VERTEBRATE BIO CONTROL (AND HUMAN?)

By: IZAKOVIC

CREATED 01-16-2001

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Although, during the past, Australia's indigenous flora and fauna proved very vulnerable to damage by alien mammals introduced by European settlers, new Australian environment research agency, CSIRO Wildlife Ecology, initiative to rid its landscapes of wild rabbit, fox and mouse, using genetically modified viruses, is arousing some concerns abroad.

The aim is to develop contraceptive vaccines specifically designed for vertebrate pests, which will trick the immune system to attack the pests' eggs and sperm as though they were foreign cells, resulting in infertility.  Delivery of the vaccine will be preferably through the agency of a virus which spreads naturally through the target pest population. The vaccines are created by genetically modifying the carrier virus to include sperm, egg (gametes) or other key reproductive proteins (antigens). 

The concern is that the sterilizing viruses might escape from Australia and decimate mammal populations worldwide. Various fox species ranging across Africa, Europe, Asia and North America could be vulnerable to any infectious virus used to sterilize feral foxes in Australia, reinforcing the need for species-specificity in any transmissible virus. The same is true of rabbits. In the Americas, wildlife scientists fear that a recombinant myxoma virus, although non-lethal, could still sterilize Sylvilagus rabbits - some North American Sylvilagus species are already rare.

For this reason the Organization for International Epizootics has adopted a recommendation that only non-transmissible vectors be used for fertility control of wild dogs and other canids.

However, such concerns are now weighed against Australia's national interests, and the evidence of the historic record. Argument is that Australia's geographic isolation, reinforced by strict quarantine measures, has successfully protected Australia from exotic viruses for two centuries and the fact that, during the past 45 years, the myxoma virus has not become established in New Zealand, which is less than 2000 km across the Tasman Sea.

More about this program can be read at Australian environment research agency's site Pest Animal Control CRC which is linked to the above image.

In the January 2001 issue of the New Scientist, Rachel Nowak writes that, during the work on a mouse contraceptive vaccine for pest control, Ron Jackson of CSIRO's wildlife division and Ian Ramshaw at the Australian National University, both in Canberra, have accidentally created a modified mousepox virus, inserting into him a gene that creates large amounts of interleukin 4, which kills every one of its victims, by wiping out part of their immune system.

Furthermore, the engineered virus also appears to have high resistance to the vaccination, indicating that such programmers would be of limited use. According to Alibek, who now works on developing novel treatments for anthrax for the defense contractor Hadron in Virginia, this highlights that any vaccine could be overcome by genetically engineered virus or bacterium.

Mr. Jackson stated that it would be safe to assume that if some idiot did put human IL-4 into human smallpox they'd increase the lethality quite dramatically. By publishing this report they wanted to make it clear to the scientific community that they should be careful because it is not too difficult to create severe organisms.

To learn more on how the Australian researchers succeeded to produce a killer virus while merely trying to stimulate antibodies against mouse eggs, to make them infertile, go to article which is linked to the  New Scientist logo on the right. Now is a simple meter to produce a cheep and perfect, but severe biological weapon capable of terminating it's target directly or, in more covert way, terminating target's reproduction. 

If still it has not bean done.

And what about humans as targets?

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