Defences Under Attack the Potential Misuse of Immunology

Defences Under Attack the Potential Misuse of Immunology 

However, it has become evident that these experiments can lead to the creation of particularly dangerous microorganisms that can evade the immune responses in devastating ways. Some examples will be offered to illustrate this point, which will then be handled more thoroughly in a later section. A prime example is the inadvertent creation of a killer mousepox virus by researchers trying to develop a contraceptive vaccine to control the rodent population in Australia.1 

Particularly disturbing is the fact that another scientist, Mark Buller at Saint Louis University, has picked up on these experiments and carried them one step further by increasing the lethality of the mousepox virus and by planning to carry out similar manipulations in the cowpox virus.2 

Another example concerns the potentiation of a virulence factor of vaccinia virus, the strain used for smallpox vaccinations.3 In this case a property (factor) of the virus was engineered to more effectively eliminate an essential component of the innate immune system, which acts as the first line of defence against an infection. 

The situation is accentuated by the fact that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the US National 

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