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:embarrass :embarrass :embarrasshttp://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_626814.html
Terror fears after scientists create mail order polio virus
Following a recipe downloaded from the Internet and using gene sequences from a mail-order supply house, scientists have assembled a man-made version of the polio virus.
The scientists carried out the exercise to prove how easy it would be for terrorists to make deadly biological weapons.
Researchers at the University of New York assembled the virus and then injected it into mice to show that it worked. 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 biomedical research team and co-author of the study appearing in the journal Science.
"This approach has been talked about, but people didn't take it seriously," Dr 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 to progress in sciences. This is a new reality, a new consideration."
Dr Wimmer said the laboratory demonstration proves that eradicating a virus in the wild may not mean it is gone forever.
Now, he said, biochemists can reconstruct those 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.
Smallpox and other lethal viruses are much more complex and difficult to assemble, but Mr Cello said "probably in the future it would be possible."
Dr Wimmer said it "would be very difficult now to re-create the smallpox virus, but eventually you would be able to do that."
Story filed: 19:20 Thursday 11th July 2002
