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'Rogue Scientists' Could Exploit Gene Editing Technology, Experts Warn (theguardian.com)
A senior geneticist and a bioethicist warned on Friday that they fear "rogue scientists" operating outside the bounds of law, and agreed with a US intelligence chief's assertion this week that gene editing technology could have huge, and potentially dangerous, consequences. Recent advances in genetics allow scientists to edit DNA quickly and accurately, making research into diseases, such as cystic fibrosis and cancer, easier than ever before. But researchers increasingly caution that they have to work with extreme care, for fear that gene editing could be deployed as bioterrorism or, in a more likely scenario, result in an accident that could make humans more susceptible to disease rather than less.
Making it sound inhuman is the whole point. If you're against something, make it sound evil!
Don't like guns? Talk about "assault weapons" and "cop-killer bullets".
Don't like GM foods? They can be "frankenfoods".
And now. . . Designer babies!
A couple of years ago that statement was correct. CRISPR has really changed the game.
Now, they often don't know what a given stretch of DNA does, so they can't predict what the change will do, but they can now say, "I want to change this sequence right here to this exact sequence of bases," and do it quickly and accurately.
Yes, CRISPR/Cas9 is easy to use in the lab -- we use it in my lab quite a bit. You express a guide RNA and the Cas9 enzyme together inside of a cell to make a precise cut, and co-transform a repair DNA template to make a (more or less) precise insertion.
How exactly would you express the guide RNA and Cas9 in somebody's body as a weapon? Keep in mind that our bodies come into contact with LOTS of DNA every single day, and our cells do NOT magically incorporate that DNA and express it. No, the tricks that are used to transform cells and express DNA can be performed inside of a lab, but not in the field en mass.
The applications of CRISPR/Cas9 in biotech and medicine will definitely have profound social and economic effects. But a weapon? A national security concern? Nope.
And why haven't terrorists used biological weapons successfully before if there is such a risk from them?
Biological weapons have a number of serious drawbacks that make them unattractive as weapons to terrorists:
1. Production of large enough quantities for an attack requires laboratory and light industrial type equipment with consumables and all of the support and logistics necessary to procure and operate said equipment. Countries where terrorism is a problem are generally poverty stricken, have little or no functioning government or infrastructure and are short on just about everything, including fuel and food. This makes biological weapons relatively expensive in the bang vs buck department and if Bin Laden's captured papers are anything to go by, terrorists tend to be cheapskates. The news reports of the papers captured during the Bin Laden raid, for example, mentioned arguments over the cost of replacement car parts for a cell operating in Yemen, among other things.
2. Unlike chemicals or shrapnel, effective dispersal of a biological agent that doesn't also destroy the agent itself in the process requires some fairly sophisticated engineering. Terrorists working in primitive conditions with improvised explosive devices are probably not up to the task. Moreover, the use cases for these dispersal systems are either small scale or difficult and expensive and as we know, terrorists are a notoriously cheap bunch.
3. Without sophisticated storage and complex preservation techniques, the shelf life of bioweapons is short which makes them a use them or lose them proposition for terrorists.
4. Finally, unless a large number of people are infected, which is unlikely in a small scale terrorist attack, the damage will be very limited at best. This is especially true if the attack occurs in a first world nation where medical care is both sophisticated and abundant. Astute readers will note that aid workers infected in Africa with the Ebola virus recovered fully after being flown here to the United States and treated successfully.
In conclusion, bioweapons are unlikely to be a serious problem even if the terrorists have the backing of a nation state. The economics of the attack are simply too poor and no nation would want to face the retribution that would surely follow when the United States inevitably discovered who was responsible. For example, notice how quickly the Syrian government surrendered their chemical weapons stockpiles when they thought that the United States would become directly involved in their civil war if they refused. The United States and allied nations ought to be focusing instead on more plausible methods of terrorist attack and how to prevent them instead of worrying about things that only happen in Tom Clancy novels or Hollywood movie plots.
I was a research assistant at a large university in the U.S. for 15 years and you are not too far from reality.
"Scientists must register and be fingerprinted by their local sherrif"
I had to do this, the odds of having to do this goes up with your lab's biosafety level.
"They must keep all their test tubes in a regulation safe when not in use."
See above.
"Scientists shouldn't have access to automatic equipment. No military-style scientific equipment either."
That's ok, undergrads are cheaper. Besides, you'd be surprised how many biologists are technically inept.
"One equipment purchase per scientist per month."
That would be every scientists' wet dream.
"Buying scientific equipment for another scientist will be a felony."
Diverting grant money is a no-no.
"Convicted felons won't be allowed to possess scientific equipment."
Not so much equipment, but felons are denied access to certain chemicals and biological agents.
"Scientific equipment will only be allowed to be sold through a licensed dealer, with Federal background checks."
Kinda true at national labs.
Well, that's a general trend. Fewer people can create more mayhem with less resources now than before. (Maybe that is the Fermi paradox...)
Now, I'm not sure it's all that easy to "print up something harmful" just yet. And my point was rather, that if you have a bio-reactor that can print up viruses left, right and centre, then you could have a chemical reactor to make you sarin gas, at half the price.
However, even though the capabilities for mayhem are legio, we don't see that much mayhem, so there are other mechanisms at play as well. If twenty years in the security field has taught me anything, it's that the overwhelming majority are nice people, and not the immoral bastards that modern "economic theory" claim we all are.
But, when, how and if we reach a tipping point, that is both a difficult and of course an important question. Lots of sci-fi speculating on that very subject (I'm partial to Rainbow's End, by V. Vinge), but one also has to remember that the devil is in the details, so it's not a simple linear extrapolation.
I'm all for making society a better place, and of course bad surroundings make more bad people. So we could at least start by trying to not make things worse... If we reach the point where all it takes is a single loon however, all bets are of course off. And that's the scary part.
Stefan Axelsson