Smallpox as a Weapon

Bioengineering

In September of 2000, at the thirteenth International Poxvirus Symposium, a group of Australian scientist posted their work on infecting mice with an engineered mousepox that was supposed to make the mice sterile. Instead the engineered mousepox had wiped out the mice. (15:128) The mice were naturally resistant to mousepox, and some of them had also been vaccinated. The engineered virus had wiped out 100% of the naturally resistant mice and 60% of the immunized mice. The Australian scientists had added a single foreign gene, the mouse IL-4 gene, to natural mousepox virus.

The mouse IL-4 gene produces a protein called interleukin-4, a cytokine that acts as a signal in the immune system. By putting a mouse gene into natural mousepox, the researchers had created a superlethal, vaccine-resistant pox of mice. The study suggested a paralleled in that engineered IL-4 smallpox might be able to break through people’s immunity, but not if the vaccinations were recent, perhaps only weeks old. (15:227)

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