Engineered Pathogens and Unnatural Biological Weapons: The Future Threat of Synthetic Biology.

Variola (Smallpox) virus.

Engineered Pathogens and Unnatural Biological Weapons: The Future Threat of Synthetic Biology.

 The following is a quote from Paul Cruickshank, Editor in Chief, of CTC Sentinel, in their latest issue: JULY/AUGUST 2020 · VOLUME 11, ISSUE 8.

‘The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed concerns over bioterror threats, with Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently warning that a bioterror attack involving a pathogen with a high death rate “is kind of the nightmare scenario” facing the planet. In this month’s feature article, J. Kenneth Wickiser, Kevin J. O’Donovan, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Washington, Major Stephen Hummel, and Colonel F. John Burpo assess the potential future threat posed by the malevolent use of synthetic biology. They write that synthetic biology “is a rapidly developing and diffusing technology. The wide availability of the protocols, procedures, and techniques necessary to produce and modify living organisms combined with an exponential increase in the availability of genetic data is leading to a revolution in science affecting the threat landscape that can be rivalled only by the development of the atomic bomb’.

 The article I will reference herein is captioned above in BOLD, I want to name the persons involved in said work and their various fields, of endeavour and expertise.  

 Dr. J. Kenneth Wickiser is a Professor of Biochemistry and the Associate Dean for Research at the United States Military Academy (USMA) and has extensive experience working on engineered and natural genetic switches in bacteria and biomarkers in human clinical studies. He earned his PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University and completed his postdoctoral research training at Rockefeller University in the Laboratory of Molecular Neuro-oncology.Dr. Kevin J. O’Donovan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Life Science at USMA with expertise in neural development and axon regeneration. He earned his PhD in Neuroscience from the Johns Hopkins University, did his postdoctoral work at Rockefeller University, and was faculty at the Burke Neurological Institute before moving to USMA. LTC Michael Washington currently serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Life Science at USMA. He has a PhD in Emerging Infectious Disease with an emphasis in Immunology from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.MAJ Stephen Hummel is currently a PhD student in the Biology Department at Boston College. Previously, he served in both Iraq and Afghanistan and as a USAREUR CBRN Plans Officer, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Life Science at USMA, a Nuclear Operations Officer on a Nuclear Disablement Team, and most recently as the Deputy, Commander’s Initiatives Group at 20th CBRNE Command.COL F. John Burpo currently serves as the Head of the Department of Chemistry and Life Science at USMA. As an artillery officer, he served in airborne, armour, and Stryker units with humanitarian, peacekeeping, and combat operational deployments. He also served as the Deputy Commander-Transformation for the 20th CBRNE Command. He has a Sc.D. in Bioengineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

The following post is framed around the article mentioned above. Frequent readers of this blog know that, I often cite various sources and professionals in their fields as a means of strengthening what I write, where other persons are quoted I always use quotation marks, and indicate whom is being quoted or referenced. The intent being to provide the reader with as much credibly verifiable information as possible. The writers said the following pertinent to their article: ‘This article has been developed using both primary and secondary literature sources recently published in peer-reviewed scientific papers’.Note to readers, this blog is in no way a platform that promotes, nor endorses governments, or religious extremism. The information on this site is primarily, for educational and research purposes.

In the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been shown that biological threats can and do emerge from nature. We have also learned that infectious diseases can swiftly spread amongst human populations without, human engineering making them ideal substrates, from which engineered weapons can be developed.  The following is a quote from the article in question: ‘Recently, the convergence of advances in computer science, engineering, biological science, and chemistry have made it possible to engineer living systems to optimize growth and increase pathogenicity (the propensity to cause disease). This interdisciplinary approach to providing novel biological functionality has had a positive impact on the biotechnological and biopharmaceutical industries. At the same time, these engineered bacteria and viruses can be co-opted for belligerent purposes. 

 Designer biological weapons in the hands of state and non-state actors gives an aggressor, an asymmetric advantage over another state or group, with more conventional weapons. The article in CTC, focused primarily on terrorist organizations, as the type of non-state actors who could leverage biological weapons, in pursuit of their goals. In contemporary terms it is not a far-fetched expectation, for a state actor to use such weapons against its perceived enemies. The following is quoted from the CTC article cited previously: ‘Synthetic biology (SynBio) is the scientific discipline that encompasses all aspects of the engineering of biological systems. Beginning with the discovery of the chemical structure of DNAb in the 1950s, SynBio tools such as recombinant DNA technology and genome editing tools  have developed at a fast pace as the fundamental molecular mechanisms underlying biology are discovered. 

These SynBio tools are lowering the education, training, cost, time, and equipment threshold required to modify and employ pathogenic organisms as biological weapons’.What was once the domain of sci-fi novelist’s, conspiracy theorists et al, is now increasingly being touted by scientist’s, military leaders, and person’s in the global intelligence community as very real, and imminent Bio-engineered weapons deployed in cities anywhere on this planet, in the 21^st Century is increasingly a real and imminent threat according to the people, like those cited previously in this post. Small island states in the Caribbean have zero capability, to prepare for, counter or mitigate the spread of and effects of a bio-engineered designer weapon. A follow up post on these types of threats will be posted.      

  See the following sources for further study: 1. W. Seth Carus, “The History of Biological Weapons Use: What We Know and What We Don’t,” Health Security 13:4 (2015): pp. 219-255. 2 Jonathan B. Tucker, “Biological Weapons in the Former Soviet Union: An Interview with Dr. Kenneth Alibek,” Nonproliferation Review (Spring-Summer 1999). 3 Ibid. 4 Carus. 5 Allen A. Cheng and Timothy K. Lu, “Synthetic biology: an emerging engineering discipline,” Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering 14 (2012): pp. 155-178. 6 Antoine Danchin, “Scaling up synthetic biology: do not forget the chassis,” FEBS Letters 586:15 (2012): pp. 2,129-2,137. 7 Claire Muslin, Marie-Line Joffret, Isabelle Pelletier, Bruno Blondel, and Francis Delpeyroux, “Evolution and emergence of enteroviruses through intra-and inter-species recombination: Plasticity and phenotypic impact of modular genetic exchanges in the 5’untranslated region,” PLoS Pathogens 11:11 (2015): e1005266. 8 Cheng and Lu. 9 Claudia E. Vickers, “The minimal genome comes of age,” Nature Biotechnology 34:6 (2016): p. 623. 10 Michael J. Ainscough, “Next Generation Bioweapons: The Technology of Genetic Engineering Applied to Biowarfare and Bioterrorism,” Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, 2002. 11 Stephen Hummel, F. John Burpo, and James Bonner, “Profit-Minded Suppliers: Convergence of IED Facilitation and WMD Proliferation Networks for Non-State Actors,” CTC Sentinel 12:2 (2019): pp. 12-16; Stephen Hummel, Douglas McNair, F. John Burpo, and James Bonner, “Profit-Minded Suppliers: The WMD Pathways and Combating Convergence,” CTC Sentinel 12:4 (2019): pp. 16-21. 12 Jeronimo Cello, Aniko V. Paul, and Eckard Wimmer, “Chemical Synthesis of Poliovirus cDNA: Generation of Infectious Virus in the Absence of Natural Template,” Science 297:5,583 (2002): pp. 1,016-1,018. 13 Daniel G. Gibson, Gwynedd A. Benders, Cynthia Andrews-Pfannkoch, Evgeniya A. Denisova, Holly Baden-Tillson, Jayshree Zaveri, Timothy B. Stockwell, et al., “Complete Chemical Synthesis, Assembly, and Cloning  of a Mycoplasma genitalium Genome,” Science 319:5,867 (2008): pp. 1,215-1,220; Daniel G. Gibson, John I. Glass, Carole Lartigue, Vladimir N. Noskov, Ray-Yuan Chuang, Mikkel A. Algire, Gwynedd A. Benders, et al., “Creation of a Bacterial Cell Controlled by a Chemically Synthesized Genome,” Science 329:5,987 (2010): pp. 52-56.