• Health security · Nov 2017

    The Threat of Synthetic Smallpox: European Perspectives.

    • Giulia Impelluso and Filippa Lentzos.
    • Health Secur. 2017 Nov 1; 15 (6): 582-586.

    AbstractThis article explores how advances in synthetic biology, and the potential threat of deliberately recreating and spreading smallpox, are affecting the multilateral debate on the remaining variola virus stocks. It draws on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 10 high-profile, European-based experts in biosecurity and synthetic biology. Four overarching themes affecting the retention or destruction debate are discussed, relating to biosecurity, dangerous knowledge, accidental releases, and eradication. We conclude that while synthetic biology seems to affect all the main discourses in the variola stocks debate, a range of views is present and it is not apparent that advances in synthetic biology are causing a shift toward either retention or destruction of the stocks.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…