In a classic case of [yellow journalism], the Guardian has an [article] calling for increased restrictions on science supply businesses.

The reason? They were able to get a 78-bp long section of the smallpox genome sent to their office. But don't worry, they had modified it so it was harmless.

Let me first start by pointing out the utter absurdity of technological issues associated with stitching together 1500 stretches of DNA into a usable genome. If the "science correspondent" of the Guardian wasn't a complete boob, or had ever worked in a real molecular biology lab, he'd know that this is no small feat. Indeed, even in the best of times, stitching together that much DNA would probably get you a nomination for a Noebel, at least. It's not like fricking legos, in any case.

To prove my point, it's a well-known fact that the smallpox genome is easily available on the NCBI's webserver. As a matter of fact, you can look at it right [here]. Of course, you're no more closer to having smallpox that you would have a nuclear bomb after reading [this site]. (Please note that after the recent [news] concerning AT&T, you're likely to be setting off all kinds of alarms over at the NSA by looking at stuff like "smallpox" and
"nuclear" stuff. (Cue the men in black, of course...)

There are literally dozens of companies that you can buy synthetic DNA from. You give them the sequence you want, and they can turn it into real DNA or even RNA quite quickly. As a matter of fact, our lab does it all the time. Current technology peters out after about 100 to 150 bp though. It is conceivable, therefore that an extremely motivated "terrorist" (damn, how I hate that term), could split up the necessary 185,578 bp of the [Variola] RNA virus sequence into twelve-hundred odd orders (assuming an average fragment length of 150 bp, almost twice that used in the guardian article), and have himself the entire genome of smallpox. Of course, it's still present in twelve-hundred odd pieces, but facts have never gotten into the way of sensationalistic journalism, have they?

Even assuming that you managed to somehow ligate all of those pieces together (and just buying that much synthetic DNA is going to cost a small fortune), you're still no closer that when you started. It's like claiming that since I have my car's maintenance manual, that's as good as having the car itself, rr that reading about being a pilot makes me able to fly 747's. The DNA (or in this case) RNA, is still just a bunch of instructions. You'd still have to somehow get that into mammalian cells (without degradation, of course), and get the virus to express itself. (Again, no small feat by any stretch of the imagination).

The fact of the matter is, that as juicy a target as smallpox is, it's just not in any way shape or form feasible to recreate even a very simple virus from scratch (or, in this case, from thousands of bits of synthetic RNA). Massive research labs don't do it regularly at all, and it's lunacy to think that even a highly-disciplined "terrorist" rogue scientists could do it. Again, reality never seems to play a large part when it comes to generating hysteria among the idiots of the world.
As the article points out, the recreation of some viruses has been done in a similar manner but 1) the genomes were over 10 times smaller and 2) these were high-power labs with lots of extremely skilled scientists. Can it be done? Sure. But as I'm going to prove in a second, it's like worrying about being hit by an asteroid while standing in the middle of rush hour traffic. You've got better things to be concerned over.

The truely scary part is that the truth is much more mundane. All it would potentially take is one disgruntled (or paid off) scientist either at the NIH or Russia's Koltsovo research centre to resurrect this long-extinct killer. Furthermore, it's not even necessary to use smallpox. Yeah, the name is good for creating hysteria and what not, but there are plenty of other infectious organisms that you can obtain for a lot less work than attempting to create an entire virus from scratch. Again, this article pisses me off on so many levels. Before I go any further, there's lots of people nodding their heads at this story that should know a lot better. Here's a few quotes from the article:


As I mentioned before, this brings a whole new definition to the meaning of "stupid". It's like saying that it's easy to build a bulldozer if you can get access to iron ore. Literally. A fraction of the money spent in attempting to build the stupid thing from scratch would go a lot further into bribing somebody at a university so you could get your hands on legionella or anthrax or something a bit less esoteric. (More on this in a bit, though).


No duh, Sherlock. All you have to do is point your browser at the NCBI homepage (run by the federally-funded NIH, I might add) [here], and you can find sequences for [Anthrax], [E. Coli O157:H7], [Ebola Zaire] (and Marburg, Reston, and Sudan, if you [wish]), and even [Yersinia Pestis] (the plague) for flavor.
Let me try and point out the ridiculousness of it all. This is like saying that since the [structure] for VX is available, any Tom, Dick, or Harry could cook up a batch in his kitchen. (Making VX from scratch would be at least several orders of magnitude easier, not to mention cheaper or faster, then trying to make smallpox from scratch, let me tell you.)

Unforunately, as I stated, it's not just idiot journalists (and I took a class in college that was full of journalism majors, and yes, there were all (to an individual) complete baboons) that are getting themselves into a quivering froth:

Repeat after me: There is no loophole. There is no need for more "legislation" or "regulation". Granted, this is the UK, where they're trying to [ban] kitchen knives because of increased stabbing deaths (They claim that knives are "pointy" and "shartp")....duh. (Remember that the UK also outlawed most forms of gun ownership a while back). Still, the fact that a supposedly educated chairman of a science committee doesn't understand the silliness of this whole issue doesn't engender much confidence.

As I was saying earlier, if you want to play chicken little, there's a lot more terrifying (not to mention realistic) issues to worry about than some supergenius stitching together smallpox. Namely, states like Iran realizing that nuclear arms are a dead end, and that a cheap bioterrorism unit would give them much bigger bang for their buck. (Just like I wrote about [earlier]). In all truthfulness, it wouldn't even take a well-funded state operation to make some nasty bugs. I, for example, could probably do it. It'd take a while, and a fair amount of money, but it's not all that difficult. A undergrad degree in molecular biology would give you all the tools, it would just take the motivation. As I've stated before in this blog, I was (and still am) surprised that we've never had a major bioterrorism attack on our soil. If/when it does come, I can positively guarantee you it's not going to be the result of some wacko ordering DNA matching NCBI sequences. That's just silly.

Oh, and unless you didn't notice, I don't like journalists. When there isn't any news to be found, they just up and make some.