Scientists manufacture polio virus

American scientists have synthesised the polio virus from scratch, arguably synthesising life and raising questions about biological safety, ethics, and the ability of bioterrorists to replicate the procedure. The work was conducted by researchers from the State University of New York in Stonybrook and was funded by the Pentagon in an effort to develop measures to counter biological warfare. The scientists, led by Drs Eckhard Wimmer, Aniko Paul, and Jeronimo Cello, constructed the polio virus using commercially available mail order reagents which included the building blocks called the nucleic acid base pairs. They found the polio virus sequence on an internet website and reproduced its RNA sequence base by base. The experiment has shown that viruses can be produced from scratch. Theoretically this could also be done for lethal viruses such as Smallpox and Ebola, which could then be used for bioterrorism. The experiment calls into question current vaccination and viral eradication policies. If the threat of a re-emergence of smallpox and other viruses is still present then vaccinations should continue. Moreover, no microbe can ever be considered to be totally eradicated. The researchers claimed that it would not promote bioterrorism, as the terrorists already had access to the same information, and that this just reinforces the need to continue vaccinations.