Superbugs 'deadlier than bioweapons'
Pastor Dale Morgan
Superbugs 'deadlier than bioweapons'*
Last Updated: 2:44am BST 23/10/2007
Superbugs such as MRSA pose a far greater threat to humanity than
bioterrorism, a genetics pioneer claimed.
Dr Venter warns of the superbug threat
The warning came from Craig Venter, an American scientist currently
working on a project which uses DNA building blocks to create the
world's first synthetic life form.
Critics argue that artificially-created microbes – bacteria which can
cause disease – potentially pose a grave danger, by either invading the
environment or being used to manufacture deadly bioweapons.
But Dr Venter maintains that drug-resistant bacteria such as MRSA are a
far more clear and present danger, and argues that his work could
provide the only effective way of stopping the superbugs.
Dr Venter pointed out that antibiotic-resistant strains of
Staphylococcus aureus, such as MRSA, were killing more people in the US
than tuberculosis.
A strain of the bug had now appeared that could not be treated by any
known type of antibiotic.
"I'm much more concerned about that than any threat of bioterrorism," he
told journalists at the Science Media Centre in London yesterday.
"The US government is doing very little about it and I'm not aware of
the British government doing anything substantial about it.
"Drug-resistant Staphylococcus is the equivalent of a new biological
infection."
Scientists at the US-based J Craig Venter Institute have already
succeeded in transplanting the complete genetic code from one microbial
organism to another and "booting it up" like new software in a computer.
The next step is to build from scratch an artificial genome – a complete
set of genes in a cell or organism. This goal might be only months away.
Dr Venter insisted that worries about synthetic organisms were
unfounded. Much of the fear had been fuelled by Hollywood fantasies with
no bearing in reality, he said.
"There's no Andromeda Strain," he said, referring to a 1971 film in
which a biotoxin destroys a town.
"There's nothing new or different about synthetic genomics other than
the starting point for the information."
In 1995 Dr Venter became the first scientist to work out the complete
genetic code of an organism.
As president and founder of Celera Genomics, he was notorious for
producing a private version of the human genome which offered
information to scientists for a fee. In contrast, the rival Human Genome
Project, a collaboration of scientists from all over the world, allowed
completely free access to its data.
But Dr Venter, who is in the UK to promote his autobiography, said he
had been wrongly portrayed as a capitalist exploiter of the genome.
He pointed out that without private money, he would have been forced to
retire.
He added: "If you look at the record, I have no human gene patents and
my institution has no human gene patents, yet my biggest critics do."