Professor Donald Henderson, of the Centre for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh, [...the man who led the successful global vaccination campaign to eradicate smallpox from the wild] said he feared that tinkering with the genetic makeup of the variola virus - which causes smallpox - might accidentally produce a more lethal form of the disease.
"What I worry about is that there is rather too much done in this area and the minute you start fooling around with it in various ways, I think there is a danger," Professor Henderson said. "I'd be happier if we were not doing it and the simple reason is I just don't think it serves a purpose I can support. The less we do with the smallpox virus and the less we do in the way of manipulation at this point I think the better off we are."
~Some people, not Professor Henderson!?, believe AIDS and Ebola 'escaped' from labs. I would also put Swine Flu, Legionairres Disease, Mad Cow and the North American outbreak of West Nile Virus on a list of probable iatrogenic diseases.
Posted by Cieciel at January 26, 2005 11:20 PM