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Scientists Suspect Bio-engineered Agents: The Financial Express
New Delhi, May 05: With Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) claiming more than 100 deaths in 19 countries, there is no shortage of theories as to its cause. Is it the suspected coronavirus or some bio-engineered agents?
New Delhi, May 05: With Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) claiming more than 100 deaths in 19 countries, there is no shortage of theories as to its cause. Is it the suspected coronavirus or some bio-engineered agents?
Dr Mae-Wan Ho, director of the UK based Institute of Science in Society has a different story to tell. She says “the SARS episode should serve as a reminder of some simple facts about genetic engineering....genetic engineering involves the rampant recombination of genetic materials from widely diverse sources that would otherwise have very little opportunity to mix and recombine in nature. In other words, geneticists can now greatly speed up evolution in the laboratory to create viruses and bacteria that have never existed in all the billions of years of evolution on earth.”
Casting doubts about the suspected caronavirus, she said that the New England Journal of Medicine has just published more detailed analysis using polymerase chain reaction by two groups which indicate that the new virus is not closely related to any known virus at all, human, mouse, bovine, cat, pig, bird, notwithstanding.
Writing on the website http://www.i-sis.org.uk, Dr Mae-Wan Ho quoting Science said that Malik Pieris of University of Hong Kong was the first to identify coronavirus which causes cold and pneumonia. This finding was replicated in in other laboratories. The virus and antibodies against the virus were detected in many, though not all infected patients, but were not found in more than 800 healthy controls tested.
She said that according to New Scientist coronavirus was named after the death of the WHO doctor Carlo Urbani who first recognised SARS as a new disease. Coronavirus was isolated from his lungs and sent to Joe DiRisi lab in University of California. She says, “there is some remaining doubt, however, whether the caronavirus is a complete story. John Tam, director of virology at Prince of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong found another virus, the human metapneumovirus in 25 out of 53 SARS patients, as have the laboratories in Canada and Germany. Metapneumovirus belongs to the family of Paramyxoviridae, which includes viruses responsible for parainfluenza, mumps and measles, as well as the Nipah and Hendra viruses in recent outbreaks.”
She further said that caronavirus showed up in only 30 patients tested while the bacterium Chlamydia has been identified in all samples in Hong Kong, though that strain of Chlamydia is not known to cause disease. She then questions “could it be that both viruses are bystanders of the disease while an as yet unidentified virus could be responsible for SARS?”
She said that tests showed that coronavirus was atypical. It rapidly infected cells in culture dishes, something that other human coronaviruses do not do. Viruses from lung tissue in Toranto patients readily infected monkey kidney cells, and no known human coronavirus infects the cell line.
Ultimately Dr Mae-Wan Ho holds some new virus created by the process of genetic engineering as responsible for the spread of SARS. She says that it may be a possible act of bio-terrorism. “Who needs bio-terrorists when we have got genetic engineers?,” she says and cites an example where researchers in Australia in January 2001 accidentally created a deadly virus that killed all its victims in the course of manipulating a harmless virus.
Casting doubts about the suspected caronavirus, she said that the New England Journal of Medicine has just published more detailed analysis using polymerase chain reaction by two groups which indicate that the new virus is not closely related to any known virus at all, human, mouse, bovine, cat, pig, bird, notwithstanding.
Writing on the website http://www.i-sis.org.uk, Dr Mae-Wan Ho quoting Science said that Malik Pieris of University of Hong Kong was the first to identify coronavirus which causes cold and pneumonia. This finding was replicated in in other laboratories. The virus and antibodies against the virus were detected in many, though not all infected patients, but were not found in more than 800 healthy controls tested.
She said that according to New Scientist coronavirus was named after the death of the WHO doctor Carlo Urbani who first recognised SARS as a new disease. Coronavirus was isolated from his lungs and sent to Joe DiRisi lab in University of California. She says, “there is some remaining doubt, however, whether the caronavirus is a complete story. John Tam, director of virology at Prince of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong found another virus, the human metapneumovirus in 25 out of 53 SARS patients, as have the laboratories in Canada and Germany. Metapneumovirus belongs to the family of Paramyxoviridae, which includes viruses responsible for parainfluenza, mumps and measles, as well as the Nipah and Hendra viruses in recent outbreaks.”
She further said that caronavirus showed up in only 30 patients tested while the bacterium Chlamydia has been identified in all samples in Hong Kong, though that strain of Chlamydia is not known to cause disease. She then questions “could it be that both viruses are bystanders of the disease while an as yet unidentified virus could be responsible for SARS?”
She said that tests showed that coronavirus was atypical. It rapidly infected cells in culture dishes, something that other human coronaviruses do not do. Viruses from lung tissue in Toranto patients readily infected monkey kidney cells, and no known human coronavirus infects the cell line.
Ultimately Dr Mae-Wan Ho holds some new virus created by the process of genetic engineering as responsible for the spread of SARS. She says that it may be a possible act of bio-terrorism. “Who needs bio-terrorists when we have got genetic engineers?,” she says and cites an example where researchers in Australia in January 2001 accidentally created a deadly virus that killed all its victims in the course of manipulating a harmless virus.