Designer bugs: how the next pandemic might come from a lab

Why we need to take the threat of bioengineered superbugs seriously.

  Did Covid-19 Come From A Lab? Was It Deliberate Bioterrorism? A Biodefense Expert Explores The Clues

Mother nature is a very efficient “bioterrorist.” We have seen this time and time again as new diseases have emerged, like Ebola, SARS, and henipaviruses. During the current pandemic, it’s been alleged that people created a new pathogen in the Wuhan lab - and even that it’s been released as a deliberate act of bioterrorism. So how could we determine definitively if Covid-19 was a naturally occurring or bioengineered outbreak? The simple answer is: it’s complicated.

  This Is What It Would Take to Turn a Virus into a Weapon

Melinda Gates recently declared that the biggest threat to humanity is a pandemic brought on by a bioterrorist attack.

  WMD Terrorism: The Once and Future Threat

Biological attacks have the potential for the most catastrophic effects outside of nuclear weapons, but there are significant difficulties associated with attacks using living weapons. Aum Shinrikyo experimented with anthrax, botulinum toxin, cholera, Q fever, and even ebola, from 1990–95, but was unsuccessful due to unsophisticated delivery mechanisms and nonvirulent strains.17 The mechanism through which the lone actor Bruce Ivins chose to disperse anthrax-causing spores—a letter—was also unsophisticated and, fortunately, although his expertise and access allowed him to produce a sophisticated agent, it was not dispersed at a catastrophic scale.

 Aum Shinrikyo’s legacy of toxic terror

Modern terrorists have proved that they are willing to kill on a large scale, and that they will seek to acquire or develop WMDs to do so. Aum Shinrikyo’s toxic legacy and the threat of such an attack will only grow as technologies and expertise in chemistry, medicine and biology become more globalised in the 21st century.

 Bill and Melinda Gates think a weaponized disease may be the biggest threat to humanity — here's how worried you should be

The biggest global risk that Melinda Gates can imagine within the next 10 years is "most definitely" a bioterrorism attack.

 How deadly pathogens have escaped the lab — over and over again

Research into dangerous viruses and bacteria is important, but for the deadliest pathogens, it’s not clear the benefits are worth the risks.

 Report For Defense Department Ranks Top Threats From 'Synthetic Biology'

New genetic tools are making it easier and cheaper to engineer viruses and bacteria, and a report commissioned by the Department of Defense has now ranked the top threats posed by the rapidly advancing field of "synthetic biology." One of the biggest concerns is the ability to recreate known viruses from scratch in the lab. That means a lab could make a deadly virus that is normally kept under lock and key, such as smallpox.

The Threat Of Biological Warfare Is Increasing, And The U.S. Isn't Ready

Which brings me to the subject of biowar -- the use of microbes to attack target populations. This is not a new idea. Europeans gave Native Americans blankets tainted with smallpox during the early colonial period, knowing their lack of resistance to the disease would wipe out whole tribes. What is new today is that virulent pathogens -- microorganisms that spread disease -- can be readily spawned in laboratories.

There’s Toxicity, And There’s Toxicity

Now, all drugs have biological activity, or they wouldn’t be drugs. But some of them are definitely more active than others, and BTX is at the far end of the scale. To give you the idea, on a mg-per-kilo basis, I believe that its fatal dose is at least five orders of magnitude lower than Sarin nerve gas, a fact that will definitely make an industrial safety director sit down and think about career options. There are quite a few wildly toxic peptides and proteins, since they’ve had plenty of time for evolution to sharpen the spear points, but to the best of my knowledge, botulinum is the winner.

Toxins as biological weapons for terror—characteristics, challenges and medical countermeasures: a mini-review

Currently, some toxins are classified as potential biological weapons, although they have several differences from classic living bio-terror pathogens and some similarities to manmade chemical warfare agents. This review focuses on category A and B bio-terror toxins recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Botulinum neurotoxin, staphylococcal enterotoxin B, Clostridium perfringens epsilon toxin, and ricin.

A Three-Inch Bio-Detector Quickly Scans For All the Bacteria and Viruses We Know Of, All at Once

The Lawrence Livermore Microbial Detection Array (LLMDA) is but a one-inch wide, three-inch long glass slide, but packed in a checkerboard pattern within the device are 388,000 probes set to detect more than 2,000 viruses and about 900 bacteria.

America's bioterrorism labs have a disturbing safety record

Altogether, these incidents have been leading some to question whether current oversight of research on dangerous pathogens is sufficient and even suggest that some of this research isn't safe enough to continue.

Becoming Biohackers: The Long Arm of the Law

Is the rise of amateur gene enthusiasts working in make-shift labs a harmless pursuit or a potential bioterrorism threat? The third part of this biohacking series reveals the concerns of the FBI and the community, and why views differ on what to do about it.

Biological warfare and bioterrorism: a historical review

This article explains the concepts of biological warfare and its states of development, its utilization, and the attempts to control its proliferation throughout history. The threat of bioterrorism is real and significant; it is neither in the realm of science fiction nor confined to our nation.

Biological Warfare and its Cutaneous Manifestations

This article attempts to eliminate some of that mystery by discussing the history and background of biological weapons and by reviewing agents that cause cutaneous disease.

Biological Weapons and Virtual Terrorism

The ability to acquire key ingredients via the Internet, and to ‘hire’ individuals with the scientific knowledge to make biological weapons, means that bioterrorism is, and will remain, an omnipresent risk.

Bioterrorism Funding Withers As Death Germs Thrive In Labs, Nature

Biological weapons have a long and sordid history, from catapulting infected corpses to dropping bombs of plague-infected fleas. But what if a biological weapon were being developed and studied by scientists that had the potential to kill not a battalion or a city, but 150 million people?

Bioterrorism Preparing to Fight the Next War

Government concern about bioterrorism has also led to new federal restrictions on the handling of infectious agents; such rules have hampered both the ability of U.S. researchers to participate in international collaborations and efforts to train foreign scientists in this

Bioterrorism: A Dirty Little Threat With Huge Potential Consequences

We should never doubt that terrorist adversaries are intelligent, have sophisticated and ever-advancing capabilities to inflict devastating casualties, or fully lack the will to do so. To believe otherwise could potentially be a deadly mistake.

Cities Might Not Be as Prepared as They Think for a Bioterrorism Attack

Smallpox maliciously released in London would spread to several countries before governments could intervene, a new model predicts.

Could gene editing tools such as CRISPR be used as a biological weapon?

Concerns are also mounting that gene editing could be used in the development of biological weapons. In 2016, Bill Gates remarked that “the next epidemic could originate on the computer screen of a terrorist intent on using genetic engineering to create a synthetic version of the smallpox virus”.

Deadly Bioterror Threats: Six Real Risks

Bioterrorism is back in the news with word of a dangerous new strain of botulism, for which there is no antidote. The strain is so powerful, the researchers who discovered it won't release its genetic code until an antidote is found because they fear it will fall into the wrong hands.

Ebola Is Not a Weapon

Conspiracy theories are highly contagious. Here’s why they’re wrong.

How Ready Are We for Bioterrorism?

The specter of a biological attack is difficult for almost anyone to imagine. It makes of the most mundane object, death: a doorknob, a handshake, a breath can become poison. Like a nuclear bomb, the biological weapon threatens such a spectacle of horror — skin boiling with smallpox pustules, eyes blackened with anthrax lesions, the rotting bodies of bubonic plagues — that it can seem the province of fantasy or nightmare or, worse, political manipulation. Yet biological weapons are as old as war itself.

Is Bioterrorism the Most Terrifying Public Health Problem?

Fears of bioterrorism are overblown. We should be spending much more money, time, effort, and print (including e-print) on naturally occurring outbreaks, epidemics, and human behavioral risk factors.

The deadly bean: why ricin is used for bioterror

It's easy to make, but it's also not very effective as a biological weapon, scientists say.

The Pentagon Ponders the Threat of Synthetic Bioweapons

WHEN IT COMES to detecting new organisms that emerge from exotic places and cause global havoc, the US military is ready. The Pentagon operates infectious disease labs and surveillance networks in places like Kenya, Georgia, and Thailand, as well as a giant research center and vaccine-making unit just outside Washington, DC.

The Secret's in the Sauce: Bioterror at the Salsa Bar

In early September, 1984, a woman stood in front of the Taco Time salsa bar in The Dalles, Ore., holding a small plastic bag filled with light brown liquid. Quickly and furtively, she squirted the solution into the salsa bucket and poured a little into the salad dressing. The largest bioterrorist attack in United States history had begun.

The Secret's in the Sauce: Bioterror at the Salsa Bar

The attack on The Dalles Taco Time salsa bar and nine other restaurants remains the first, largest, and worst bioterrorism attack in the U.S.

The Specter of Chemical and Biological Weapons

Efforts to harness the power of toxic chemicals and deadly organisms have been at the core of chemical and biological attacks throughout history. This package chronicles such incidents before and after Syria's recent alleged chemical weapon attack on civilians outside Damascus.

What Biosecurity and Cybersecurity Research Have in Common

They have similar dangers—and similar potential benefits.

“Designer bugs”: how the next pandemic might come from a lab

Why we need to take the threat of bioengineered superbugs seriously.