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SCAN
BIOTERRORISM
Innocence Lost
IS ENOUGH BEING DONE TO KEEP BIOTECHNOLOGY OUT OF THE WRONG HANDS? BY W. WAYT GIBBS
I n labs across the U.S. and Europe, doz-
ens of geneticists are working to create
stealthy viruses that can deliver artificial-
ly engineered payloads into cells without de-
tection by the immune system. Other scien-
tists have experimented with the influenza A
pathogen and discovered that an infectious
virus can be assembled from just
eight short loops of DNA, easily
synthesized by a machine. A
year ago we would only have
marveled at the ingenuity of such
researchers, who after all are
simply trying to perfect gene
therapies for inherited diseases
and to find new drugs for conta-
gious illnesses.
Now, having witnessed the
first attack with biological weap-
ons against the U.S. government
and media—albeit a clumsy and
poorly aimed attack—biologists
are more aware of the other edge
of the swords they forge. With
recipes for a vaccine and effective
drugs in hand, the world can
deal with anthrax and 11 more
DNA SEQUENCERS and other of the 50 naturally occurring bioagents that
machines used in genetic make the most likely weapons. Advances to
engineering may be put under tighter come will probably offer some protection
controls to prevent their use in
designing new types of bioweapons. against the remaining 38 agents. At the mo-
ment, the defense has the advantage.
14 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
Copyright 2001 Scientific American, Inc.
But biotechnology is quickly speeding
up, shrinking down and automating the
work of genetically engineering microorgan-
isms. “You can now finish before lunch proj-
ects that used to consume a Ph.D. thesis,”
says Gigi Kwik, a fellow at Johns Hopkins
University’s Center for Civilian Biodefense
Studies. Scientists joke darkly that it used to
take a precocious high school student to
make a bioweapon. Today, with the help of
prepackaged kits and automated DNA syn-
thesizers, the high school janitor can do it.
That is an exaggeration, thank good-
ness. But more could be done to forestall the
day when miscreant engineers can create
novel pathogens that resist antibiotics or that
wreak havoc by tricking the immune system
into attacking the body. A law passed in late
October makes it a crime to possess “biolog-
ical agents” except for research or medical
uses. It also requires drug and background
checks on lab workers who handle certain
lethal microbes. Follow-on bills moving
through the House and Senate would force
everyone working with such germs or toxins
to register with the federal government.
“We don’t have a good handle on what
pathogens are where,” says Amy E. Smith-
son, a bioterrorism expert at the Henry L.
KAY CHERNUSH
Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. “Those
regulations should be in place worldwide,”
Smithson says. But she notes that after the
JANUARY 2002
 U.S. tightened its controls on
the shipment of dangerous
pathogens several years ago,
only the U.K. and Germany
followed suit.
“Are the safeguards in
place appropriate? So far I be-
lieve they are,” says Carl Feld-
baum, president of the Wash-
ington-based Biotechnology Industry Orga-
nization. “But are they sufficient? Probably
not. I think we need to start thinking now
about controlling the availability and export
of those types of new instruments that could
make it possible for a novice to create a dan-
gerous biological agent.”
Every year the military’s Defense Threat
Reduction Agency reviews about 25,000 ex-
port license applications to check that no
equipment or materials are sent to places
where they would likely be used to make ad-
vanced weapons. The list of restricted items
runs 326 pages— but just four of those pages
contain items used in the construction of bi-
ological weapons. The U.S. Customs Service
has seized no illegal shipments of bio-
weapons components within the past 15
years, according to a spokesperson.
CAMR/B. DOWSETT Photo Researchers, Inc.
A few violations have been caught after
the fact. Allergan, a biotech firm in Irvine,
Calif., paid a settlement of $824,000 in
1998 after the government accused it of
making 412 shipments of botulinum toxin
to customers all over the world, including
some in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Lebanon.
But no special license is required to export
DNA synthesizers and sequencers and other
SECURITY
Lockerbie Insurance
AIR
HARDENED LUGGAGE CONTAINERS CAN NEUTRALIZE EXPLOSIVES BY DAVID M C MULLIN
A fter a bomb went off in 1988 on Pan
Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scot-
land, killing all 259 passengers on-
board, the Federal Aviation Administration
created standards that industry would have
to meet if it chooses to deploy luggage con-
tainers capable of withstanding such a blast.
During the 1990s, the FAA tested 10 hard-
ened luggage containers made from a variety
of materials, including reinforced alumi-
www.sciam.com
Copyright 2001 Scientific American, Inc.
EBOLA VIRUS could undergo genetic
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manipulation to enhance its already
highly potent lethality. SCAN
automated machines that can
make it much easier to engage
in the genetic engineering of
microorganisms. Applied Bio-
systems, the leading vendor of
such equipment, has its headquarters in
California but branch offices in Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and
60 other countries.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that
wealthy, determined terrorists could whip
up a batch of lethal vaccine-resistant bacte-
ria without killing themselves. Keep in
mind, Smithson urges, that “the Soviet bio-
weapons program was humongous: tens of
thousands of scientists in dozens of research
institutes were dedicated to this over
decades.” And its operation was exposed
when an anthrax outbreak at Sverdlovsk re-
A FELONY
sulted in nearly 70 deaths.
Feldbaum says that biotech industry
AGAINST US ALL
leaders are already talking with government Richard Butler, who led the U.N.
officials about restricting the export of some effort to destroy Iraq’s biological
high-tech equipment. But it is far less likely munitions, suggested at a
that certain biological research will be classi- conference in November 2000
that the best way to prevent a
fied in the way that much nuclear research bioweapons arms race is to
has been. “We just don’t think that top- strengthen international
down, command-and-control-style regula- sanctions against them. “The
tion of scientists will work,” Kwik says. possession of biological
“Academics would fight it tooth and nail, weapons— or actions
unambiguously designed to
and who can blame them? But perhaps sci- produce them— should be
entists could self-govern” in ways that keep categorized as a crime against
terrorists out of the loop. humanity,” he entreated.
num, fiberglass, aramid fibers and polymers.
Only one container— concocted from
fiber-metal laminates developed originally by
the Delft University of Technology in the
Netherlands— passed the FAA’s test and re-
ceived certification. The material, called
Glare (short for glass reinforced), consists of
multiple aluminum layers interspersed with
layers of fiberglass and adhesive bonding that
are supple yet strong. When used in fabricat-
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 15