Scientists build deadly virus with Internet recipe

[HAZE]

WASHINGTON, July 11 — Following a recipe downloaded from the Internet and using gene sequences from a mail-order supply house, researchers have assembled a synthetic version of the polio virus to prove how easy it would be for terrorists to make deadly biological weapons.

RESEARCHERS AT the University of New York at Stony Brook assembled the virus and then injected it into mice to show that it worked. The animals were paralyzed 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. Wimmer is the co-author of a report on the research, published Thursday by the journal Science on its Web site, Science Express.

“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 to progress in sciences. This is a new reality, a new consideration.â€

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.

A SIMPLE HUMAN PLAGUE

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.â€

Wimmer said it “would be very difficult now to re-create the smallpox virus, but eventually you would be able to do that.â€

“The world had better be prepared,†he added.

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

Damn, that's some scary shit.

For the full story, go here:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/779006.asp?pne=msn#BODY

peace,