John_F Loc: Minneapolis, MN

The quote is from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists for 21 Feb.

In 2017, the virologist David Evans made headlines when he used synthetic biology to recreate the extinct horsepox v***s, which is closely related to the v***s that causes smallpox, a disease eradicated in 1980. Evans and his team, ordering the genetic material they needed through the mail, reportedly spent $100,000 on the research, an amount that seems small given the momentous implications of their work. “No question. If it’s possible with horsepox, it’s possible with smallpox,” German virologist Gerd Sutter told Science magazine in a press account of Evans’s work. A number of biosecurity experts and even The Washington Post editorial board joined him in voicing their concerns. Given the reaction Evans met, one might expect the news that yet another microbe related to the smallpox v***s had been synthesized to set off similar alarm bells.

Yet when the American biotech company that funded Evans’s horsepox work, Tonix Pharmaceuticals, announced this January that it had successfully synthesized just such a microbe, vaccinia, no one seemed to take note.

Since the World Health Organization eradicated the smallpox-causing variola v***s from nature, the only known samples of it have been held in two high-security facilities in the United States and Russia. But developments in synthetic biology, a field which includes the art and science of constructing v***l genomes, have made it possible to create the smallpox v***s in a lab. While there’s no evidence that anyone has done that yet, as Tonix’s work indicates, researchers are inching incredibly close to that line. Before it was eradicated, smallpox was responsible for 300 million deaths in the 20th century. The re-introduction of the disease—through negligence or malice—would be a global health disaster.

Tonix announced the new synthetic vaccinia v***s quietly, burying the news in a press release for a poster that the firm presented at the American Society for Microbiology’s annual biodefense science and policy conference. The poster focused on the progress the company was making in testing Evans’s synthetic horsepox v***s for use as a v*****e against smallpox, which Tonix calls TNX-801. Current smallpox v*****es are based on live vaccinia v***s that is grown using cell culture technology. Tonix’s poster also references another smallpox v*****e candidate the company is testing, one based on a synthetic version of the vaccinia v***s that Tonix is calling TNX-1200. While the vaccinia and horsepox v***ses are not themselves serious threats to human health, there are several reasons why this new development in synthetic biology is problematic.

Tonix has apparently ignored the concerns that many biosecurity experts, including myself, have raised. Given the close genetic similarity among orthopoxv***ses like the horsepox, variola, and vaccinia v***ses, the laboratory techniques that can be used to create one can also be used to produce others–most worryingly, the smallpox-causing variola v***s. Indeed, Evans has said as much himself, once pointing out that his research “was a stark demonstration that this could also be done with variola v***s.” Evans’s lab used the same technique to produce the synthetic vaccinia v***s for Tonix as it did to synthesize the horsepox v***s.

Unlike in other cases of controversial dual-use research, the risks posed by the synthesis of orthopoxv***ses are not offset by any significant benefits. In 2018, I wrote that the benefits of using Evans and Tonix’s horsepox v***s as a smallpox v*****e rested on a weak scientific foundation, and an even weaker business case. The case for synthesizing vaccinia is more dubious. Tonix cannot claim that synthesizing the vaccinia v***s was the only way to obtain it. Unlike horsepox v***s, which went extinct in the 1980s and for which the only known sample is held by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, vaccinia is widely available from multiple sources.

The business case for a new smallpox v*****e based on novel platforms such as synthetic horsepox or synthetic vaccinia is even weaker than it was a few years ago. One of Tonix’s key talking points about the v*****e based on the synthetic horsepox v***s is that it would be safer than older v*****e varieties. Since the company’s synthetic vaccinia strain in the TNX-1200 v*****e is “very similar” to the vaccinia strain used in one of the older, so-called second generation, smallpox v*****es, it’s hard to see how this new synthetic v*****e could have an improved safety profile. Further complicating Tonix’s case is that there is now a newer and safer third-generation smallpox v*****e available. Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration licensed Bavarian Nordic’s JYNNEOS v*****e, which is based on a non-replicating strain of vaccinia. This v*****e doesn’t damage the heart, unlike second-generation smallpox v*****es, and can even be given to people with c*********d i****e s****ms. Tonix will likely find it difficult to attract the venture capital or government funding needed to win approval and licensing for either of its synthetic smallpox v*****e candidates.

Given the current level of interest among scientists in using orthopoxv***ses, as well as related pox v***ses, to develop new v*****es and cancer therapies, there is already a well-established foundation of laboratories that could use synthetic biology to further their research. Indeed, Evans had previously expressed his hope to synthesize genetically engineered vaccinia strains to develop new anti-cancer treatments. As evidenced by the relatively muted reaction to Tonix’s synthetic vaccinia announcement, there’s a strong risk that orthopoxv***s synthesis could gradually be viewed as normal, legitimate research. It’s not difficult to imagine the emergence of a global cadre of labs and scientists capable of developing synthetic versions of the infectious smallpox v***s.

While orthopoxv***ses are among the most complicated and expensive v***ses to synthesize, a World Health Organization scientific advisory panel found that “a sk**led laboratory technician or undergraduate students working with v***ses in a relatively simple laboratory” could be up to the task. The genome sequence of variola v***s has already been determined and is available online. The key ingredient needed to synthesize a v***l genome is DNA. In the case of variola v***s, what’s required is about 186,000 base-pairs of genetic material. And there is now a global industry of DNA synthesis companies that produce and sell DNA for use in biomedical research and biomanufacturing.

As described by the World Health Organization panel, once a lab has acquired the necessary DNA molecules, it would need to assemble the material into a complete genome and use a helper v***s to generate an infectious variola v***s. By my count there are at least 100 laboratories around the world with the expertise to do so.

Worryingly, there are few meaningful national or international safeguards to prevent access to the DNA needed to synthesize the variola v***s. According to a 2019 global survey of biosecurity practices by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit that tracks biosecurity risks and other threats, no country requires the companies that sell synthetic DNA to prevent “questionable parties” from acquiring materials. The think tank also found that less than 5 percent of countries regulate dual-use research, such as the use of techniques that might also be used to synthesize dangerous v***ses.

The only positive development in this area in the last few years is that the International Gene Synthesis Consortium, a group of DNA synthesis companies that screens customers and their orders, has prohibited its members from synthesizing gene sequences unique to the smallpox v***s genome. Unfortunately, the consortium represents only 80 percent of the global DNA synthesis market, leaving an uncomfortably large number of companies operating without any sort of regulation on what they can make and who they can sell it to.

The loosely regulated market for synthetic DNA, the normalization of synthetic orthopoxv***s research, and a large number of capable facilities and researchers creates an environment in which a rogue state, unscrupulous company, reckless scientist, or terrorist group could potentially reintroduce one of the worst microbial scourges in human history.

Unless world bodies, national governments, and scientific organizations put in place stronger safeguards on synthetic v***s research, the next press release touting a new breakthrough in synthetic biology might announce that an unknown scientist in an obscure lab has successfully resurrected the smallpox v***s.

Elaine2025 Loc: Seattle, Wa

This is just too stupid. Way too stupid.

soba1 Loc: Somewhere In So Ca

PH CIB

Human Overpopulation could be controlled without k*****g anyone through the use of Birth Control and stabilizing Governments, Economies and Consumption, but that would not create the huge ups and downs in Markets that Disasters create, and Nobody would get even more Wealthy and Powerful and Controlling than they already are, so it will never happen....

EyeSawYou

Human overpopulation of the Earth is a myth that never seems to end.

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

Based on?