Re: CIA Bioweapons Threat Report

From: "Tim Gwinn" <***>

Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 23:59:11 -0500

On a related matter, Nature.com reports that:

Scientists have built a virus from scratch in only two weeks. Their new technique paves the way for synthetic viruses and bacteria, but stirs concerns over biological weapons and the environment.

The virus was created by genome sequencing pioneer Craig Venter and his team at the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives in Rockville, Maryland, and revealed at a press conference yesterday.

One interesting point is that the effort is intended as a stepping-stone in methodology toward the creation of "designer" bacteria. This tacitly involves the notion of surrogacy - of being able to substitute one system for another, a topic which Rosen touched on many times. These scientists in the report assume that viruses are indeed valid surrogates for bacteria. In particular, they are assuming that the modes of synthesis for viruses are valid surrogates for modes of synthesis for bacteria: that they share significant ontological aspects.

I am of the mind that viruses - unlike bacteria - are not complex systems, but are instead simple systems. And that as a result, the modes of synthesis used for viruses will fail miserably when applied to the problem of fabricating bacteria or other organisms.

Regards,

Tim

-----Original Message-----
From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:***On Behalf Of Tim Gwinn
Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 11:08 PM
To: ***
Subject: CIA Bioweapons Threat Report

To all,

There is a very short but very disturbing report on bioweapons from a meeting convened by the CIA. Here is a quote from an AP new article

(http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031114/ap_on_go_ot/cia_bioweapons_1):

The life sciences experts, convened by the agency's Office of Transnational Issues, raised fears of genetically engineered diseases that "could be worse than any disease known to man," according to the CIA's unclassified report on their conference.

The report is a 2-page PDF and can be downloaded from:

http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/bw1103.pdf

Note the call for a "qualitatively different relationship between the government and life sciences communities".

Regards,

Tim