World's most deadly bugs... in the hands of terrorists

The Scotsman - World's most deadly bugs... in the hands of terrorists

This really scares me. Terrorists, the standard type with guns and bombs, bother me. Terrorists with bioweapons scare the snot out of me. I have studied and worried about this for years. Ever since Aum Shinrikyo's terror attacks on the Tokyo subways I have worried.

For those who do not remember, the Aum Shinrikyo cult believed that the end of the world was coming and civilized people had slowed it down. They wanted to break civilization so that the End would finally arrive. They experimented with botulin toxin and anthrax spores before settling on making sarin nerve gas and releasing it in the subways during rush hour. Fortunately, the batch was not very pure and only killed a fraction of what they had hoped.

With this new synthetic biology, the Aum would have been able to kill the thousands they had been trying to. What is worse is that the methods used previously were illegal and fell within the limits of international treaties. This is not and does not. It is legal but unethical. Ethics do not stop terrorists who think beheading innocents are justified.

Can synthetic biology be slowed or stopped? Doubtful. Once a technology is know to exist almost anyone with similar training, or intelligence, can figure out how to duplicate it. Such as what happened with nuclear weapons.

What can be done about this then? Not much. Controls must be designed and implemented. Laws will need to be passed. Monitors will have to be emplaced. All of this just to ensure that the work that is done is kept within the legal and ethical codes that are developed for the public good.