Saturday, November 1, 2003

Lethal virus ignites debate
Genetic engineering of mousepox could help deter terrorism

By WILLIAM J. BROAD
THE NEW YORK TIMES

SAN FRANCISCO -- Scientists have genetically engineered a highly lethal mousepox virus designed to evade vaccines, underscoring biotechnology's deadly potential and stirring debate over whether such research plays into the hands of terrorists.

The research team at St. Louis University, backed by a federal grant and led by Mark Buller, created the superbug to figure out how to defeat it, a key goal of the government's anti-terrorism plan.

The genetic engineering involved a virus known as mousepox, which infects mice but is not known to hurt people. Into that virus, a cousin of the smallpox virus, the scientists spliced a single gene that made it superlethal. They then designed a two-drug cocktail that promises to defeat their exceptionally deadly virus.

The scientists said the experimental results showed that the best defenses proved quite effective in preventing deadly disease not only in mice, but probably in humans exposed to customized smallpox of similar design.

This type of research has been debated for years, with critics arguing again yesterday that superviruses created in laboratories could inspire terrorists to make their own deadly diseases. The mousepox scientists countered that the research could help deter terrorism by demonstrating the emergence of more potent medical defenses.

The mousepox research was financed by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and was meant to find new protections against smallpox, a highly contagious disease that kills one in three victims.

The leaders of the research said that the lethal mouse virus would have no effect on humans even if it somehow escaped from the laboratory, which they said was safeguarded at biosafety Level 3, the second-highest possible degree of security.

"To my knowledge, there's no scientific evidence to suggest that this kind of research poses any sort of human health risk," said Buller, a professor of molecular microbiology. Many experiments have demonstrated that mousepox does not cause disease in humans, he said.

It goes beyond similar research on mousepox that Australian scientists reported in early 2001. They warned that their genetic technique, which they said they accidentally stumbled onto, could overpower existing vaccines and produce deadlier kinds of biological weapons. The news prompted hot scientific debate internationally.

Yesterday Buller said the St. Louis researchers had also made a designer form of cowpox, another cousin of smallpox, to better understand how hard it would be to apply the same kind of genetic engineering to the human smallpox virus and make it more lethal.

Experts said that both the threat of such developments and the federal response to them seemed part of a theoretical debate and not something for the public to worry about for now. They split over whether the research was prudent. Some argued that, given the increasingly fast pace of advances in genetic engineering, it was wise to investigate worst-case possibilities and responses.

"If we do not act across a wide range of areas we will be failing in our responsibilities as global citizens," said Ken Alibek, a former leader of the Soviet Union's germ weapons program.

Other experts called such research a slippery slope that could aid terrorists, and contended that the research should have fallen under the kind of rigorous peer review that a panel of the National Academy of Sciences called for last month in new recommendations.

"This is bigger than the original Australian work," said Elisa Harris, a Clinton administration arms control official now at the University of Maryland. "They knew the mousepox results and deliberately set out to build upon that work in a way to create a more deadly virus."

"There was a need here," she added, "for consequential research to be reviewed to weigh the potential risks and benefits before the work proceeded, and that apparently didn't happen here."

Dr. Lawrence Kerr, a senior official at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, agreed, noting that the St. Louis research had begun long before the new recommendations were issued and would have undergone such scrutiny if begun now.

"This is exactly the kind of scenario" that federal officials worry about, he said in an interview.

Smallpox no longer exists in nature or human populations, unlike most pathogens that can be used as weapons. Officially, only the United States and Russia have stocks of the virus, under tight security. But experts suspect that clandestine supplies of the virus exist.