In 2011 Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier revealed he had done something “really, really, stupid” with the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus.
He had “mutated the hell” out of it in the lab, in Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, enabling it to be spread through the air. The H5N1 mortality rate is around 100 times higher than Covid.
We had not seen a terrifying pandemic because it was only transmitted by physical contact. That had now changed.
The aim of the scientists, who were financially backed by global health research organisations, was not to create a terrifying bioweapon but rather to understand how the virus might evolve into something more dangerous by making it happen in the laboratory.
They were so alarmed by what they had done that in 2012 they called for a halt on all studies aimed at making viruses more dangerous (this is called “gain of function” research) until more reliable safety protocols could be introduced. That eventually happened but that did not mean such experiments were now safe. The possibility of a laboratory leak was very real.
One of the wilder suggestions about Covid-19 is that the virus was created in a laboratory. There is no evidence for this – the data shows that it arose, like other pandemics, through contact with wild animals.
Nevertheless, there are good reasons to be concerned about dangerous viruses being created in laboratories. This has been tried repeatedly ever since the origin of genetic engineering, half a century ago, particularly in the old Soviet Union, and then more recently in the USA and elsewhere.
Between 2004 and 2010 there were 11 instances of infection in US pathogen laboratories, while in 2012 there were more than 100 cases in which samples may have been released. In 2014 scores of laboratory workers were potentially exposed to deadly anthrax when live samples were accidentally distributed to US laboratories, while another laboratory contaminated a normal flu sample with H5N1 and then sent it in the post. None of those incidents led to a fatality, but that was a matter of luck.
Partly as a result of these problems, the US government stopped funding gain of function research, although a small number of projects are now active again. The claim is that they will enable us to predict the course of future pandemics and act against them. But the way we responded to Covid was not guided by such studies. To many observers, this research appears reckless and pointless.
Fouchier’s abandoned experiment was not the first time that researchers had stopped work on genetic engineering because they thought it might be too dangerous. The first moratorium – known only to a handful of people – was decided in 1971, at the very beginning of the new technology, to prevent what was feared might be an outbreak of cancer.
Then, in 1974, a worldwide public research pause was announced, culminating in an international conference in Asilomar, California held in February 1975. At the meeting it was decided that the research, which within a few years gave rise to new therapies and drugs (including insulin) and to GM crops, could go ahead under certain safety conditions. But there was no discussion of the most dangerous aspect of genetic engineering – its use to make bioweapons.
Gene editing: Timeline
1953 Watson and Crick discover the double helix structure of DNA
1971 US scientist Paul Berg plans to mix DNA from a cancer-causing virus and the gut bacterium E. coli, halts project following informal opposition
1971 Soviet researchers tell USSR leader Brezhnev that genetic engineering could
make new bioweapons, given massive funding
1972 Berg opens the era of genetic engineering, mixing DNA from a virus and a bacterium
1974 Widespread concern about the potential for new diseases leads to a global moratorium on genetic engineering
1975 Conference at Asilomar, California, decides on safety protocols that can make research safe
1975 The Biological Weapons Convention comes into operation
1978 GM microbes used to create human insulin
1980 Genetic engineering becomes big business, Paul Berg wins Nobel Prize for Chemistry
1981 Apartheid South Africa launches bioweapons programme, aimed at “populations”
1985 Outbreak of hemorrhagic fever near Chinese Lop Nor facility suggests bioweapons research taking place
1989 Soviet defector reveals scale of bioweapons programme in USSR
1991 Collapse of USSR, widespread fears that bioweapons could fall into hands of terrorists or rogue states
1991 South African bioweapons programme privatised, goes bust in 1994
1997 Russian scientists make anthrax vaccine-resistant
2000 South African scientists try to sell E. coli strains containing a gene for the most potent bacterial toxin known
2000 Australian researchers discover how to make smallpox vaccine-resistant
2001 9/11 attacks in US create atmosphere of fear, boost research on bioweapons
2002 Sars coronavirus epidemic in China kills around 800 people
2003 Sars escapes from labs in China and Singapore
2003 Californian researchers make tuberculosis even more infectious
2003 Iraq accused of creating bioweapons in run-up to US-UK invasion – no evidence ever found
2005 Researchers sequence genome of 1918 flu pandemic virus, using bodies frozen in Alaskan permafrost
2011 Lethal H5N1 bird flu virus becomes transmissible through air in gain of function research
2012 Virologists call for global moratorium on gain of function studies of lethal pathogens
2012 CRISPR gene editing makes genetic engineering even easier
2013 Gain of function moratorium lifted following new security protocols
2014 H5N1 mixed with 1918 flu virus to make new deadly virus
2014 Series of lab leaks and unrelated outbreak of Ebola in US lead to halt in funding of gain of function studies
2016 Canadian researchers reconstruct a virus closely related to smallpox
2017 Gain of function funding renewed in US, but with much stricter controls
2019 Two gain of function studies of H5N1 approved
2020 Covid-19 identified, global pandemic begins
And yet, the Soviet delegation to Asilomar included researchers involved in the decision by the USSR to launch a top-secret offensive biological warfare programme. That programme eventually employed 30,000 people in around 40 institutions, all working to create highly infectious and lethal microbes aimed at people and at agriculture.
One particularly dangerous project saw the engineering of a form of plague to produce a toxin against nerves. This was an artificial version of multiple sclerosis that would rapidly incapacitate the victim’s senses and paralyse them.
All this was hidden from view until a leading Soviet bioweapons scientist defected in 1989. His evidence alarmed both MI6 and the CIA, revealing both the full extent of Soviet genetic engineering of new weapons and the West’s intelligence failures.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, bioweapons work in the ex-Soviet states was privatised and for a few years continued more or less openly. Then everything went dark. It would surely be naïve to imagine that Russia has abandoned all interest in bioweapons.
Other countries also appear to have created bioweapons – China, South Africa and, probably, Israel. All countries claim they are solely focused on defensive work, but this cannot be verified. Although the Biological Weapons Convention was set up in 1972, it cannot launch inspections or impose sanctions. In the 1990s the US vetoed a legally binding inspection regime, arguing that they would threaten the country’s biodefence and pharmaceutical sectors. The Convention remains toothless.
In the 21st Century, fears have moved away from military applications to the possibility of terrorists creating bioweapons, partly because genetic techniques have become so much simpler.
In 2000, Australian researchers accidentally made mousepox, a virus similar to smallpox, resistant to the effect of vaccines. Alarmed that smallpox might be similarly manipulated, the researchers waited for 18 months before publishing their findings. As they put it, “this is the public’s worst fears about GMOs come true”. When a leading Russian virologist was told of the experiment, he remarked disconcertingly: “Of course, this is not a surprise.”
After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the US government identified bioterrorism as a “clear and present danger”, boosting the budget for anti-bioterrorism research. By 2006 more than 16,000 researchers in more than 300 US institutions had access to biological warfare agents, many of them with very little previous experience.
Their experiments included making smallpox genes more dangerous, reconstructing the polio virus using DNA delivered through the post and recreating the deadly 1918 flu virus that caused a global pandemic that dwarfed the one we are living through. A decade later, Canadian scientists reconstructed the horsepox virus – closely related to smallpox – using bits of DNA that had been ordered over the internet.
The danger of a natural pandemic was also highlighted when a SARS coronavirus outbreak occurred through human contact with bats in southern China. This led to more than 8,000 infections with 10% mortality before being stifled by lockdowns and mask-wearing.
New US and European laws were passed controlling “dual use” experiments – legitimate microbiological research that could be used to create a bioweapon. That oversaw official research, but amateur researchers – biohackers – were becoming interested in the new technology and began carrying out genetic research in their basements and garages.
Bioterror threats may seem like the realm of science fiction, but they are real. Al Qaida tried unsuccessfully to develop bioweapons because, as they put it, “the enemy drew our attention to them by repeatedly expressing concerns that they can be produced simply with easily available materials”.
Despite the half a century of research, none has ever been deployed, nor is there any evidence that any have been developed by terrorists or biohackers. Molecular genetics is a lot more complicated than it may seem, and even if an amateur were to synthesise a pathogen, they would then find it hard, if not impossible, to turn it into a weapon.
The real biosecurity threat comes from states secretly seeking to create weapons, and from the danger of a leak from one of the many laboratories carrying out dangerous gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens.
This research needs to be tightly controlled on a global scale, and the Biological Weapons Convention must be reinforced, giving it the same powers as the International Atomic Energy Authority. Politicians and the public need to be aware of the potential dangers. This is too important to be left to the scientists or the military.
The Genetic Age: Our Perilous Quest To Edit Life by Matthew Cobb is out now
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