In John Brunner's epic science fiction novel, set in 2010, the science of biological engineering has advanced to the point where even university students can produce genetically tailored organisms. To put it another way, by 2010, so Brunner postulates, terrorists can produce their own bio-weapons. This is one of the sub-plots in the novel.

Brunner wrote his book 40 years ago in 1968.

2010 is almost here. So how good was Brunner's guess? Are we almost at the point where terrorists can produce their own bio-weapon?

Meet the burgeoning science of synthetic biology. Synthetic Biology is:

A) the design and construction of new biological parts, devices, and systems, and

B) the re-design of existing, natural biological systems for useful purposes.

See:

http://syntheticbiology.org/

Well and good. But does this require an expensive lab and a lot of hard to acquire equipment? Is engineering your own organisms in practice as hard as building your own nukes?

Introducing iGEM.

iGEM stands for "International Genetically Engineered Machine."

See:

http://2008.igem.org/About

Students from all across the word compete to produce the most useful, most ingenious organisms using "standard parts" supplied by MIT. This year's winning team is from Slovenia.

Here is a handy link to a catalogue of the parts available.

http://partsregistry.org/Part_Types

You can get any number of E coli strains.

What do readers think?

Was Brunner right? Have we almost reached the stage where terrorists could construct their own bio-weapons?

What are the implications of the spread of this sort of technology?

Here is the iGEM page for "Team Melbourne."

http://2008.igem.org/Team:Melbourne

In thinking about this don't think in terms of a "doomsday bug" that can wipe out the whole of humanity as in the "I am legend" movie. That is very unlikely. Rather think in terms of terrorists engineering local outbreaks of some sort of haemorrhagic fever that kill a few hundred.

Also think in terms of viruses that may infect crops or farm animals rather than humans.

However the "I am legend" plot may not be as far fetched as it seems. Researchers are trying to use viruses to control cancer as this page on the Mayo Clinic website shows.

http://www.mayoclinic.org/news2008-rst/5042.html

Steven.... the mind boggles..why do you even ask the question...?

You could rephrase it as an outright assertion and be on safe ground.

Any one of us could cause untold damage to our communities in a variety of ways.. good grief.... you don't need to be a molecular biologist to do that.

Yes Steven, many people can engineer bioweapons these days. In fact a group of researchers in Adelaide a few years back accidentally made a super infective flu virus.

For serious genetic engineering though, you need a reasonable laboratory to prevent contamination of your cultures, access to biotechnology reagents and some proper starting material as well as a decent education to understand what you are doing. If religious terrorists are able to get these (especially the education), then it's possible.

On the simpler side, if you were able to get your hands on a plasmid that encodes for a serious toxin, say aflatoxin or botulinum toxin and were able to get into an expression vector (easy for a genetics lab), then you could produce massive amounts of the stuff for weapons. But this kind of thing is not for kitchen benchtops or garages, you need decent equipment, eg incubators, autoclave, access to antibiotics and expression vectors etc. But it's possible, unlikely but possible.

The most likely scenario, is just using the plain old stocks of what we have now, eg. anthrax etc. Easy to grow, and they cause a lot of concern without indiscriminately wiping out humanity.

You also need a decent laboratory so that you don't kill yourself as soon as you get something even slightly infectious. That requires some support that terrorists don't generally have unless they are state sponsored.

Or.... you could just read Buggy's post and just put it all into practice..

*swatttt*

I can see eco-terrorism being a problem, whether it's squirting some nasties out of a water pistol at livestock at the Royal Easter Show or transporting a bunch of cane toads into some pristine wilderness.

Acquiring human pathogens may be a bit of a problem for the amateur but maybe not so for the more dedicated, although cultivating some legionella may be as far as it goes - unless you have contacts inside a research laboratory.

Then again, tainting a city's water supply could be as easy as strategically dumping barrel of PCBs.

If it's that easy for me to quickly come up with some simple scenarios that that, what are the limits for the dedicated and resourceful professional?

Who knows what the capabilities of
terrorists are?

Advances in science and technology will
undoubtedly increase terrorist capabilities
in the future.

But how and when? who knows...

We need realistic and comprehensive threat
assessments that consider all relevant factors.

Nations and Governments must take greater international
support of nonproliferation and other forms of
prevention.

I don't think it is impossible, but I don't think it is THAT easy either.

What we'd have to worry about in regards to bio-weapons is accidents at the facilities. There's a scary paper floating around the net about incidents involving near and actual outbreaks due to employee carelessness. Google it, it's there.

The chances of a terror cell getting something is remote, I believe. I also don't believe they are that 'romantic' as some would have you believe either. It ain't like buying an ounce of pot. You need to be IN THE KNOW to get it and as soon as you start asking you'll come up on the radar then just as swiftly be deleted off the radar.

There's a ZILLION things 'terrorists' could do to mess with a nation if they REALLY wanted that are WAY more effective and practicable than bio-stuff.

The general consensus seems to be that terrorists could not engage in sophisticated bio-engineering. Judging by what the STUDENT participants in the iGEM competition achieved, I am not so sure. The winning team engineered a vaccine for Helicobacter pylori, the microbe that causes stomach ulcers.

Others engineered E coli to tell the time.

See: http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55178/

This looks pretty sophisticated stuff to me.

I also think the psychological impact of a successful bio-weapon attack would be immense. Imagine if just a few hundred people in, say, London became infected with Ebola.

My guess is that an adequate bioscience facility could be built for a few million dollars. This is not out of reach of a terrorist organization with sympathisers among Saudi princes. It is a tiny fraction of the cost of building a facility to enrich uranium.

How would the terrorists get the "spare parts?" They could enter a team into iGEM and get a starter kit courtesy of MIT

The potential of them getting their hands on something is there but I'm more inclined to worry about getting stabbed, shot, assaulted or butchered by someone passing me by in my life that DOESN'T look different to me.

The prisons are full of them.

StG

You raise an interesting point. What are the risk factors we ought to be worried about?

In the US an average of 3,500 people are killed in traffic accidents every month. That exceeds the number killed on 9 / 11. In fact, since 9 / 11 more people in the US have died in traffic accidents EVERY MONTH than died as a result of the attack.

In the UK more people died as a result of traffic accidents in the second week of July 2005 than died as a result of the bombings that occurred during that week.

So far in industrialised countries, traffic accidents have been a greater risk factor by far than terrorism.

As risk factors go both terrorism and traffic accidents are dwarfed by the problems we bring on ourselves through smoking, substance abuse and a sedentary lifestyle. Picture a portly smoker downing his fourth beer and railing against the threat of terrorism prior to climbing into his car and driving off in a slightly inebriated state. That fellow is probably going to die, have a stroke or kill someone long before even the most assiduous terrorist can get to him.

So why do we talk so much about terrorism?

The short answer is that we don't.

How many people do you know who have made a new year's resolution to do more to combat terrorism?

Compare that to the number of people who resolve to diet or workout at the gym.

In 2005 the CSIRO's Total Wellbeing Diet book outsold Harry Potter in Australia. It has since sold 700,000 copies and a sequel has been released which seems to be selling equally well.

Books on "How to combat terrorism" don’t even exist.

When my children were growing up I worried much more about the possibility of road accidents than terrorist attacks and I was living in South Africa at the time!

I don’t want to downplay the dangers of terrorism. It is a serious, problem. We do need to be alert.

But in Australia I suggest it is a second order problem.

This news just in:

REPORT: WORLD AT RISK OF BIO, NUKE ATTACK

See:

http://www.abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=6375476&page=1

Quote:

"The biggest threat is a biological attack, which the report considers to be a greater possibility than a nuclear or radiological attack."

Here's the thing. Producing a nuke requires billions unless you can get your hands on fissile materials. Then the cost falls to hundreds of millions.

However the cost of producing bio-weapons has fallen to tens of millions AT MOST. This is well within the reach of a well funded terrorist organisation.

As the report points out:

"...The globalization of biotechnology industries is spreading expertise and capabilities, and increasing the accessibility of biological pathogens suitable for disruptive attacks..."

The capabilities are out there. The number of people with the requisite know-how is growing. As with computers, the costs are falling.

Steven, terrorist could easily use biological weapons. They already have. Remember the anthrax letters?

There are already quite a few diseases that would probably fit the bill, smallpox being one of them.

You don't need multiple millions of dollars or a fancy genetics lab to make a weapon that uses anthrax.

But that wasn't your original question. Your question was could they genetically engineer a "doomsday bug". Now that is quite a different proposition altogether.

I recall the use of Sarin on Japanese subway as the most significant terrorist use of bio-toxins.

Sure Terrorists already use Bio-weapons, often less effectively than they use explosives.

The important issue to focus on with terrorists, be they religious minded fundamentalists or the sort of scum of Bader-Mienhoff or the Italian Red brigades, is as dearest Margaret said

"All attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail. It must be business as usual. "