Vying Over A Virus

By David Robinson

The creation of the first completely man-made virus, announced last week on the website of the journal Science, provoked a surprisingly heated debate among biologists. Eckard Wimmer, a microbiologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, led a team that built a copy of the polio virus by assembling more than 7,000 base pairs of DNA to match a published record of the virus's genetic code. Some scientists say the research, while an impressive technical feat, creates needless fears in a population already skittish about anthrax and smallpox. "Why did [Wimmer] pick a human disease which conjures up terrifying images?" asks Stanford University biowarfare expert Steven Block, who points out that scientists have long known that DNA can be strung together in a lab. "It's being done more for effect and less for the advancement of science." Critics weren't comforted by the news that the Pentagon funded the study (cost: about $300,000) as part of its program of basic research on human pathogens.

Is the brouhaha justified? Wimmer, who has been studying polio for more than 33 years, says it was important to demonstrate that viruses can be made from scratch. Polio is a disease that would be of little interest to terrorists, he argues: there is a readily available vaccine, and terrorists are unlikely to copy Wimmer's technique when it is easier to obtain deadly viruses in nature. Smallpox, the one bug that can't be found there, is too complex to be made this way. So why all the fuss? Says Wimmer: "There is something with viruses that strikes a chord."

--By David Robinson