BioterrorismDNA synthesis creates risk of resurrecting deadly viruses

Scientists are warning that decades of public research on the sequencing of virus DNA are now posing unforeseen threats, as synthesis technologies advance to the point where individuals without expert knowledge may be able to reconstruct long dormant viruses using readily available maps.

As Dr. Gigi Kwik Gronvall writes for the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism (START), diseases which have been extinct for many years may be resurrected by bioterrorists using mail-order DNA kits, with openly published sequence data as their guide. Among these, smallpox — declared to be eradicated by the World Health Organization in 1980 — could be reintroduced by using the 1994 gene mapping which was prepared in order better to understand why the disease was so deadly.

At the time, researchers could not have predicted that advances in DNA synthesis, or “writing,” would have such potentially dangerous future consequences. Only now is this problem being examined closely by scientists and security experts who fear that as technological progress quickens, the potential to weaponize research may also grow.

“The dual-use problem has been the focus of many reports and studies,” writes Gronvall. “There have been attempts to narrow the area of potential security concern in order to provide oversight. The U.S. Government has defined a new category of Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC) as ‘life sciences research that, based on current understanding, can be reasonably anticipate to provide knowledge, information, products, or technologies that could be directly misapplied to pose a significant threat with broad potential consequences to public health and safety, agricultural crops and other plants, animals, the environment, material, or national security.”

A 2010 World Health Organization (WHO) report also referred to the threat of smallpox reintroduction, noting that DURC advances “would render substantial portions of [Smallpox virus] accessible to anyone with an internet connection and access to a DNA synthesizer.” These synthesis technologies are also becoming cheaper and more available, increasing the danger.

Should this happen, there would be few under the age of 45 who have been vaccinated against the disease, leaving many with no immunity. Gronvall notes that some nations, including the United States, do retain sufficient supplies of smallpox vaccine to limit the spread, but most do not, leaving billions of people vulnerable.

Above all else, though, the lack of predictability in technology makes identifying any technologies as DURCs difficult to the point that it may be impossible.

“As the smallpox sequence example demonstrates, technology advances cannot be reliably predicted, so estimates could lead to false conclusions about how dual-use or how dangerous the publication of a particular piece of research could be,” Gronvall writes.

Dealing with the problem, then, may have to rely on a wait-and-see approach, with vaccine production the only sure preventative measure governments can take.

“The likelihood of smallpox’s reintroduction to nature is unknown, and perhaps unknowable — while the positive contributions of the sequencing of the smallpox virus and subsequent research are immense and measurable,” writes Gronvall.