Mad Hedge Biotech and Healthcare Letter
December 28, 2023
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(CLOSING THE YEAR WITH A BANG)
(XBI), (ABBV), (IMGN), (RHHBY), (PFE), (MRK), (AMGN), (VKTX), (TERN)
Mad Hedge Biotech and Healthcare Letter
December 28, 2023
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(CLOSING THE YEAR WITH A BANG)
(XBI), (ABBV), (IMGN), (RHHBY), (PFE), (MRK), (AMGN), (VKTX), (TERN)
The biotechnology sector, pretty much like a phoenix rising from the ashes of its recent lackluster performance, is experiencing a renaissance as 2023 draws to a close. The recent spree of high-stakes deals has set the stage for what could be a significant rebound, a situation that savvy investors should watch closely.
In a remarkable display of strategic maneuvering, AbbVie (ABBV) has been on an acquisition tear.
Earlier in December, they've recently snapped up Cerevel Therapeutics for an eye-popping $8.7 billion, only a week after announcing their intent to acquire ImmunoGen (IMGN) for a formidable $10.1 billion.
And in this high-stakes game, Roche Holding (RHHBY) isn't playing second fiddle, having declared their acquisition of Carmot Therapeutics for $2.7 billion.
This flurry of activity isn't just a few isolated incidents. It's actually a trend. Of the 18 biotech acquisitions exceeding $1 billion announced this year, a significant one-third have emerged since October. This surge is like a shot in the arm for the sector, suggesting a much-anticipated uptick.
But let's take a step back and consider the broader picture.
The SPDR S&P Biotech ETF (XBI) has shown some muscle in November and December. However, it's still trailing behind this year, down by 3%, while the S&P 500 has surged by 19.5%.
Now, focusing on the XBI, a temperature check for the sector: trading around $80, it's a steep drop from its heyday in the $140 range during late 2020 and early 2021. It's down nearly 50% from its peak in February 2021.
This isn't just a dip; it's a nosedive.
Looking at the turn of events, it’s possible that the AbbVie-ImmunoGen deal is perhaps the precursor to a more consistent pattern of mergers and acquisitions in 2024. It seems that we've hit the floor and the only way now is up, with M&A activities poised to inject some much-needed vitality into the sector.
In previous years, the biotech valuations took a hit, and understandably, companies were hesitant to settle for offers that undervalued them compared to their pandemic-era zeniths. But this year, the tide has turned.
Notably, the cumulative value of biopharma deals at a whopping $128 billion this year, shooting up from $61 billion in 2022.
Key transactions fueling this jump include Pfizer's (PFE) massive $43 billion deal for Seagen and Merck’s (MRK) $10.8 billion acquisition of Prometheus Biosciences.
The shift in the regulatory landscape is also worth noting.
Antitrust regulators, who initially seemed poised to block deals like Amgen's (AMGN) $27.8 billion acquisition of Horizon Therapeutics, have shown more flexibility. This change in stance is likely emboldening companies to pursue larger deals.
Now, let's talk about the financial clout.
Large-cap biopharma companies are projected to have about $199 billion in cash by year-end. There's a noticeable dip in dividends and stock buybacks, hinting at a strategic pivot towards mergers and acquisitions. It could indicate that we can expect Pharma to maintain an aggressive stance on the M&A front.
So, what's in store for the XBI and investors alike?
This uptick in M&A activity is like untying the strings of a tightly held purse, releasing cash back into the sector. It's a magnet for both specialist and generalist investor interest, a potential boon for the XBI.
Predicting the next wave of M&A is basically like reading tea leaves. Yet, this year has shown a marked preference for biotechs specializing in obesity, immunology, and cancer.
A notable example is the speculation around Pfizer eyeing a deal with a biotech firm developing an anti-obesity pill.
The ripple effect? Shares of Viking Therapeutics (VKTX) and Terns Pharmaceuticals (TERN), both in the obesity pill race, have seen their stocks jump 47% and 62.5%, respectively, in December.
Evidently, the biotech sector, once in the doldrums, is now witnessing a renaissance. This resurgence is marked by major deals reshaping the industry landscape, holding significant implications for 2024 and beyond.
For investors, this sector represents a fertile ground for growth and opportunity. Staying informed and nimble is key to capitalizing on these dynamic developments. The biotech sector, it seems, is back in the game, and how!
Global Market Comments
January 20, 2023
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WILL SYNBIO SAVE OR DESTROY THE WORLD?),
(XLV), (XPH), (XBI), (IMB), (GOOG), (AAPL), (CSCO), (BIIB)
CLICK HERE to download today's position sheet.
Some 50 years ago, when I was a biotechnology student at UCLA, a handful of graduate students speculated about how dangerous our work really was.
It only took us an hour to figure out how to synthesize a microbe that had a 99% fatality rate, was immune to antibiotics and was so simple it could be produced in your home kitchen.
Basically, a bunch of bored students discovered a way to destroy the world.
We voiced our concerns to our professors, who immediately convened a national conference of leaders in the field. Science had outpaced regulation, as it always does. They adopted standards and implemented safeguards to keep this genie from getting out of the bottle.
Four decades later scientists have been successful at preventing a “doomsday” bug from accidentally escaping a lab and wiping out the world’s population.
That is, until now.
In 2010, Dr. Craig Venter created the first completely synthetic life form able to reproduce on its own. Named “Phi X174,” the simple virus was produced from a string of DNA composed entirely on a computer. Thus was invented the field of synthetic biology, better known as “Synbio.”
Venter’s homemade creature was your basic entry-level organism. Its DNA was composed of only 1 million base pairs of nucleic acids (adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine, and uracil), compared to the 3 billion pairs in a human genome. Shortly thereafter, Venter one-upped himself by manufacturing the world’s first synthetic bacteria.
The work was hailed as the beginning of a brave new world that will enable biology to make the same dramatic advances in technology that computer science did in the 20th century. Dr. Drew Endy of Stanford University says that Synbio already accounts for 2% of US GDP and is growing at a breakneck 12% a year. He predicts that Synbio will eventually do more for the economy than the Internet and social media combined.
You may recall Craig Venter as the man who first decoded the human genome in 2003. The effort demanded the labor of thousands of scientists and cost $3 billion. We later learned that the DNA that was decoded was Craig’s own. Some five years later, the late Steve Jobs spent $1 million to decode his own genes in a vain attempt to find a cure for pancreatic cancer.
Today, you can get the job done for $1,000 in less than 24 hours. That’s what movie star Angelina Jolie did, who endured a voluntary double mastectomy when she learned her genes guaranteed a future case of terminal breast cancer.
The decoding industry is now moving to low-cost China, where giant warehouses have been built to decode the DNA of a substantial part of humanity. That should soon drop the price to $100. It’s all about full automation and economies of scale.
This technology is already spreading far faster than most realize. In 2004, MIT started the International Genetically Engineered Machine Contest where college students competed to construct new life forms. Recently, a high school division was opened, attracting 194 entries from kids in 34 countries. Gee, when I went to wood shop in high school, it was a big deal when I finished my table lamp.
This will make possible “big data” approaches to medical research that will lead to cures of every major human disease, such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and more within our lifetimes. This is why the healthcare (XLV), biotechnology (XBI), and pharmaceutical (XPH) sectors have been top performers in the stock market for the past two years. It’s not just about Obamacare.
The implications spread far beyond healthcare. IBM (IBM) is experimenting with using DNA-based computer code to replace the present simple but hugely inefficient binary system of 0’s and 1’s. “DNA-based computation” is prompting computer scientists to become biochemists and biochemists to evolve into computer scientists to create “living circuit boards.” Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL), and Cisco (CSCO) have all taken notice.
We are probably only a couple of years away from enterprising hobbyists downloading DNA sequences from the Internet and building new bugs at home with a 3D printer. Simple organisms, like viruses, would need a file size no larger than one needed for a high-definition photo taken with your iPhone. They can then download other genes from the net, creating their own customized microbes at will.
This is all great news for investors of every stripe, and will no doubt accelerate America’s economic growth. But it is also causing governments and scientists around the world to wring their hands, seeing the opening of a potential Pandora’s box. What if other scientists lack Venter’s ethics, who went straight to President Obama for security clearance before he made his findings public?
If we can’t trust our kids to drink, drive, or vote, then how responsibly will they behave when they get their hands on potential bioterror weapons? How many are familiar with Bio Safety Level 4 (BSL) standards? None, I hope.
In fact, the race is already on to weaponize synbio. In 2002, scientists at SUNY Stonybrook synthesized a poliovirus for the first time. In 2005, another group managed to recreate the notorious H1N1 virus that caused the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic. Some 50-100 million died in that pandemic within 2 years.
Then in 2011, Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Center in Holland announced that he had found a way to convert the H5N1 bird flu virus, which in nature is only transmitted from birds to people, into a human to human virus. Of the 565 who have come down with bird flu so far, which originates in China, 59% have died.
It didn’t take long for the Chinese to get involved. They have taken Fouchier’s work several steps further, creating over 127 H5N1 flu varieties, five of which can be transmitted through the air, such as from a sneeze. The attributes of one of these just showed up in the latest natural strain of bird flu, the H7N9.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia are charged with protecting us from outbreaks like this. But getting the WHO, a giant global bureaucracy, to agree on anything is almost impossible unless there is already a major outbreak underway. The CDC has seen its budget cut by 25% since 2010 and has lost another 5% due to the US government sequester.
The problem is that the international organizations charged with monitoring all of this are still stuck in the Stone Age. Current regulations revolve around known pathogens, like smallpox and the Ebola virus, that date back to the 1960s when the concern was about moving lethal pathogens across borders via test tubes.
That is, oh so 20th century. Thanks to the Internet, controlling information flow is impossible. Just ask Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar Al Assad. Al Qaida has used messages embedded in online porn to send orders to terrorists.
Getting international cooperation isn’t that easy. Only 35 countries are currently complying with the safety, surveillance, and research standards laid out by the WHO. Indonesia refused to part with H5N1 virus samples spreading there because it did want to make rich the western pharmaceutical companies that would develop a vaccine. African countries say they are too poor to participate, even they are the most likely victims of future epidemics.
Scientists have proposed a number of safeguards to keep these new superbugs under control. One would be a dedicated sequence of nucleic acid base pairs inserted into the genes that would identify its origin, much like a bar code at the supermarket. This is already being used by Monsanto (MON) with its genetically modified seeds. Another would be a “suicide sequence” that would cause the germ to self-destruct if it ever got out of a lab.
One can expect the National Security Agency to get involved, if they haven’t done so already. If they can screen our phone calls for metadata, why not high-risk DNA sequences sent by email?
But this assumes that the creators want to be found. The bioweapon labs of some countries are thought to be creating new pathogens so they can stockpile vaccines and antigens in advance of any future conflict.
There are also the real terrorists to consider. When the Mubarak regime in Egypt was overthrown in 2011, demonstrators sacked the country’s public health labs that had been storing H5N1 virus. Egypt has one of the world’s worst bird flu problems, due to the population’s widespread contact with chickens.
It is hoped that the looters were only in search of valuable electronics they could resell, and tossed the problem test tubes. But that is only just a hope.
I have done a lot of research on this area over the decades. I even chased down the infamous Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army that parachuted plagued infected rats into China during WWII, after first experimenting on American POWs.
The answer to the probability of biowarfare always comes back the same. Countries never use this last resort for fear of it coming back on their own population. It really is an Armageddon weapon. Only a nut case would want to try it.
Back in 1976, I was one of the fortunate few to see in person the last living cases of smallpox. As I walked through a 15th century village high in the Himalayas in Nepal, two dozen smiling children leaned out of second-story windows to wave at me. The face of everyone was covered with bleeding sores. And these were the survivors. Believe me, you don’t want to catch it yourself.
Sure, I know this doesn’t directly relate to what the stock market is going to do today. But if a virus escaped from a rogue lab and killed everyone on the planet, it would be bad for prices, wouldn’t it?
I really hope one of the kids competing in the MIT contest doesn’t suffer from the same sort of mental problems as the boy in Newton, Connecticut did.
I Think Woodshop Would Have Been Easier
Cause of the Next Bear Market, or the End of the World?
Global Market Comments
December 30, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WILL SYNBIO SAVE OR DESTROY THE WORLD?),
(XLV), (XPH), (XBI), (IMB), (GOOG), (AAPL), (CSCO), (BIIB)
Global Market Comments
December 30, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WILL SYNBIO SAVE OR DESTROY THE WORLD?),
(XLV), (XPH), (XBI), (IMB), (GOOG), (AAPL), (CSCO), (BIIB)
Global Market Comments
December 31, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WILL SYNBIO SAVE OR DESTROY THE WORLD?),
(XLV), (XPH), (XBI), (IMB), (GOOG), (AAPL), (CSCO), (BIIB)
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
June 8, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WILL SYNBIO SAVE OR DESTROY THE WORLD?),
(XLV), (XPH), (XBI), (MON), (IBM), (GOOG), (AAPL), (CSCO)
Some 40 years ago, when I was a biotechnology student at UCLA, a handful of graduate students speculated about how dangerous our work really was.
It only took us an hour to figure out how to synthesize a microbe that had a 99% fatality rate, was immune to antibiotics, and was so simple it could be produced in your home kitchen.
Basically, a bunch of bored students discovered a way to destroy the world.
We voiced our concerns to our professors, who immediately convened a national conference of leaders in the field. Science had outpaced regulation, as it always does. They adopted standards and implemented safeguards to keep this genie from getting out of the bottle.
Four decades later scientists have been successful at preventing a "doomsday" bug from accidently escaping a lab and wiping out the world's population.
That is, until now.
In 2010, Dr. Craig Venter created the first completely synthetic life form able to reproduce on its own. Named "Phi X174," the simple virus was produced from a string of DNA composed entirely on a computer. Thus was invented the field of synthetic biology, better known as "Synbio."
Venter's homemade creature was your basic entry level organism. Its DNA was composed of only 1 million base pairs of nucleic acids (adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine, and uracil), compared to the 3 billion pairs in a human genome. Shortly thereafter, Venter one-upped himself by manufacturing the world's first synthetic bacteria.
The work was hailed as the beginning of a brave new world that will enable biology to make the same dramatic advances in technology that computer science did in the 20th century. Dr. Drew Endy of Stanford University says that Synbio already accounts for 2% of US GDP, and is growing at a breakneck 12% a year. He predicts that Synbio will eventually do more for the economy than the Internet and social media combined.
You may recall Craig Venter as the man who first decoded the human genome in 2003. The effort demanded the labor of thousands of scientists and cost $3 billion. We later learned that the DNA that was decoded was Craig's own. Some five years later, the late Steve Jobs spent $1 million to decode his own genes in a vain attempt to find a cure for pancreatic cancer.
Today, you can get the job done for $1,000 in less than 24 hours. That's what movie star Angelina Jolie did, who endured a voluntary double mastectomy when she learned her genes guaranteed a future case of terminal breast cancer.
The decoding industry is now moving to low cost China, where giant warehouses have been built to decode the DNA of a substantial part of humanity. That should soon drop the price to $100. It's all about full automation and economies of scale.
This technology is already spreading far faster than most realize. In 2004, MIT started the International Genetically Engineered Machine Contest where college students competed to construct new life forms. Recently, a high school division was opened, attracting 194 entries from kids in 34 countries. Gee, when I went to wood shop in high school it was a big deal when I finished my table lamp.
This will make possible "big data" approaches to medical research that will lead to cures of every major human disease, such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and more, within our lifetimes. This is why the health care (XLV), biotechnology (XBI), and pharmaceutical (XPH) sectors have been top performers in the stock market for the past two years. It's not just about Obamacare.
The implications spread far beyond health care. IBM (IBM) is experimenting with using DNA based computer code to replace the present simple, but hugely inefficient, binary system of 0's and 1's. "DNA based computation" is prompting computer scientists to become biochemists and biochemists to evolve into computer scientists to create "living circuit boards." Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL), and Cisco (CSCO) have all taken notice.
We are probably only a couple years away from enterprising hobbyists downloading DNA sequences from the Internet and building new bugs at home with a 3D printer. Simple organisms, like viruses, would need a file size no larger than one needed for a high definition photo taken with your iPhone. They can then download other genes from the net, creating their own customized microbes at will.
This is all great news for investors of every stripe, and will no doubt accelerate America's economic growth. But it is also causing governments and scientists around the world to wring their hands, seeing the opening of a potential Pandora's box. What if other scientists lack Venter's ethics, who went straight to President Obama for a security clearance before he made his findings public?
If we can't trust our kids to drink, drive, or vote, then how responsibly will they behave when they get their hands on potential bioterror weapons? How many are familiar with Bio Safety Level 4 (BSL) standards? None, I hope.
In fact, the race is already on to weaponize synbio. In 2002, scientists at SUNY Stonybrook synthesized a polio virus for the first time. In 2005, another group managed to recreate the notorious H1N1 virus that caused the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic. Some 50-100 million died in that pandemic within 2 years.
Then in 2011, Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Center in Holland announced that he had found a way to convert the H5N1 bird flu virus, which in nature is only transmitted from birds to people, into a human to human virus. Of the 565 who have come down with bird flu so far, which originates in China, 59% have died.
It didn't take long for the Chinese to get involved. They have taken Fouchier's work several steps further, creating over 127 H5N1 flu varieties, five of which can be transmitted through the air, such as from a sneeze. The attributes of one of these just showed up in the latest natural strain of bird flu, the H7N9.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia are charged with protecting us from outbreaks like this. But getting the WHO, a giant global bureaucracy, to agree on anything is almost impossible, unless there is already a major outbreak underway. The CDC has seen its budget cut by 25% since 2010, and has lost another 5% due to the US government sequester.
The problem is that the international organizations charged with monitoring all of this are still stuck in the Stone Age. Current regulations revolve around known pathogens, like smallpox and the Ebola virus, that date back to the 1960's, when the concern was about moving lethal pathogens across borders via test tubes.
That is, oh so 20th century. Thanks to the Internet, controlling information flow is impossible. Just ask Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar Al Assad. Al-Qaeda has used messages embedded in online porn to send orders to terrorists.
Getting international cooperation isn't that easy. Only 35 countries are currently complying with the safety, surveillance, and research standards laid out by the WHO. Indonesia refused to part with H5N1 virus samples spreading there because it didn't want the western pharmaceutical companies that would develop a vaccine rich. African countries say they are too poor to participate, even they are the most likely victims of future epidemics.
Scientists have proposed a number of safeguards to keep these new superbugs under control. One would be a dedicated sequence of nucleic acid base pairs inserted into the genes that would indentify its origin, much like a bar code at the supermarket. This is already being used by Monsanto (MON) with its genetically modified seeds. Another would be a "suicide sequence" what would cause the germ to self-destruct if it ever got out of a lab.
One can expect the National Security Agency to get involved, if they haven't done so already. If they can screen our phone calls for meta data, why not high risk DNA sequences sent by email?
But this assumes that the creators want to be found. The bioweapons labs of some countries are thought to be creating new pathogens so they can stockpile vaccines and antigens in advance of any future conflict.
There are also the real terrorists to consider. When the Mubarak regime in Egypt was overthrown in 2011, demonstrators sacked the country's public health labs that had been storing H5N1 virus. Egypt has one of the world's worst bird flu problems, due to the population's widespread contact with chickens.
It is hoped that the looters were only in search of valuable electronics they could resell, and tossed the problem test tubes. But that is only just a hope.
I have done a lot of research on this area over the decades. I even chased down the infamous Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army that parachuted plagued infected rats into China during WWII, after first experimenting on American POW's.
The answer to the probability of bio warfare always comes back the same. Countries never use this last resort for fear of it coming back on the own populations. It really is an Armageddon weapon. Only a nut case would want to try it.
Back in 1976 I was one of the fortunate few to see in person the last living cases of smallpox. As I walked through a 15th century village high in the Himalayas in Nepal, two dozen smiling children leaned out of second story windows to wave at me. The face of every one was covered with bleeding sores. And these were the survivors. Believe me, you don't want to catch it yourself.
For those who want to learn more about synbio, or participate in the discussion, please visit the BioBricks Foundation by clicking here.
Sure, I know this doesn't directly relate to what the stock market is going to do today. But if a virus escaped from a rogue lab and killed everyone on the planet, that would be bad for prices, wouldn't it?
I really hope one of the kids competing in the MIT contest doesn't suffer from the same sort of mental problems as the boy in Newton, Connecticut did.
Some 40 years ago, when I was a biotechnology student at UCLA, a handful of graduate students speculated about how dangerous our work really was.
It only took us an hour to figure out how to synthesize a microbe that had a 99% fatality rate, was immune to antibiotics, and was so simple it could be produced in your home kitchen.
Basically, a bunch of bored students discovered a way to destroy the world.
We voiced our concerns to our professors, who immediately convened a national conference of leaders in the field. Science had outpaced regulation, as it always does. They adopted standards and implemented safeguards to keep this genie from getting out of the bottle.
Four decades later scientists have been successful at preventing a ?doomsday? bug from accidently escaping a lab and wiping out the world?s population.
That is, until now.
In 2010, Dr. Craig Venter created the first completely synthetic life form able to reproduce on its own. Named ?Phi X 174,? the simple virus was produced from a string of DNA composed entirely on a computer. Thus was invented the field of synthetic biology, better known as ?SynBio.?
Venter?s homemade creature was your basic entry level organism. Its DNA was composed of only 1 million base pairs of nucleic acids (adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine, and uracil), compared to the 3 billion pairs in a human genome. Shortly thereafter, Venter one-upped himself by manufacturing the world?s first synthetic bacteria.
The work was hailed as the beginning of a brave new world that will enable biology to make the same dramatic advances in technology that computer science did in the 20thcentury. Dr. Drew Endy of Stanford University says that SynBio already accounts for 2% of US GDP, and is growing at a breakneck 12% per year. He predicts that SynBio will eventually do more for the economy than the Internet and social media combined.
You may recall Craig Venter as the man who first decoded the human genome in 2003. The effort demanded the labor of thousands of scientists and cost $3 billion. We later learned that the DNA that was decoded was Craig?s own. Some five years later, the late Steve Jobs spent $1 million to decode his own genes in a vain attempt to find a cure for pancreatic cancer.
Today, you can get the job done for $1,000 in less than 24 hours. That?s what movie star Angelina Jolie did, who endured a voluntary double mastectomy when she learned her genes guaranteed a future case of terminal breast cancer.
The decoding industry is now moving to low cost China, where giant warehouses have been built to decode the DNA of a substantial part of humanity. That should soon drop the price to $100. It?s all about full automation and economies of scale.
This technology is already spreading far faster than most realize. In 2004, MIT started the International Genetically Engineered Machine Contest where college students competed to construct new life forms. Recently, a high school division was opened, attracting 194 entries from kids in 34 countries. Gee, when I went to wood shop in high school it was a big deal when I finished my table lamp.
This will make possible ?big data? approaches to medical research that will lead to cures of every major human disease, such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and more, within our lifetimes. This is why the health care (XLV), biotechnology (XBI), and pharmaceutical (XPH) sectors have been top performers in the stock market for the past two years. It?s not just about Obamacare.
The implications spread far beyond health care. IBM (IBM) is experimenting with using DNA based computer code to replace the present simple, but hugely inefficient, binary system of 0s and 1s. ?DNA based computation? is prompting computer scientists to become biochemists and biochemists to evolve into computer scientists to create ?living circuit boards.? Alphabet (GOOG), Apple (AAPL), and Cisco (CSCO) have all taken notice.
We are probably only a couple years away from enterprising hobbyists downloading DNA sequences from the Internet and building new bugs at home with a 3D printer. Simple organisms, like viruses, would need a file size no larger than one needed for a high definition photo taken with your iPhone. They can then download other genes from the net, creating their own customized microbes at will.
This is all great news for investors of every stripe, and will no doubt accelerate America?s economic growth. But it is also causing governments and scientists around the world to wring their hands, seeing the opening of a potential?Pandora?s Box. What if other scientists lack Venter?s ethics? He went straight to President Obama for a security clearance before he made his findings public.
If we can?t trust our kids to drink, drive, or vote, then how responsibly will they behave when they get their hands on potential bioterror weapons? How many are familiar with Bio Safety Level 4 (BSL) standards? None, I hope.
In fact, the race is already on to weaponize SynBio. In 2002, scientists at SUNY Stonybrook synthesized a polio virus for the first time. In 2005, another group managed to recreate the notorious H1N1 virus that caused the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic. Some 50-100 million died in that pandemic within 2 years.
Then in 2011, Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Center in Holland announced that he had found a way to convert the H5N1 bird flu virus, which in nature is only transmitted from birds to people, into a human to human virus. Of the 565 who have come down with bird flu so far, which originates in China, 59% have died.
It didn?t take long for the Chinese to get involved. They have taken Fouchier?s work several steps further, creating over 127 H5N1 flu varieties, five of which can be transmitted through the air, such as from a sneeze. The attributes of one of these just showed up in the latest natural strain of bird flu, the H7N9.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia are charged with protecting us from outbreaks like these. But getting the WHO, a giant global bureaucracy, to agree on anything is almost impossible, unless there is already a major outbreak underway. The CDC has seen its budget cut by 25% since 2010.
The problem is that the international organizations charged with monitoring all of this are still stuck in the Stone Age. Current regulations revolve around known pathogens, like smallpox and the Ebola virus, that date back to the 1960s, when the concern was about moving lethal pathogens across borders via test tubes.
That is, oh so 20th?century. Thanks to the Internet, controlling information flow is impossible. Just ask Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad. Al Qaida has used messages embedded in online porn to send orders to terrorists.
Getting international cooperation isn?t that easy. Only 35 countries are currently complying with the safety, surveillance, and research standards laid out by the WHO. Indonesia refused to part with H5N1 virus samples spreading there because it did want to enrich the western pharmaceutical companies that would develop a vaccine. African countries say they are too poor to participate, even though they are the most likely victims of future epidemics.
Scientists have proposed a number of safeguards to keep these new superbugs under control. One would be a dedicated sequence of nucleic acid base pairs inserted into the genes that would identify its origin, much like a bar code at the supermarket. This is already being used by Monsanto (MON) with its genetically modified seeds. Another would be a ?suicide sequence? that would cause the germ to self-destruct if it ever got out of a lab.
One can expect the National Security Agency to get involved, if they aren't already. If they can screen our phone calls for meta data, why not high risk DNA sequences sent by email?
But this assumes the creators want to be found. The bioweapons labs of some countries are thought to be creating n
ew pathogens so they can stockpile vaccines and antigens in advance of any future conflict.
There are also the real terrorists to consider. When the Mubarak regime in Egypt was overthrown in 2011, demonstrators sacked the country?s public health labs that had been storing H5N1 virus. Egypt has one of the world?s worst bird flu problems, due to the population?s widespread contact with chickens.
It is hoped that the looters were only in search of valuable electronics they could resell, and tossed the problem test tubes. But that is only a hope.
I have done a lot of research on this area over the decades. I even chased down the infamous Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army which parachuted plague infected rats into China during WWII, after first experimenting on American POWs.
The answer to the probability of bio warfare always comes back the same thing. Countries never use this last resort for fear of it coming back on their own populations. It really is an Armageddon weapon. Only a nut case would want to try it.
Back in 1976 I was one of the fortunate few to see in person the last living cases of smallpox. As I walked through a 15th?century village high in the Himalayas in Nepal, two dozen smiling children leaned out of second story windows to wave at me. The face of every one was covered with bleeding sores. And these were the survivors. Believe me, you don?t want to catch it yourself.
For those who want to learn more about SynBio, or participate in the discussion, please visit the BioBricks Foundation by clicking the link:
http://biobricks.org.
Sure, I know this doesn?t directly relate to what the stock market is going to do today. But if a virus escaped from a rogue lab and killed everyone on the planet, that would be bad for prices, wouldn?t it?
I really hope one of the kids competing in the MIT contest doesn?t suffer from the same sort of mental problems as the boy in Newton, Connecticut did.
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