Worst-case scenario
Could gene technology lead to the development of terrifying biological weapons? (9 minute read)
For me, fear and fascination have always been separated by the faintest of fine lines. When I was a child I read obsessively about venomous animals, volcanoes, poisonous mushrooms, spiders and wētā. Somehow, I found this reading comforting as well as frightening. As an adult, I discovered a selection of terrifying literature about awful diseases which had a similar effect on me. I was horrified, but I also found these books calming.
Most of the books about diseases, whether fiction or non-fiction, focused on viruses. Ebola, often described in lurid and not particularly accurate terms, was a popular subject. Influenza, particularly the pandemic of 1918/1919, was another virus which was the subject of many books. There were other kinds of diseases covered as well – bacterial diseases like tuberculosis, plague and legionnaires disease, parasites such as malaria and even prion diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, which is caused by a type of infectious protein.
The diseases in most of the books were real, and quite terrifying enough. But a few authors of fiction decided that no existing disease was frightening enough and imagined rogue scientists manipulating genes to create new diseases which were far, far worse than anything we’d ever seen before. I was reminded of these scenarios when I was writing about genetically modified vaccines, such as the one created against Ebola. Could a scientist meddling with Ebola create a cataclysmic new outbreak? Was that likely, or even possible?
On the whole, I have learned that catastrophising about the worst imaginable disasters isn’t particularly helpful. But it does have its place, particularly if it’s done in a thoughtful manner and framed by an understanding of risk. After all, we need to understand what might go wrong in order to make good decisions about managing risk. So, I decided to follow my fear and fascination down a slippery slope from lifesaving vaccines to technological cataclysm.
Gene technology is an example of a dual-use technology. It has numerous civilian uses, some of which most of us would consider beneficial, such as producing insulin, and some of which can be debated, such as making crops resistant to various herbicides. But gene technology also has the potential to be used to make weapons. This isn’t an unusual situation – there are numerous examples through history. One memorable case is the massive explosion at the port in Beiruit in August 2020. This was caused by ammonium nitrate, which is used for both fertiliser and an explosive in mining. It has also been used to make bombs which have been used in a number of terrorist attacks as far back as the 1970 bombing which killed a researcher at the University of Wisconsin.
However, there’s a difference between making a bomb and making a biological weapon. Although there are restrictions on many kinds of weapons, biological weapons are completely illegal, globally, for anyone, and have been since 1975. Not only that, most countries appear to have complied with the convention which bans biological weapons. There are exceptions: in 1979 there was a major outbreak of anthrax in one of the largest cities in the Soviet Union, Sverdlovsk (also known as Yekatarinberg). Anthrax is usually associated with livestock, but also infects humans and kills a large proportion of those infected unless it’s treated with antibiotics. While at the time of the outbreak the Soviet authorities blamed infected meat, an investigation conducted in the early 1990s showed that it was the result of anthrax which had been released from a military facility in the city and was then blown by the wind. Clearly, the Soviet Union had not been complying with the biological weapons convention.
The Sverdlovsk outbreak is considered to be an accident, but anthrax has been deliberately used as a weapon too. In the weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 on the USA, letters containing anthrax were mailed to journalists and politicians in several US states. Investigators quickly identified that the particular type of anthrax used was one developed in the USA for use in vaccine development1. By the end of the year, five people had died and 17 others had suffered infections but survived. It took many years, but investigators eventually concluded that the anthrax had most likely been sent by a government scientist.
Anthrax belongs to a group of bacteria which can produce a dormant form known as a spore. These spores allow the bacteria to survive unfavourable, even extreme, environmental conditions such as heat, cold, drought, toxic chemicals and ultraviolet light. Then, when conditions are good, the spores germinate and the bacteria multiply. It’s these spores which have made anthrax a disease of great interest to those making biological weapons. The spores can be stored for long periods, then, when released, they can be carried by air currents into human lungs, where they germinate and cause a deadly infection.
I wanted to explain about anthrax, because it demonstrates an important point about biological weapons. There has long been a view among military strategists that biological weapons aren’t particularly useful. They are imprecise and unpredictable, and there are significant barriers to producing them and using them. It is difficult to produce the quantities which might be used for weapons without infecting those who are producing the weapons or living near a production facility. A highly contagious disease can be difficult to contain or control.
Strategists have identified a number of criteria which make diseases suitable for use as biological weapons, including being easy to produce in large amounts, stable during production and storage, and easy to disseminate. Anyone using such a weapon also needs to consider how to protect their own people – and if this is easy to do, then it’s likely to be easy for their enemy to protect themselves as well. Thankfully, there is only a small number of diseases which meet the criteria.
Anthrax has some particular advantages – its spores survive in a dormant state for long periods and it seldom, if ever, spreads from person to person. Even so, there are very few examples of it being used. I find it hard to believe that this is either because everyone is deterred by an international convention or because they think biological weapons are simply too horrible. It’s more likely that those who wish to terrify or kill large numbers of people have cheaper and easier ways to do so.
Studies of the Soviet bioweapons programme have found that they were using gene technology, altering the bacteria which cause anthrax to resist antibiotics and render existing vaccines ineffective. However, the programme cost huge amounts of money and diverted the effort of many scientists from other work, while demonstrating how difficult it was to develop diseases which met all the criteria for effective biological weapons. At that time, though, the capabilities of gene technology were nowhere near what they are now, with the development of more the modern gene editing tools which I wrote about a few weeks ago.
The last decade has seen scientists, intelligence agencies and think tanks suggesting that new gene editing techniques could be misused, whether intentionally or unintentionally, with catastrophic results. The potential to use gene editing alongside artificial intelligence has prompted some analysts to suggest that it may soon be possible to create bioweapons which can be targeted more precisely at specific groups of people. It’s quite easy for someone like me, who has read dozens of horrifying books about disease outbreaks, to get sucked into a whirlpool of terrifying possibilities.
But using gene editing to create more dangerous viruses or bacteria isn’t the end of the story. There are still the old challenges of producing large amounts, storing it, disseminating it and controlling where it spreads. Other methods of terrorising people are still easier and cheaper, for now at least. Nonetheless, it’s worth considering outrage here. I suspect that a gene-edited bioweapon is something people would find so frightening that it might not need to be very effective, or harm many people, to cause massive distress and disruption.
The other possibility we have to consider is unintentional harm. There are legitimate reasons for scientists to use gene editing techniques on deadly viruses and bacteria, just as there are legitimate reasons for scientists to use conventional techniques to develop different strains of anthrax. For example, scientists have long manipulated bacteria and viruses in laboratories in order to understand how they cause infection and how they might be prevented or treated. Gene editing will make that easier.
A particular concern is using gene technology to enhance certain abilities of viruses and bacteria in ways which make them more dangerous. This is sometimes termed “gain-of-function” research, although the term has a much wider meaning than this. This kind of research gained notoriety when researchers studying bird flu developed strains which could be transmitted between ferrets. The research was useful in helping us to understand what might allow bird flu to spread between humans, and was contained in specialised laboratories designed for work on such dangerous viruses. But it was also alarming, and prompted new restrictions on research.
I can understand why gene editing deadly viruses and bacteria provokes such horror. The risk of using gene technology for this kind of research is quite different from something like gene editing pine trees to prevent them spreading. However, bird flu is a huge threat too. We may well have magnified the threat with intensive agriculture, but we know that flu is dangerous enough on its own. We have to weigh the risks of researching bird flu against the risk of not researching it – when a human pandemic could be right around the corner (I’ll come back to this another time, because the situation has changed significantly since I wrote about it early last year).
If there is any work of this kind underway in New Zealand, it will be heavily regulated, and I doubt this would change with the upcoming review of gene technology regulation. But threats of this kind – whether from biological weapons or accidents – can’t be effectively regulated by individual countries. There is currently real concern that the international rules governing this kind of research are not up to the job. Developments in gene technology, like artificial intelligence, are outpacing our ability to regulate them.
When I read about the ways that both of these technologies could cause harm, I feel as if I want to crawl under a rock and pretend they didn’t exist. But I know that’s not possible. When I try and apply risk-based thinking, I find myself more worried about artificial intelligence, as well as less convinced of the benefits. This might be because I’m a biologist and understand gene technology better than artificial intelligence. But it may also be because it seems to me that artificial intelligence is less regulated and more concentrated in the hands of extremely wealthy individuals or corporations.
It also strikes me that we have other, more pressing, threats. We do need better international cooperation to manage both gene technology and artificial intelligence. But we also need to keep our focus on the crises happening now – water overconsumption and pollution, the imminent extinction of so many plants and animals, and climate change. We have a lot to worry about.
I’m not going to go down the conspiratorial route and wonder whether there’s more to the story than that. This article is taking me to places which are frightening enough without going that way.
Thank you for presenting knowledgeably this threat. Good to have knowledge.