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March 2006

The Knowledge

Continued from page 3

By Mark Williams
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When I asked about the prospects for creating bioweapons through synthetic biology, Popov mentioned the polio virus synthesized in 2002. "Very prominent people like [Anthony] Fauci at the NIH said, "Now we know it can be done.'" Popov paused. "You know, that's...naïve. In 1981, I described how to carry out a project to synthesize small but biologically active viruses. Nobody at Biopreparat had even a little doubt it could be done. We had no DNA synthesizers then. I had 50 people doing DNA synthesis manually, step by step. One step was about three hours, where today, with the synthesizer, it could be a few minutes -- it could be less than a minute. Nevertheless, already the idea was that we would produce one virus a month."

Effectively, Popov said, Biopreparat had few restrictions on manpower. "If you wanted a hundred people involved, it was a hundred. If a thousand, a thousand." It is a startling picture: an industrial program that consumed tons of chemicals and marshalled large numbers of biologists to construct, over months, a few hundred bases of a gene that coded for a single protein.

Though some dismiss Biopreparat's pioneering efforts because the Russians relied on technology that is now antiquated, this is what makes them a good guide to what could be done today with cheap, widely available biotechnology. Splicing into pathogens synthesized mammalian genes coding for the short chains of amino acids called peptides (that is, genes just a few hundred bases long) was handily within reach of Biopreparat's DNA synthesis capabilities. Efforts on this scale are easily reproducible with today's tools.

What the Russians Did
The Soviet bioweapons program was vast and labyrinthine; not even Ken Alibek, its top scientific manager, knew everything. In assessing the extent of its accomplishment -- and thus the danger posed by small groups armed with modern technology -- we are to some degree dependent on Serguei Popov's version of things. Since his claims are so controversial, a question must be answered: Many (perhaps most) people would prefer to believe that Popov is lying. Is he?

Popov's affiliation with Alibek is a strike against him at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (Usamriid) at Fort Detrick, MD, where Biopreparat's former top scientist has his critics. Alibek, one knowledgeable person told me, effectively "entered the storytelling business when he came to America." Alibek's critics charge that because he received consulting fees while briefing U.S. scientists and officials, he exaggerated Soviet bioweaponeering achievements. In particular, some critics reject Alibek's claims that the U.S.S.R. had combined Ebola and other viruses -- in order to create what Alibek calls "chimeras." The necessary technology, they insist, didn't yet exist. When I interviewed Alibek in 2003, however, he was adamant that Biopreparat had weaponized Ebola.

Alibek and Popov obviously have an interest in talking up Russia's bioweapons. But neither I, nor others with whom I've compared notes, have ever caught Popov in a false statement. One must listen to him carefully, however. Regarding Ebola chimeras, he told me when I first interviewed him in 2003, "You can speculate about a plague-Ebola combination. I know that those who ran the Soviet bioweapons program studied that possibility. I can talk with certainty about a synthesis of plague and Venezuelan equine encephalitis, because I knew the guy who did that." Popov then described a Soviet strategy for hiding deadly viral genes inside some milder bacterium's genome, so that medical treatment of a victim's initial symptoms from one microbe would trigger a second microbe's growth. "The first symptom could be plague, and a victim's fever would get treated with something as simple as tetracycline. That tetracycline would itself be the factor inducing expression of a second set of genes, which could be a whole virus or a combination of viral genes."
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Comments

  • The Knowledge Bioweapons Article
    Guest (eldestdeev) on 03/13/2006 at 12:00 AM
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    1
    Superb piece, superbly told.  One hopes the government is secretly far ahead of public knowledge in combatting or pre-empting this.  Otherwise, massive death can be the only forseeable result.
    Rate this comment: 12345
    • Pandora's Box
      Guest (Gary Percer) on 03/13/2006 at 12:00 AM
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      1
      Like Pandora's box, once the technology is disseminated, it cannot be re-gathered.

      Like Pandora's box, the box will be opened because of the nature of the human being.

      Like Pandora's box, we will suffer the consequences for all time.
      Rate this comment: 12345
      • Pandora's box
        Guest (Ueberluser) on 05/02/2006 at 12:00 AM
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        1
        Yes, that may very well be the case.
        It may also be that case that these technologies could save the entire race from a yet to be determined threat and as such would be a nessecary evil. Not that nessecary evils won't kill us all anyway...
        Rate this comment: 12345
    • Pathogens are not weapons
      Guest (Andreas) on 03/21/2006 at 12:00 AM
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      1
      This otherwise very good article only briefly touches the considerable difficulty of creating weapons from pathogens. While it concludes that biological agents will most probably be used in warfare, it completely omits a discussion of the effectiveness of biological weapons in war, which is probably not very good. Presumably the reason why biological weapons have never been used is that they simply are not that more damaging than conventional ones, but way more difficult to target. The same is probably true for chemical weapons, which have been used to some extent.
      Rate this comment: 12345
      • Biological Weapons Have Been Used
        Guest (AP) on 04/09/2006 at 12:00 AM
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        1
        Dear Sir - biological weapons have been used in war - one of the best examples is the use of small pox by the British during the French-Indian War, and other examples, historically documented, by US Forces against Native American groups - again, generally, small pox infected blankets.

        Also, note - I think you argument is valid, except, when you are dealing with asymetric warfare and terrorist agents - either domestic or foreign, given the fact that the rules of engagement are no longer binding, and you are dealing with zero-sum game theory. 

        Also, note - salmonella was actively used in the Dalles, Oregon in early 1980s to de-stabilize an entire town in order to effect political outcome of vote, and as well to target specific individuals.
        Rate this comment: 12345
      • Pathogens are not weapons?
        Guest (Frank) on 07/25/2006 at 12:00 AM
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        1
        Who says they haven't been used successfully? The last stage of the Black Plague in 1352 began during a biological, abeit cure one, in the Crimea of Russia. Before 1906 and the Sino-Russian war most of the deaths in all wars were attributed to disease. The South used biological warfare during the American civil war by contaminating the water supply of Norhern troops with dead animals. Typhus nearly wiped out Napoleon's army before it ever got to Moscow in 1812 and was responsible for 75% of the deaths in his army and his return to Poland set off a massive typhus epidemic that went as far as the English Channel.
        Rate this comment: 12345
    • DNA
      Guest (shri) on 05/03/2006 at 12:00 AM
      Posts:
      1
      The society is ultimately responsible. The Governments pof countries must co-operate
      Rate this comment: 12345
  • E coli o157
    Guest (richard katz) on 03/13/2006 at 12:00 AM
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    1
    how come even in long articles like this nobody EVER mentions E coli o157 as a biowarfare agent? not only has it been used that way, successfully, but it sure looks like it was made in the recombinant mode that this article is all about.
    Rate this comment: 12345
    • E coli 157
      Guest (Frank Lowe) on 07/25/2006 at 12:00 AM
      Posts:
      1
      Check former research into HIV/AIDS in the 1980's. They studied it then.
      Rate this comment: 12345
  • Other equally or more important questions
    Guest (Alan Root) on 03/15/2006 at 12:00 AM
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    1
    How do we identify and extinguish those features of our brains that impel us in self-destructive directions? Let's minimize the threats from asteroids coming at us from outer space! Let's maximize the threats from inner space! We need to reprogram our brains and our genes...
    Rate this comment: 12345
    • Assume the Worst, Work Backward
      Guest (AP) on 04/09/2006 at 12:00 AM
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      1
      Is there is anyone on this listing activly pursuing this issue? I have a research problem associated with assuming that these agents exists, and planning response.  I can't afford as per tasking to argue about whether or not the Soviets did this, or did that. I must assume they did, and deal with both foreign and domestic continued threat and release. 

      I also can't afford to assume that new technologies will save us. 

      I am willing to dialogue in other modes.

      AP
      Rate this comment: 12345
  • In the event that there is no defense...
    Guest (Shane) on 04/10/2006 at 12:00 AM
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    1
    In the event that western civilization has no defense against such a threat, we rely on intelligence to alert us to the threat.  If any credible threat is uncovered...I daresay that we may live to see a pre-emptive tactical solution.  On what scale?  I think that would depend on the accuracy and detail of the intelligence.

    If we are successfully attacked on a global scale by a bioengineered pathogen that can spread from human to human and retains its' genetic sequence so it doesn't mutate out of its' weaponized form... well, let's just hope we don't see that day.  If we do, let me be one of the victims because I don't want to live in the kind of world that would follow such an event.
    Rate this comment: 12345
  • The Knowledge article
    Guest (Guran Walker) on 04/13/2006 at 12:00 AM
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    1
    The point was made, inferior military regimes resort successfully to the most potent weapon they can find - always. Now we draw near God in our molecular tinkering will the angels save us or destroy us? Scripture indicates they will seed the winds. But I feel this is only one of the scurges to be suffered by our Race. Nice to have the 'heads up' on the state-of-play. Sublimely written heh.
    Rate this comment: 12345
  • My brief response to the article
    Guest (Robert Carlson) on 04/19/2006 at 12:00 AM
    Posts:
    1
    http://synthesis.typepad.com/synthesis/2006/03/the_knowledge.html
    Rate this comment: 12345
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