Dr. Eckard Wimmer is a man of many scientific accomplishments. As one of his latest accomplishments, Dr. Wimmer became one of the first people in history to synthesize from scratch a dangerous human pathogen, or more specifically, the poliovirus. What Dr. Wimmer's achievement shows is that our current safeguards for preventing access to the world's deadliest viruses are now irrelevant, because if someone wants their own deadly disease, they can simply make it. But Dr. Wimmer is not the only one who can design his own disease. The Washington Times of Jan 15, 2004, notes that the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives, in Rockville, put together another virus, and did it much faster than did Dr. Wimmer. For the first time in history, we are faced with the dangers of people being able to easily design their own diseases.

While the people who synthesized the poliovirus were scientific experts, how they went about the virus' construction was not complicated. According to the Journal of Transhumanist Solutions of Nov 2002, recreating polio was "easy to do." The article also states that the scientists did not use their vast scientific knowledge in the virus' construction; instead, they used a simple-to-follow recipe downloaded from the Internet and then used a mail order supplier to obtain the needed DNA sequences. As a matter of fact, The Washington Post of July 17, 2002, shows that anyone willing to invest just ten thousand dollars on a DNA synthesizer and a few months time in development could make practically whatever they could want, all in the privacy of their own garage.

But as easy and dangerous as this might sound, unfortunately it gets worse. According to The Daily Telegraph (London) of July 12, 2002, anyone synthesizing a deadly virus could actually make a new strand of a pre-existing virus. So while The Star Tribune of Feb 10, 2003, is optimistic when it states that if there was an outbreak of smallpox they could handle it through vaccinations, unfortunately, those vaccinations are only good against strands A&B of the smallpox virus (the only two strands currently in existence). Anyone could design strands C, D, E, F, G, H, L, or Z. And that's only one virus. New strands of Ebola, Botulism, or the Plague could all be redesigned to be made far more deadly.

In order to see just how easy it is for anyone to be able make their own virus, I logged on to www.idtdna.com, Integrated DNA Technologies's website (the company that sold Dr. Wimmer the DNA he used to manufacture polio). From there, I filled out a simple application to gain free membership to their website as an official academic researcher. And the only 'verification' of my application they even bothered to conduct was a confirmation email thanking me for signing up with their service and inviting me to place orders immediately. An offer which I accepted by placing an order for my own segment of the smallpox virus for about twenty dollars, though I could have bought the complete virus for maybe eighty dollars at most. And thanks to next day shipping for an extra $20, I had my order the following morning.

Days after I received my order in the mail, I was contacted by IDT and they told me they didn't know who the head researcher of my company was, or even where to bill my order to. Remember, this was after I already received my order. Thus, it is clear just how easy it is for anyone to go out and make his or her own virus.

Regrettably, the New Scientist of Jan 18, 2003, is correct when it reports that key sequences for deadly microbes have been available for years; if someone wants to know how to make a dangerous virus, they already have what they need. Therefore, attempting to restrict access to this information will do little to help. There must be Federal monitoring of the shipment of dangerous DNA components. Dr. Wimmer was right when he told Virus Weekly of August 6, 2002, that there must be monitoring of these suspicious orders.

In a personal interview conducted on September 26, 2002 with Rome Terrill, the VP of legal and regulatory affairs at IDT, he said that because these DNA components are needed by legitimate researchers trying to find cures, they must not be banned. Instead, a federal database of DNA components of the world's viruses could be created; then if someone orders a sequence in that database, the order would be sent to a federal agency which would verify who is placing this order and for what reason. As a matter of fact, the technology to do this already exists. Terrill notes Genome Technologies' March 2003 report that there are computer programs in existence that could match the genetic sequences being ordered to a public database to find if they contain dangerous DNA segments.

But while Dr. Wimmer was the first person in history to synthesize his own strand of a deadly pathogen, unless something is done, and soon, he most certainly will not be the last.