91av

Melbourne

THE fear of infectious disease has largely faded in the wealthy West over the
past century, thanks to sanitation, antibiotics and the like. But it re-emerged
with a vengeance this year when some humans switched allegiance and began
working on the side of the killers.

Weapons-grade anthrax sent through the mail in the US has killed five people
so far. Although the perpetrator’s identity remains a mystery, the FBI suspects
a rogue scientist. And it’s not just rogue scientists that have been giving
infectious agents a helping hand—far from it. In January, New
Scientist revealed that Australian scientists had accidentally created a
killer mousepox virus, unwittingly providing a blueprint for the ultimate
bioweapon.

Then there were the agricultural epidemics. This year, a particularly
virulent strain of foot and mouth disease hit Britain after rampaging through
Asia and the Middle East. It probably arrived in contaminated meat products, and
got into the swill fed to pigs. Four million animals were slaughtered, and
around £3 billion lost in trade, tourism and in eradicating the
disease.

The events of 2001 are forcing governments to change their attitude towards
epidemics—be they natural or deliberate, animal or human. And for the
first time since genetic engineering became routine in the 1970s, molecular
biologists are talking seriously about the need to police their patch. And this
time they are not just talking about voluntary moratoriums. Some are prepared to
support what has long been anathema to scientists worldwide—legal
restrictions and nonscientists overseeing what researchers can do.

The engineered mousepox was the catalyst for this about-face. Many scientists
had assumed it would be extremely tricky to genetically engineer a microbe to
make it more virulent than aeons of evolutionary fine-tuning had achieved. But
the assumption was proved naive when a team of Australian scientists
accidentally converted the usually mild mousepox into a virus that wipes out
every mouse it infects. Bioterrorists now have a blueprint for modifying other
poxes that infect humans. It was a harsh wake-up call for biologists.

“When you wield power equivalent to nuclear weapons, you need some
oversight,” says John Steinbruner of the Center for International and Security
Studies in Maryland. His is one of several organisations, including the US
National Academy of Sciences and the Federation of American Scientists, that are
thrashing out ways to regulate research.

The key will probably be defining—and possibly
banning—”inherently dangerous” research. So far, though, there is no
agreement on the details. One huge obstacle is the fear that restrictive
regulations will do more harm than good. After all, understanding what makes an
infectious agent virulent, say, or what turns the immune system on and off,
could be used to save lives as well as to take them.

The US Congress is already rushing through legislation requiring, among other
things, background checks on scientists who work with certain infectious agents.
But even the most stringent regulations in the world can’t rule out nefarious
uses of biology. The anthrax attacks have focused minds on how to recognise a
bioterrorist attack quickly enough to prevent catastrophic loss of life. One
proposal put before a committee of the US House of Representatives in November
is the Rapid Syndrome Validation Project.

RSVP is based on the premise that the best way to spot a suspicious outbreak
is to map symptoms as quickly as possible, showing when and where people fall
sick with any one of six “syndromes”—broad categories of serious disease
including acute bloody diarrhoea, and fever with disorientation or delirium. But
doctors are notoriously bad at notifying authorities of outbreaks, even if they
are legally required to do so. To get around that problem, RSVP is easy to
use—all you need is a Web browser—and provides medical carrots such
as help with diagnosis and information about similar cases.

Data on factors such as wind patterns can be superimposed on the map. This
might reveal whether an outbreak is natural or due to someone driving a van
spewing out anthrax through a city. And you can make that judgment in time to
act: statistics dictate that even if 10,000 people have been exposed, only a few
hundred will get sick at first. So as long as the disease in question takes
several days to take hold—as anthrax and smallpox do—you’ve still
got a chance to save most of the infected people.

To get around the reporting problem, the US is also trying to develop a
system called LEADERS that takes information from computerised hospital records.
But even as ambitious projects are being planned, low-tech methods are already
notching up victories. ProMed-mail, an Internet mailing list with 25,000
subscribers in 160 countries, has shown the dramatic impact of the neighbourhood
watch approach to disease surveillance. Anyone who has information about disease
outbreaks of any kind can send it to ProMed. Expert moderators quickly vet
reports before posting them to everyone on the list.

The system is forcing governments to be more open. For example, a recent
outbreak of foot and mouth in Argentina, initially denied by the government, was
broadcast worldwide by ProMed. For the moment at least, this is probably the
best way we have of monitoring natural and deliberate outbreaks of disease.

Sounding the alert when an outbreak occurs is one thing, but what about
stopping it in its tracks? If the wildfire spread of foot and mouth is anything
to go by, free trade and travel can make that nigh on impossible. And although
there’s no evidence that the outbreak was a deliberate piece of economic
sabotage, the idea alone has sent a chill through countries like Australia that
are free of the disease.

Australia has long shored up the advantage of its isolation with stringent
quarantine laws, extensive monitoring and diagnostic facilities. But even
Australia has been scared into raising further defences in light of the
devastation wreaked by foot and mouth in Britain. It is committing A$590
million (£214 million) to new measures. Every container and piece of mail
coming onto the continent will be inspected or X-rayed, and at least 80 per cent
of passengers will have their luggage X-rayed or searched.

A year ago such efforts might have seemed like overkill. Now war games based
on anthrax attacks in London or a killer flu are becoming routine, as the West
wakes up to the fact that infectious diseases still have the power to cause
death and destruction on a major scale.