Smallpox research urged by World Health Organization board

By Paul Elias
The Associated Press

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An influential World Health Organization committee is sending shock waves through the scientific community with a recommendation that researchers be permitted to conduct genetic-engineering experiments with the smallpox virus.

The idea is to be able to better combat a disease considered a leading bioterrorism threat though it was eradicated publicly 25 years ago.

The WHO previously had opposed such work for fear that a "superbug" might emerge. Because the disease is so deadly, the WHO at times has recommended destroying the world's two known smallpox stockpiles, located in secure labs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and in the former Soviet Union.

The recommended policy shift has reignited a debate over whether such research will help or hinder bioterrorism defenses.

The World Health Assembly — the ruling body of the 192-nation WHO — would decide whether to approve the experiments, which would include splicing a "marker" gene into the smallpox virus so its spread can be better tracked in the laboratory. The WHO committee said that inserting the marker gene wouldn't make the disease more dangerous and that allowing such experimentation would speed depletion of remaining smallpox-virus stocks.

It has been U.S. policy to refrain from genetically engineering smallpox, but that would change if the WHO endorses such research.

"It's absolutely the right decision," said Dr. Ken Alibek, a former top scientist in the Soviet biological-weapons program who said the Soviets covertly developed smallpox as a weapon in the 1980s.

Alibek, who defected to the United States in 1992 and now teaches at George Mason University, said it's possible to genetically engineer smallpox to render current vaccines useless.

"The bad guys already know how to do it," he said. "So why prohibit legitimate researchers to do research for protection?"
 
Other scientist argue that such research has little value and is too risky.

"We have seen no evidence of a threat that would justify this research," said Sujatha Byravan, executive director of the Council for Responsible Genetics, a Boston nonprofit. "A decade ago, the WHO was planning to destroy the world's last remaining samples. Today, it is proposing to tinker with the virus in ways that could produce an even more lethal smallpox strain. This is a devastating step backward."

Smallpox is believed to have killed more people than all wars and epidemics combined. It is the only major disease to be eradicated successfully under a WHO-sponsored vaccination program. The last known case was in 1978.

The WHO committee that made the genetic-engineering recommendation is the international organization's Advisory Committee on Variola Virus Research. News of its decision, in a meeting in Geneva last week, was first reported by National Public Radio.

The committee said further research should be carried out before a decision is made.

"It will go through the bureaucratic process," WHO spokesman Dick Thompson said. "It will be a political decision."

Associated Press reporter Sam Cage contributed to this report.