Mail-order polio virus made to internet recipe sparks terrorism fears

SCIENTISTS have made a polio virus from mail-order materials using a recipe available on the internet to show how easy it is for terrorists to make deadly biological weapons.

Researchers at the University of New York assembled the virus and then injected it into mice. The animals were paralysed and then killed.

“The reason we did it was to prove that it can be done and it now is a reality,” said Dr Eckard Wimmer, leader of the research team and co-author of the study in the journal Science.

“This approach has been talked about, but people didn’t take it seriously,” Wimmer said. “Now people have to take it seriously. Progress in biomedical research has its benefits and it has its down side. There is a danger inherent in progress in sciences. This is a new reality, a new consideration.”

Wimmer said the study proves eradicating a virus in the wild may not mean it is gone forever.

He said biochemists can reconstruct viruses from blueprints easily available in scientific archives and from biological supplies that can be bought through the mail.

The polio virus assembled in the laboratory is one of the simplest of the human plagues, said Jeronimo Cello, first author of the study. “It was very easy to do,” he said.

Smallpox and other lethal viruses are much more complex and difficult to assemble, but Cello said “probably in the future it would be possible.”

Wimmer said it “would be very difficult now to re-create the smallpox virus, but eventually you would be able to. The world had better be prepared”

Smallpox was eradicated in the wild, but laboratory specimens were retained in the US and the Soviet Union. Some experts believe specimens of the virus could have been secreted away for later use as a weapon.

After last autumn’s terrorist and anthrax-by-mail attacks, US officials became concerned about the smallpox threat and arranged for the manufacture of enough vaccine to protect the US population. They are now formulating a policy about how that vaccine should be used.

Polio is on the brink of being eradicated worldwide and there are plans to stop inoculations against the disease after it disappears from nature. Wimmer said that policy should be reconsidered. Stopping vaccination could lead to a generation of people highly susceptible to polio, enhancing its danger as a weapon.