BIO-MISHAPS, BIO-WEAPONS AND BIO-TERROR
As I riffled through the day’s newspaper, a report titled “Swine flu virus claims six lives in Tamilnadu“ grabbed my attention. It made my mind, hark back to a time when Billy Corgan, the lead singer of famous “Smashing Pumpkins” had bemoaned in his blog that the swine flu virus was not a naturally occurring disease. He finagled that it was created by man to scare the hell out of people. I also reminisced having read about the great influenza pandemic of 1918, which the world had witnessed exactly hundred years ago when the Spanish flu virus a variant of swine flu had infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide and killed more people than both the world wars put together.
Billy Corgan’s claim may be right or wrong, but back in 1957, swine flu virus had totally disappeared from the surface of our planet, but it brusquely re-emerged after twenty long years in 1977.
Precisely at a time when Omutninsk Chemical Factory in Soviet Russia was manufacturing large amounts of influenza vaccine and crop production bacteria overground, while plague and tularemia microbes were being researched in heavily guarded underground facilities as a part of the Soviet Bioweapons program. It is therefore presumed that the swine flu virus was probably deliberately released, giving credence to the existence of a biological weapons program of Soviet Russians. Concomitantly, vaccine trial or a vaccine development trial going awry were considered as other plausible explanations for the 1977 epidemic.
Still some Scientists believed, that the swine flu virus might have found its way into the population after a lab worker might have accidentally broken the frozen vials containing the pathogen which had been preserved since the 1950s.
In the recent past, several such bio-mishaps have happened with potentially fatal repercussions. In March of 2013, officials at a high-security government research lab in Texas said they had lost a vial containing Guanarito virus, which causes “bleeding under the skin, in body cavities such as the mouth, eyes or ears,”. This matter has now been entrusted to FBI for investigation. Just a year later at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, more than a thousand vials containing the SARS virus went missing.
These are deadly bio-toxins, which could become cataclysmic biological weapons if they landed by chance into the hands of terrorists. There have also been some spine-chilling news reports of various laboratory errors, such as a forgotten vial of smallpox found in an old freezer, and mishaps involving anthrax and bird flu at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the USA.
On the flipside, today the bio-criminals or terrorists don’t have to rely on existing pathogens. They can create their deadly viruses due to advances and discoveries in the field of gene-sequencing and synthetic biology. With gene technology becoming less expensive, more accurate, and faster every year, it is predictable that by 2020 bio-criminals will have the ability to manipulate genomes to engineer new bioterror weapons.
We recently saw an example of what this could look like when researchers in the Netherlands and the United States altered the genetic code of bird flu or avian influenza virus (HSN1) to make it more deadly. Though bird flu has a 70 per cent mortality rate, human to human transmission of the virus is not possible. But by tinkering the DNA and causing just four genetic mutations, the Dutch-American team were not only able to engineer a much more virulent strain with enhanced transmissibility to human beings but also transformed the virus into an incredible bio-weapon. Although the original goal of the scientists was to study how quickly H5N1 might evolve in order to better prevent its spread, the genetically altered strain, which resulted proved that, if released, it was capable of causing a global epidemic.
In the past, the only way by which government agencies combated bioterrorism was by restricting access of the pathogens to antisocial elements. The bio-criminals of today and tomorrow may no longer have to worry about obtaining access or stealing pathogenic biological cultures from governmental or private labs. They would now be able to download the genetic sequence blueprints from the internet and 3D print these deadly viruses themselves.
Moreover, the full genetic sequence of many select agents and other pathogenic genomes (smallpox, botulism, anthrax) are already freely available for download at the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s DNA sequence database. Besides, today it would cost just a few thousand rupees to design a custom DNA sequence, place an order from a manufacturer, and receive the DNA within a few weeks by mail.
To prove the point, in 2002 Eckard Wimmer, a university virologist, was able to chemically amalgamate the polio genome using mail-order DNA. Back then it cost $300,000; today it would be closer to $1,000 and in the future, it would cost less than the price of a Starbucks coffee. Though governments around the world have spent billions of dollars trying to eradicate polio, tomorrow a terrorist, could reintroduce it for a few dollars. Genetic engineering that used to be extremely difficult and expensive, can now be done anywhere in the world with a few weeks of training, a laptop, and a credit card.
As far as bio-assassins are concerned, in the not so distant future, all that they would need are some cells left behind by the target on the hair brush, toothbrush, on the cup with which he sipped coffee or the left behind fork with which he had his food. We shed billions of cells on a daily basis , prospective bio-assassins would need only few such cells left behind from a prominent politician or celebrity, to create a custom-made weaponised virus.
Personalised bioweapons are something akin to personalised medicine where it’s been shown that it’s feasible to target a single cancer cell even when its surrounded by tissues of thousands of healthy cells . “In the President’s Secret Service” a book authored by Ronald Kessler in 2009, Navy stewards gather bedsheets, drinking glasses, and other objects the president has touched—which are later sanitized or destroyed—in an effort to keep the would‑be outlaws from obtaining his genetic material.
A 2010 release of WikiLeaks, revealed that the then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had directed its embassies to clandestinely collect DNA samples from foreign heads of state and senior United Nations officials. If true, U.S has already secured strategic advantage by knowing the specific biology of world leaders; should India then not think on similar lines.
Today, most biohackers may appear to have good intentions, but we shouldn’t forget the possibility of there being some bad apples in the basket. Hacking of one’s genetic information is likely to be the identity theft of tomorrow as DNA is becoming a tool extensively used for verification.
Soon we can also expect to have biological equivalents of all types of cybercrime existing in the world today. Indeed, the most quintessential form of identity theft is human cloning, and the number of technological barricades standing in its way is falling rapidly, a contingency for which police and society are totally unprepared. We, therefore, are left with no choice aside from taking necessary corrective steps to protect the system.
The devastating consequences of a single act of bio-terror by a single man has been marvellously depicted in a film titled “Smallpox 2002”. In the film an unknown terrorist, who somehow obtains a smallpox virus culture traceable to the former Soviet bioweapons program, deliberately infects himself and walks around New York City. Within days, unwitting travellers flying out of New York airports spread the disease around the world causing a pandemic across the world that is later defeated but not before 60 million people are killed.
The 2001 anthrax attacks, one of the recent bioterror attacks, also known as Amerithrax from its FBI case name, happened for several weeks one week after 9/11 attacks in the USA. The letters posted were handwritten in untidy block capitals. The anthrax spores concealed in the envelopes killed 5 people including two senators, a news anchor and a newspaper editor. Could it be that the Al-Qaeda had now followed up 9/11 attacks with a sophisticated biological weapon? Whatever religious color the bio-terrorists may have worn , or reason they may have had to justify such behavior, the basic issue is a failure to realize the importance of diversity and the underlying spiritual unity of humankind.
When attention is given to the spiritual aspect of one’s life, it brings up responsibility, a sense of connectedness, compassion and caring for the whole of humanity. Awareness of our spiritual nature, breaks down the narrow boundaries of caste, creed, religion and nationality. Spirituality gives an individual awareness of the life present everywhere. Once people gain this awareness and their consciousness gets uplifted, violence in the name of religion or terrorism would become impossible.
Source from: epaper/deccanchronicle/chennai/dt:12.11.2018
Dr.K. Jayanth Murali is an IPS Officer belonging to 1991 batch. He is borne on Tamil Nadu cadre. He lives with his family in Chennai, India. He is currently serving the Government of Tamil Nadu as Additional Director General of Police, DVAC.
