus would be a devastating step

backwards.

 

" There are numerous evidences showing there had been generic

modification on Variola virus way before the proposal by WHA's scientific

committee. " The US in 2002 had admitted to holding hybrid poxviruses -

combinations of smallpox virus and with animal pox virus - created in

the late

70s in Britain.

 

According to a 2004 report in US News, recent inventory of CDC's

freezer unearthed unusual " chimera " viruses, created about 40 years

ago, by

crudely combining smallpox with other pox viruses. The Russians, on the

other hand, had in 1991 developed the technology for creating

vaccine-resistant smallpox virus, according to a BBC report.

 

As for genetic modification going dangerously wrong, there is the much

quoted example of the Australian scientists who inadvertently created a

mousepox strain so powerful that it killed even mice inoculated against

the virus. This happened four years ago when the scientists were trying

to engineer a sterility treatment to combat the population explosion of

mice in Australia by splicing a single foreign gene into a typically

mild mousepox virus. VAC is also seeking permission to allow the shipment

of relatively large fragments of the virus - up to 20 per cent of its

entire genome - from the two secure laboratories to other research

institutes around the world as wells as to allow insertion smallpox genes

into other pox viruses.

 

These recommendations will leave the world vulnerable to smallpox as it

increases the chances of accidental and deliberate release of the

virus, says the Consumer Association of Penang (CAP). CAP urged the

Health

Ministry's representatives to firmly reject the Advisory Committee's

recommendation at the WHA meeting this May. It says despite the

sophistication and highly secure environment of the labs, there is

always the

possibility of accidents, human errors and abuse. The infamous example of

Variola leak happened in a research laboratory in Birmingham, England

in 1978. The virus which evidently escaped from the labs containment

area, killed photographer Jane Parker.

The professor responsible for the unit killed herself and all known

stocks of virus were destroyed except for the ones kept in the US and

Russia.

 

In Malaysia, there is no record to show how many died of smallpox

before eradication. But an undated Malaysian Medical Association report

found on the Net, stated that the last case of endemic smallpox in

Malaysia

was recorded in the 1950s. And in 1973, there was a small pox scare in

Pasir Mas Kelantan, claimed to have spread from Thailand but this

turned out to be a false alarm, said a retired senior physician who

specialised in infectious diseases.

 

The science and medical community opposing the recommendation say the

scientific benefits claimed by the committee is just not worth the risk

to public health. Dr Christoper Lee, Kuala Lumpur General Hospital's

senior consultant physician of infectious disease shares this view saying

that the potential risk of smallpox is real whereas the benefits

claimed remain vague.

 

" It would be disastrous for Malaysia, in the event of a smallpox

outbreak, " he said. " Most of us, especially the younger generation,

are not

vaccinated against the disease and we are exposed from all directions -

from the millions who travel, visit and seek employment here. "

 

Dr Lee, who also heads KLGH's Department of Medicine, says WHO must

carefully weigh the pros and cons before deciding on the matter. " Public

interest and health should be paramount. "

of Communicable Disease Control Division Datuk Dr Ramli Rahmat

agrees, saying that the eradication of smallpox is an achievement

everyone should treasure. " We cannot allow a situation where the world

population is again exposed to this deadly virus. "

 

Many agree that Variola in its original form is deadly enough to be

used as a potent biological weapon and there is no need to tinker with

it.

If at all, the world is in danger from this former scourge, the VAC and

its advisors should come clean. " If they want to genetically modify the

smallpox virus for the genuine reason of finding an effective cure, it

should be done under the strict scrutiny of the WHO, " says the senior

infectious disease expert.

 

But then, if the recommendations are adopted can WHO ensure that the

world remains free of smallpox? Can it ensure that these labs would not

create a even more lethal mutant of the Variola? Can it ensure that

there are no leaks or accidents when samples are sent out in testing kits?

 

 

 

 

 

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