Podczas kiedy polityk Unni Wolnosci Zatonski i jego kulega profesor
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Thursday January 11,2001, 6:23 AM ET
Call for Safeguards After Chance Killer
Virus Find

By Paul Tait

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian scientists who inadvertently
created a killer mouse virus said Thursday that the
global Biological Weapons Convention must be given teeth to
prevent such discoveries falling into the wrong
hands.

The scientists, using technology that could be applied to
biological warfare, had been seeking a biological
contraceptive to halt mouse and rat plagues when they genetically
modified a virus like smallpox with fatal
results for mice.

Annabelle Duncan, who was deputy leader of a U.N. team which
investigated biowarfare agents in Iraq after
the Gulf War, said the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BCW)
urgently needed updating.

``It's not that you shouldn't do the research because you're
going to cut off a lot of beneficial discoveries...it's
making sure that it's very, very hard for anybody to abuse the
results,'' she told Reuters.

``At the moment the convention says don't make biological
weapons,'' she said. ``There's no way of policing it,
so if you think somebody is cheating you can't do anything about
it.''

Duncan is molecular science chief at the Commonwealth Scientific
and Industrial Research Organization
(CSIRO), which helped created the virus.

The genetically modified mouse virus, revealed by New Scientist
magazine Wednesday, is harmless to humans
but it kills mice by wiping out part of their immune system.

Its creators say that the same technique could be used to make
human diseases such as smallpox even more
lethal.

New Scientist said that the discovery highlighted a growing
international problem -- how to stop terrorists using
scientific research to create deadly new weapons.

Global Warning

A total of 140 countries have ratified the BCW pact, a relic of
the Cold War which bans the development,
production and stockpiling of bacteriological and toxin weapons.

Negotiations to strengthen the convention have made slow progress
over the past four years. Duncan hoped
member states would agree to set up a U.N.-backed body with
policing powers to monitor biological research.

The CSIRO scientists and colleagues at the Australian National
University told Australia's Defense Department
about their research before they submitted it for formal
publication which will go ahead in next month's U.S.
Journal of Virology.

``I can understand the concern that are we are publishing a
how-to-make biological weapons,'' Duncan said.

``You can keep quiet about what's going on and hope that nobody
ever finds out but once you've made a
discovery they tend to come out anyway...you can't go
backwards,'' she said.

Duncan's colleague Bob Seamark said they wanted the rest of the
world as well as the scientific community to
be aware of this type of technology and its implications.

``In the course of science you sometimes make unexpected
discoveries -- penicillin is one example,'' said
Seamark, director of CSIRO's Cooperative Research Center for
Biological Control of Pest Animals.

``The best protection against any misuse of this technique was to
issue a worldwide warning,'' he said.

The team created the virus by inserting a gene that produces a
molecule called interleukin 4 (IL-4) into
mousepox, a virus similar to smallpox.

Instead of producing antibodies to attack a mouse's eggs and make
it infertile, all the mice, stripped of part of
their immune system, died within nine days.

Seamark hoped that the Australian technology would help
researchers elsewhere to design better, more
effective vaccines. [end]

Gratulacje polityk Zatonski!

Dla nieznajacych angielsiego: naukowcy w Australii zrobili wirusa ktory
zabija wszystkie myszy. Te, jak wiadomo, sa zlem kiedy jest ich za duzo
w jednym miejscu. Normalnie so czescia ekosystemu. Cyrk polega na tym
ze tego nikt nie kontroluje, i kiedy to sie wymknie z laboratoriow
celowo albo nie, to bedzie heca jak z powiesci Lema. A kretyni w
polskim rzadzie, jak doradca Zatonski nawet nie czytaja gazet (procz
organu pana Michnika).

Przyjemnego dnia (i jutra)

zyczy

Miro



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