[Shadow_Group] Fw: W.H.O. Panel Backs Gene Manipulation in Smallpox Virus

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Paranoid Times

W.H.O. Panel Backs Gene Manipulation in Smallpox Virus
By Lawrence K. Altman, New York Times
November 12, 2004
 
An advisory committee to the World Health Organization for the first time
has recommended that Russian and American scientists be allowed to
manipulate a gene in the smallpox virus to speed the development of drugs
that could treat the disease, the agency said yesterday.
 
But the recommendation is just the first step in what officials said
could be a lengthy process to approve the experimentation.
 
Smallpox was a scourge until it was eradicated in 1980 by the W.H.O., a
United Nations agency based in Geneva. Since then, stocks of the variola
virus that causes the disease have been kept frozen in W.H.O.-approved
laboratories in Russia and the United States.
 
The Bush administration and some health officials have expressed fear
that terrorists might have obtained smallpox virus from Russia, or that
scientists in some countries might have kept the virus without telling
the United Nations agency.
 
Although a vaccine can prevent smallpox, no known drugs can cure the
disease after it has developed.
 
The proposed laboratory experiments would involve inserting a so-called
marker gene into the smallpox virus that glows green under fluorescent
light. The technique is a standard way to screen for potential antiviral
drugs, and the manipulation would not change the virulence of the virus,
said officials at the W.H.O.
 
The agency's initial intent was to destroy the remaining stocks of
smallpox virus after it had stopped person-to-person transmission of the
disease. But its member states delayed destroying the virus, demanding
additional research to find effective drugs, develop safer vaccines and
improve diagnostic tests. Such research must be conducted in the
laboratories at the highest biosecurity level.
 
The idea of conducting any genetic research on the virus has been a
subject of debate.
 
Last week the W.H.O.'s 20-member international advisory committee voted
unanimously to allow insertion of the gene, known as G.F.P. for green
fluorescent marker protein, into variola virus at the two laboratories in
Russia and the United States, said Dr. Daniel Lavanchy, a smallpox expert
for the health organization. The American laboratory is at the Centers
for Disease Control in Atlanta.
 
National Public Radio reported yesterday that W.H.O. had approved the
research.
 
Officials at the agency said the committee's recommendation must still go
through a lengthy review process. It would need to obtain approval from
the agency's director general, Dr. Jong Wook Lee; from an executive board
that meets in January; and from a meeting of the agency's member
countries, scheduled for May 2005. In addition, the matter could be
referred to other committees at any step along the way, officials said.
 
Last year, a W.H.O. advisory committee reportedly expressed significant
reservations about experiments that would take single genes from the
smallpox virus and insert them into other viruses, because it might
accidentally create an even more potent version of smallpox that could be
used in bioterrorism.
 
But Dr. Lavanchy said the experiments the advisory committee rejected
last year were "fundamentally different" than those recommended last
week, and that the insertion of the marker gene in the experiments now
being proposed would not alter the ability of variola virus to cause
disease.
 
The experiments do not involve inserting a gene or deleting one to
observe what happens to the variola virus, Dr. Lavanchy said in a
telephone interview.
 
In the proposed screening test, the fluorescent marker inserted in the
virus glows green only if the virus is not susceptible to a drug; the
glow disappears if a drug destroys the altered virus.
 
So far, only one drug - cidofovir has been identified as a candidate for
treating smallpox. The proposed experiments aim to identify a number of
additional candidate drugs, a process that may take "a few years," Dr.
Lavanchy said.
 
Using the gene-marker technique would also reduce the risk of a
laboratory worker accidentally becoming infected with smallpox, according
to W.H.O.
 
The recommendation did not address how many candidate drugs must be
identified or how long the experiments should continue.
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/health/12smallpox.html<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/health/12smallpox.html>

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