Polio from scratch

Most scientists do research to push the boundaries of knowledge. Press coverage is a happy (or unhappy) by-product of the process. But not so for scientists at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. When they set out to synthesize a polio virus from scratch, the point of the exercise was to garner public attention. Like George Leigh Mallory and Mt. Everest, they wanted to do it because it was there. In contrast to Mallory, Ekhard Wimmer and Jeronimo Cello had a relatively easy time achieving their goal. As the Associated Press reported, they wanted to demonstrate that, 'experts can now download a genetic blueprint from the Internet and use mail-order materials to assemble a deadly virus.' Indeed, they had help from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which quietly funded their quest to fabricate a polio virus using the genetic sequence from a public database. 'The reason we did it was to prove that it can be done and it now is a reality,' Wimmer said in a widely distributed quote. 'This approach has been talked about, but people didn't take it seriously.' As Wimmer told Science News, 'We don't need any nature-formed template anymore. We just need the Internet to tell us the sequence of a virus. You can make pretty much any virus this way.' Not everyone was amused. 'The journal Science is publishing the polio-making recipe today, prompting criticism from some scientists,' the Wall Street Journal noted. ''I think this is irresponsible,' says J. Craig Venter, formerly the head of the gene-sequencing company Celera Genomics Group and now the head of a non-profit think tank in Rockville, Maryland. was likewise not amused. He told Fox (TV) News, 'A number of people have responded to this by accusing these scientists of playing God. And I don't think they were playing God. I think they were trying to show us how easy it is today to play the devil.' Nor was C.J. Peters amused. In a quote reprinted in many newspapers, he said, 'I don't think this has been very helpful. Wimmer is a very smart guy. He has made a lot of contributions to polio, but this is not a great contribution. I don't think we need to encourage people to take this up as a hobby.' Even so, the report had the intended consequence. It ended up in many news broadcasts, and on …