Meeting by the River.

Zen Monday.

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1. The world must take the threat of pandemic terrorism more seriously, a leading geneticist has warned. Kevin Esvelt at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says the ability to take the DNA sequence of a virus from a database, turn it into a living virus and intentionally infect people with it is an extremely serious threat. He has now published a roadmap to help counter this kind of bioterrorism. It is just a matter of time before an individual or group wanting to cause mass deaths deliberately starts a pandemic this way, he says. “I think it definitely will happen.” Esvelt began thinking about the risks of biotechnology in 2013, when he used CRISPR gene-editing to create the first artificial gene drive, a technology that could be used to drive species to extinction. He came to the conclusion that gene drives aren’t a serious bioterror threat, as they spread slowly and are easy to counter, but that intentional pandemics are a very real threat. He gives the example of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo, which in the 1990s killed 8 people in Matsumoto and 13 people in Tokyo with the nerve agent sarin. Its members included a virologist. “If he lived today and had a list of pandemic-capable viruses, he would absolutely have both the skill and malicious intent to assemble infectious samples and deliberately release them,” says Esvelt. (Source: newscientist.com, mit.edu)

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