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00:00Oh
00:30Silent. Invisible. Lethal.
00:38Germ weapons kill indiscriminately.
00:44For this reason they have hardly ever been used.
00:51But now scientific advances mean biological weapons could potentially be targeted to infect
00:56and kill only specific people.
01:07We are entering a new era of germ warfare
01:10with consequences that could be more terrible even than a nuclear exchange.
01:26Alex Preston is five years old. Cystic fibrosis means her life hangs in the balance.
01:39She needs constant attention because fluid builds up in her lungs.
01:50But there is hope that breakthroughs in genetic engineering could lead to a cure.
01:59But this same technology can also be used for the most malevolent of purposes.
02:04The technology that will develop useful new vaccines, new drugs in a medical sense is going to be very closely associated with the technology which could put that same knowledge to malign use to producing weapons.
02:21And therefore the need to put in place a system of control which will pick up the abuse of this knowledge is absolutely essential.
02:30The British Medical Association is so concerned that they set up a special group to examine how our knowledge about the human genome, the codes of DNA that determine who we are, can be used.
02:45Their investigation has concluded that in as little as five years time, this information could be used to create viruses or bacteria targeted to kill people with a particular genetic makeup.
03:04It could create an ethnic weapon.
03:07The history of conflict both of war and indeed of terrorism in this century has increasingly been one of ethnic and racial conflict.
03:19Within Europe we have the former Yugoslavia with an ethnic element to that conflict.
03:25And in a terrorist sense we see many terrorists, perhaps some of the white supremacist groups who might want to eradicate a black population and again an ethnic weapon would be seen as particularly desirable by those people.
03:38A biological weapon targeted to a particular population is frightening, not only because of the people it would kill, but because of the people it would not kill.
03:55So far, biological weapons have been kept under wraps because of the difficulty for the attacker of delivering the germs without infecting themselves.
04:03But a genetically targeted weapon would be safe, so long as you were not a member of the targeted group.
04:13Such weapons have not yet been manufactured, but already there have been developments that make biological weapons a greater threat than at any time in their history.
04:33Tokyo.
04:34March 20th, 1995.
04:4712 people died and 5,000 were injured when a nerve gas seeped out from packages left on the subway by a Japanese religious cult, the Aum Shinrikyo.
05:07It was a chemical attack, but the group had plotted several biological attacks.
05:12Three years earlier, cult members had traveled to Zaire during an outbreak of Ebola fever.
05:22There is no cure for Ebola.
05:2690% of victims in Africa hemorrhage to death.
05:34The cult were apparently investigating using the virus to create a biological weapon.
05:40Here, for the first time, was evidence that a terrorist group with serious intentions to kill on a mass scale had set out to make such a weapon.
05:53It's absolutely clear that the latent capacity to produce and use biological weapons is increasing.
05:59It's also evident that terrorist groups are becoming more inclined to commit indiscriminate acts of mass violence than they have in the past.
06:08And one of the things that I worry about personally is the convergence of those two trends.
06:11In the last 12 months, it's emerged that almost anyone can get their hands on the necessary bugs.
06:22Yes, I'd like to place an order here, 20068-562, that'll be Yersinia pestis, bomb-based strain.
06:34A former member of a white racist group, Larry Harris, demonstrated how easily an extremist could obtain deadly germs.
06:44Posing as a medical researcher, he contacted a lab.
06:47I ordered three vials of bubonic plague.
06:54And basically, I get a catalog off the shelf, reach through, call them up, give them a charge card number, and they send it to me.
07:01Plain and simple.
07:02Yes, that is Yersinia pestis, that is correct.
07:06As far as a person getting into the biological business, you need nothing more than a very small laboratory.
07:16If you look at the size of this room, it's probably 10 to 12.
07:21And I have everything here necessary.
07:24I could easily work with plague, anthrax, cholera, typhoid, brucellosis, tularema.
07:31It's very easy to obtain.
07:32Harris's only mistake was to chase up one of his orders too eagerly.
07:39The police were called in by the supplier of microorganisms, the American type and culture collection.
07:46At his trial, Harris claimed he was making vaccines for his family and their own protection.
07:57He isn't shy of enthusing about germ weapons.
08:02Biologicals level the playing field.
08:06Before, you had governments with massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons, with aircraft carriers, with all types of machine guns and stuff of this nature.
08:15The private populace did not have these.
08:17But now when you get, they become so oppressed, the private populace is going to go with a weapon that will give them the level of the playing field.
08:26And understand, trying to use a tank, again, a bottle of germs, is stupid.
08:34Aircraft carriers become obsolete.
08:36Submarines become obsolete.
08:39You are dealing purely with a weapon of extreme power.
08:42Making a biological weapon is, however, not quite as easy as Harris makes out.
08:52Compared to making plutonium, growing bacteria is cheap and easy.
08:59But that's a long way from having a usable weapon.
09:02The first stage is relatively straightforward.
09:07Any microbiologist with a little bit of access to non-specialized equipment can manufacture biological warfare agents at home or in a very rudimentary laboratory.
09:18But that's not the end of the story.
09:19Just having the stuff in a liquid form is not the end of the story.
09:22You need to get it into a form whereby it can get inside the lungs, it can be inhaled, and it can then cause the damage.
09:28And that's the tricky part.
09:34The first problem is that the bugs are living organisms which can die in strong sunlight or cold temperatures.
09:41They must be kept alive until they are needed.
09:43Secondly, the bacteria have to be an exact particle size to stay airborne and pass through the mucous membranes in human lungs.
10:00But the biggest problem facing a terrorist is the risk of infecting themselves.
10:06Let me set this aside.
10:08Extremist groups suggest that simple face masks can protect you from contamination.
10:14Now you really have some lethal stuff here.
10:23In biological research institutes, people don't leave their chances to such basic equipment.
10:28It's clear any terrorist that considers producing or using a biological weapon is going to put themselves at some considerable personal risk.
10:43And we believe that weighs fairly heavily in their calculations.
10:48These are very dangerous organisms.
10:51Exposure and infection is often invisible, tasteless, odorless.
10:55You can't detect it.
10:57And you won't know for some time whether you've got it.
11:05But it's not impossible that someone could succeed, despite the risks and technical difficulties.
11:13And if they did, the consequences could be devastating.
11:17The scenario the authorities fear most is a small group of terrorists who set out on the Hudson River with a plan to attack New York City.
11:31They have obtained a canister filled with enough bacteria to kill half a million people.
11:38They have waited for the right weather conditions, a gentle westerly breeze.
11:54They release the germs into the air using a converted paint sprayer, and the lethal cloud drifts towards the densely populated city.
12:10At first, it would seem like a sudden mass outbreak of flu.
12:25By the time the emergency services realized that it was a deadly epidemic, many victims would already be beyond treatment.
12:37Hospitals might not have enough antibiotics to deal with the numbers falling ill.
12:48There would be panic and chaos as the infection spread.
13:01My personal opinion is that a major act of biological terrorism is far from inevitable.
13:20It's in fact quite unlikely.
13:21But given the severity of the consequences, I think it's likely enough to take it very seriously at the level of our governments to be doing much to prepare.
13:32Second point is that I believe that likelihood, while low, is growing.
13:37And that should give us pause and reason for concern.
13:40Go ahead, Bob.
13:41Well, we're saying that more and more people are going down. You received a report from the field of radio transmission.
13:48Get that chair over there and let's get him out of here.
13:51Come on, Jack, let's go.
13:53Following the Aum Shinrikyo incident and the Larry Harris case, just over two years ago the U.S. set up a new program to prepare American cities for biological and chemical attacks.
14:05The domestic preparedness program is a series of training exercises coordinated by the Army.
14:25Today they are showing Boston's emergency services how to reduce panic and how to protect themselves from contaminated casualties.
14:33The commanders who coordinate the program are keen to promote its value.
14:44Being aware is a primary piece of being ready.
14:48And if we can make the cities aware and those critical first responders aware, we can make a bad situation not as bad.
14:57But can they?
15:03As part of the training program, the U.S. Army also demonstrate how they would set about defusing a potential biological bomb.
15:14All right, let's go.
15:16It all looks very high-tech, with a shrapnel-proof, foam-filled tent to kill any bugs that had been let loose by the explosion.
15:30But the problem with a terrorist attack is that you wouldn't know it was coming, so there would be little chance of being able to defuse the weapon.
15:41Back in Boston, although the training looks impressive, it isn't solving how the city's hospitals would cope with a sudden epidemic of an exotic killer disease.
16:00In Britain, the approach seems to be to leave it all to the intelligence services.
16:15The U.K.'s response to terrorism as a whole is very much intelligence-led.
16:18And that means that the U.K. is looking at the people that might wish to do us harm.
16:23It's assessing their capabilities and it's trying, wherever possible, to prevent them from enhancing those capabilities.
16:31But should this approach fail to spot a terrorist attack, the Health Service here are poorly prepared to deal with the victims.
16:38I certainly have no experience of a large-scale epidemic and have no experience of looking after large numbers of infectious patients.
16:52Conditions such as plague or anthrax, for most doctors working in Britain, would be encountered only in books, either textbooks or the Bible.
17:03The only comfort is that making biological weapons is so risky and so difficult that it would be beyond the capability of many terrorists.
17:21But there is no such comfort on the battlefield, where there is now a real threat that biological weapons will be used.
17:33In warfare, the risks involved in making biological weapons, a risk which so far has contained the terrorist threat, can be largely overcome.
17:57And in the aftermath of the Gulf War, it has emerged that the potential impact of biological weapons could be greater than ever before.
18:09But the fear of germ warfare is not new.
18:14There's a new poison. One ounce can kill all the people in the United States.
18:26Germ warfare can wipe out an entire city.
18:30Enemy agents could contaminate the city water supply. How can we protect ourselves from BW attacks?
18:35As the Cold War intensified in the 1950s, fear grew in the United States that the Soviet Union might be developing bioweapons.
18:52The Pentagon ordered secret experiments to discover the consequences of an attack by Soviet undercover agents.
19:04In several major cities across the USA, FBI men dispersed clouds of bacteria to test how far they would travel.
19:17Concern about biological warfare was so great that Britain was also prepared to experiment on its own citizens.
19:33There were many trials carried out in both the UK and the United States and a certain amount of cooperation on seeing the effects of biological agents delivered by a number of different means, be it unorthodox means, you know, sabotage type means, from unconventional, maybe an aerosol generator in the back of a truck or on a boat offshore.
19:57So a lot of trials were carried out, but these were for defensive purposes, because it was felt this was the most important way of trying to deal with this particular threat.
20:10Meanwhile, the hunt was also on to develop their own reliable, effective weapons.
20:16One bacteria, anthrax, seem to be promising for weaponization.
20:23Anthrax is a tough organism.
20:27It survives extreme climate conditions and can lie dormant for 40 years.
20:32It causes blood poisoning and septic swellings.
20:39By the time the symptoms appear, it's often too late to save the victim.
20:46The British used sheep to test anthrax on an island off the coast of Scotland.
20:57They invented bombs and spray delivery systems which could disperse it in the air.
21:03The experiments showed that just a few grams could cause many casualties.
21:10But anthrax and other germ weapons proved unreliable.
21:15One change in the wind direction meant your own troops were infected, or that the attack failed altogether.
21:24The inability to create reliable weapons led the West to give up their stockpiles and sign a treaty with the Soviet Union in 1972, banning further research.
21:39Well, the key reason that the United States and Great Britain gave up their biological warfare capabilities is that they didn't think they were very useful.
21:49The military commanders didn't really see a contingency in which they'd ever want to use these things.
21:56They were hard to predict, hard to control, the adversary could retaliate with nuclear weapons.
22:03The threat of biological warfare seemed to have gone away.
22:08But it was an illusion.
22:10During the 1980s, intelligence reports suggested that the Russians had not really given up their program.
22:17Then in the late 80s, Iraq was reported to be acquiring bugs and microbiologists.
22:24These reports were taken seriously enough that British and American soldiers had to struggle with bioprotection suits as they prepared to fight Iraq in 1991.
22:43Then the following year, Dr. Ken Alibek, a key microbiologist from Russia, defected.
22:53The fears of Western governments were confirmed.
22:56It turned out that during the Soviet era, Russia had secretly built up a vast arsenal of biological weapons.
23:04According to the Soviet Union's philosophy, concept just to develop such weapons, any possible agent, biological agent that could be valuable for testing and applying in future biological weapons would be tested, would be developed, and would be turned into weapons.
23:29Alibek worked at the Stepnogorsk plant in the desolate region of Kazakhstan.
23:36At this and other sites, the Russians worked on all aspects of biological weapons.
23:45They tested new and more deadly disease agents and developed sophisticated ways of delivering the agents at long range.
23:53The Russians were working away on all this and had a range of agents that could be put in, mainly missiles.
24:03They saw it as a strategic weapon.
24:05If you look at the time when they accelerated their development, they really pushed in, and I think the scale of their program, I think they had 25,000 scientists working on it at some stage,
24:15with millions of dollars worth of money being poured into it, and this was in the early 80s, at the time of the Star Wars, and it's clear from evidence that we now know that this was a technology where they thought,
24:25we have the edge, we must develop this, this will be a big surprise. Of course, they were absolutely right.
24:30The Russian program created an army of scientists with knowledge of the very latest technology in germ weapons.
24:40With the collapse of the Soviet regime, most of the program has been dismantled, leaving them without jobs.
24:47My colleagues, a lot of them now are unemployed, and they've got nothing in many cases just to feed their families, their children.
25:04Some of them sell flowers in streets, very good, perfect scientists.
25:12Many of them are very angry now because of the situation in Russia.
25:17Now, if, for example, they received a proposal to do something for Iraq, for Iran, I cannot exclude they would do this.
25:29There are plenty of countries who might offer them work.
25:32The U.S. Defense Department suspects 16 of having bio-warfare programs, including Syria, North Korea, Libya, and China, along with Iran and Iraq.
25:42There's been a proliferation of technology from countries that maybe formerly had offensive programs.
25:56And that concerns us the most, in that the knowledge about how to deliver the agents, which is the most critical part,
26:07may now be available to adversaries of the United States.
26:12It was clear to the Allies that if the Iraqis possessed biological weapons, they might well be prepared to use them.
26:23After all, Saddam Hussein had not flinched from using chemical weapons to gas Kurdish villagers.
26:34Biological warfare agents kill anywhere from hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands, depending on their employment.
26:47You can't see them, you can't feel them, you can't touch them.
26:51There's terror associated also with just the threat of use of biological warfare agents.
26:57So from that perspective, they become a weapon that is very, very lucrative to those folks who may in fact be facing a force that is superior both in firepower and in capability.
27:11At the end of the Gulf War, with revelations about Russia and continued suspicions about Iraq, it was essential for the Allies to find out whether the Iraqis did actually possess biological weapons.
27:25With the backing of the United Nations, inspections began.
27:29You take your hand off my inspector now.
27:33I have instructions from my mom.
27:35You take your hand off.
27:36Not from you.
27:37You do not touch my inspector.
27:39I don't touch him.
27:40You're touching me if you touch me once more.
27:42I just talk to Mr. Smith.
27:44They wouldn't admit to a program.
27:47And they even showed a group of journalists around their main production plant in early 1995, where they were saying, here is a single cell protein plant.
27:57That's something which produces an additive for animal foods to improve its qualities.
28:02And also, this is a biopesticide plant.
28:04And a key person in the program was showing these journalists around, saying these are perfectly innocent places.
28:14Just four months later, after a high-ranking defector spilled the beans, the Iraqis had to admit that these apparently harmless pesticide plants were actually producing anthrax and other agents.
28:35Some of the factories have now been destroyed, but we still don't know the full extent of the Iraqi program.
28:42They attempted to produce biological warfare agents, and they succeeded.
28:46They'd also made the next step and put these into means of delivery and had begun to fill weapons and actually make them ready for use.
28:54So they were, and they still are, because we haven't got to the bottom of their program, a nation of very great concern.
29:03The Iraqi anthrax missiles were designed to detonate on impact.
29:07This might have destroyed most of the organisms.
29:10It's not yet clear whether the Iraqis had managed to solve the technical challenges of delivery.
29:19That's not a terribly sophisticated design, and certainly not something that the US military would regard as an efficient delivery system.
29:28But even if it didn't kill very many people, which is a possibility, the political effect that it would have had on the target area and the panic it would have caused in the population, I think, would have been very significant indeed.
29:43When in 1998, Iraq blocked UN inspections, the US and Britain felt they had no choice but to launch airstrikes.
29:53They feared that Iraq would develop bigger and better biological weapons.
29:58With the revelations about Russia and Iraq, a race against time has begun.
30:13As more and more countries get access to the technology, US and British forces must try and work out how to defend themselves against bioweapons attack.
30:23US destroyers like the SS Mitchell are now being built with special defenses.
30:45Under attack from biological or chemical weapons, the ship can be sealed.
30:50Once the hatches are closed, pressure keeps out contaminated air.
31:00Seawater can be pumped over the ship to repel any germs or toxins.
31:08But for all this to work, they would need to know that they were being attacked.
31:12So the US have been trying to develop detection systems.
31:26A few months ago, British troops took part in a thousand-man biological warfare exercise in Alabama.
31:32For the first time, they were shown how to use the American system, the biological integrated detection system.
31:40The two capabilities on the bio side are anthrax and botulinum toxin.
31:50Delivery means aerial bombs and scud.
31:54BIDS is a mobile laboratory.
31:58The idea is to set it up behind front lines where it can check continuously to see if there is anything suspicious in the atmosphere.
32:06Outside temperature is 73.1 degrees, wind direction is at 70 degrees.
32:18Inside the cramped interior, air is sucked in and analyzed to see if it contains living organisms.
32:24If so, they are tested with antibodies to see which viruses or bacteria are involved.
32:35Currently, though, it takes bids an average of 30 minutes to identify a biological agent.
32:41A long wait, during which troops are left dangerously vulnerable.
32:47If, in fact, you have to wait on the current detection systems, they take anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes.
32:52Which means that cloud has traveled in that 15 to 45 minutes over a portion of our soldiers, and they've been exposed.
33:03One of the things I worry about is that we have units exposed, and that commander has to wait for that agent identification.
33:13Meanwhile, does he have to worry about setting up decontamination?
33:16There are all kinds of issues there, and all the time, while he's trying to make those decisions, that unit maybe can't do its combat mission.
33:25And our adversaries on a battlefield are going to take advantage of that.
33:32Bids may be a step towards defense from bioweapons attack, but it can't stop troops being exposed.
33:38Early warning is needed.
33:39We need to have long-range systems in the military because the sooner we know, the sooner we can put our warfighters into protective posture.
33:51For the United States Army, the long-range biological standoff detection system is extremely critical to us
33:56because it gives us the capability to look out at long distances and to identify that a man-made cloud is present.
34:07The U.S. Army's long-range system can rapidly detect unusual clouds, but it cannot tell what a cloud is made of.
34:14It could be anthrax, but it could also be pollen or other organic material.
34:27Currently, the new systems do not provide adequate warning of an attack.
34:32Significant casualties would be unavoidable, and medical teams sent to treat the victims would face the challenge of trying to isolate these diseased and perhaps contagious soldiers.
34:44If there were many thousands of casualties, it would be impossible.
34:49The battles are normal. Can we check the air saturation, please?
34:52It's 97.
35:04Biological weapons on the battlefield are a frightening possibility, but there remains a constraint to their use.
35:09Until now, the problem of delivering germ weapons without risking infecting your own troops has never been solved.
35:18But in the decade to come, all this is likely to change.
35:22Science could be about to solve the problem of delivery once and for all, and create a new generation of germ weapons programmed to identify exactly which people they are meant to attack.
35:37At the U.S. Army's Biological Research Center, scientists work to develop vaccines to protect against bioweapons.
36:00So far, the range of diseases they needed to be concerned about has been limited.
36:11But genetic engineering has radically altered the situation.
36:16When you look at current biological weapons, they have many shortcomings.
36:24They may be difficult to absorb.
36:26They may only survive in perfect weather conditions.
36:31They may, for example, be destroyed by cold or dryness in the atmosphere.
36:35So genetic engineering can be used to make that biological agent, that virus or that bacteria, more resistant, more likely to infect people.
36:48Genetic engineering can improve existing agents.
36:53And it can also create completely new diseases.
36:56Inside a virus or bacteria, its DNA sequences determine how it behaves.
37:07You can now introduce new genes into the DNA and change the nature of the organism.
37:16By mixing and matching genes, a whole range of designer diseases could be created.
37:27The revolution in the biosciences that we've seen since the 70s is every bit as profound as the nuclear revolution of 70 years ago.
37:40And could have quite devastating impacts on the future biowarfare and bioterrorism threat.
37:46Simple modifications could transform the way an organism behaves.
37:54For example, a disease that currently affects animals could be adapted to be lethal to humans.
38:03I give you the example of monkeypox virus.
38:06You may be aware, for example, that there has been this program to eradicate globally smallpox virus.
38:14It's been a tremendously effective program.
38:18And we're very soon approaching the point where there may even be destruction of the final cultures,
38:25the final reference stocks of this virus.
38:28But there is a new agent that's related to smallpox.
38:32It is monkeypox.
38:34And monkeypox shares many of the same genetic characteristics as smallpox.
38:3995% of its nucleic acid sequence is shared with smallpox.
38:46And so there's this danger that an adversary of the United States might take that virus and use it in the context of a biological weapon.
38:56The greatest concern about the spread of Russian expertise is the claim that they developed a new generation of untreatable diseases.
39:09Antibiotic resistant strains or strains that can overcome the immune system.
39:14What is amazing is that genetically altered antibiotic resistant plague was developed.
39:25Genetically altered antibiotic resistant antarx was developed.
39:29Russians tested this agent using Russian vaccine, so-called STI-1 vaccine.
39:35And they were able to show that the normal genetically altered strain very easily overcomes vaccination immunity.
39:47This is a real situation.
39:52Designer diseases are worrying, but they still have the disadvantage of all germ weapons.
39:58They can infect the wrong people.
40:00But genetic engineering has enabled a second and more significant change.
40:09It's now possible that this fundamental problem of biological warfare could be solved,
40:15with the development of viruses and bacteria which attack only certain people, while leaving others unharmed.
40:21One hears talk about the development of a kind of ethnic weapon, a weapon that can be targeted to be effective against a particular racial group or group of people.
40:35For example, there had been certain developments in South Africa under the old apartheid regime,
40:41where they were thinking along these lines of targeting, you know, obviously a particular ethnic group.
40:45In the mid-80s, the South African government sought out an ethnically targeted weapon.
40:52Testimony given to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigating the crimes of the apartheid regime revealed the extent of these plans.
41:00And this document contained a proposition from someone in Europe.
41:07And this guy says he's got a product, a bacteria, which has got the possibility of only affecting, making sick and killing pigmented people.
41:23And it was decided that it would be good if the government had this weapon.
41:31At the time, the technology sought by the regime was not available.
41:36But with recent advances in genetics, an ethnically targeted weapon is now a possibility.
41:41At the FBI crime labs in New York, forensic science is uncovering the kind of genetic information that could be used to target population groups.
41:57Identifying individual people from samples of hair or blood has become possible by looking at human DNA.
42:12The National FBI Database contains over 100,000 samples.
42:18They use them to analyze particular sequences in the DNA, called junk DNA.
42:23Variations in these sequences now allow the FBI to distinguish one person from another.
42:33The differences that we look for are regions of DNA that may vary in length between people,
42:39or they may actually vary in sequence between people also.
42:45Sometimes these areas of DNA, because they didn't have a known function, were called junk DNA.
42:50But I like to think of the expression, one man's trash is another man's treasure.
42:55And for the forensic scientists, these regions, because they vary, are sources of vast information for us to use in forensics.
43:07The forensic work has had an unexpected side effect.
43:10The FBI databases uncovered genetic markers to identify African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Caucasians, and Native Americans.
43:28Any ethnic group might be identifiable.
43:32For two major scientific projects are now uncovering more and more information about our genes, and how they make us different.
43:38The Human Genome Project is a worldwide collaboration of scientists who are aiming to map where the different genes are within the human chromosomes, what they actually do, what they code for, what they produce as an effect within the body of each of us as individuals.
44:01The Human Genetic Diversity Project is trying to collect information on the similarities and differences in different ethnic groups.
44:12They are therefore producing information about the different spread of normal genes in different populations.
44:20Scientists collaborating in the Genetic Diversity Project have already identified a genetic marker present in the DNA of Palestinians, but not in the DNA of Israelis.
44:39One individual genetic marker wouldn't accurately identify an ethnic group, but a combination could.
44:45If you add together a number of markers for different populations, you can start to become relatively specific.
44:54So, for example, the way in which we handle milk lactose is different between the Asian and European populations.
45:01If you then add in blood groups, ABO blood groups, very different distributions, if you also add in height, skin colour and so on, you start to be able to become specific to your target population.
45:15Once all these genetic markers have been identified, a virus could be designed to look for them on entering the body.
45:26It would scan the DNA of cells, looking for the markers.
45:33If it finds them, it inserts itself into the host DNA and starts the process of infection.
45:40In this way, the virus would be targeted to attack only people who had the right genetic markers.
45:49Genetic targeting techniques are already being developed.
45:59They are coming from work with a very different aim, the search for a cure for cancer.
46:08In Texas, doctors have developed a way of targeting a poison to attack cancer cells.
46:18They are adapting a toxin that, in the past, has been used as a biological weapon.
46:29Well, ricin is a natural toxin produced by the castor bean plant, which you can see here behind me.
46:35It's an ornamental plant used in many people's homes for decoration, and it has been used for many, many years in espionage.
46:45It's been used in all sorts of criminal activities where people wish to eliminate somebody.
46:50And the reason it's so effective is because it takes virtually less than you can see in the palm of your hand to kill an individual.
47:01Ricin could potentially help all cancer patients.
47:05It could potentially help patients with a whole variety of other diseases where you know what the target cell for the disease is.
47:12Dr. Vitetta has managed to target the ricin poison to attack only the cancerous cells in the body, leaving healthy ones untouched.
47:24It does this by recognizing genetic markers.
47:35The ricin is attached to an antibody which looks for receptors on the cell surface.
47:40Because of a genetic mutation, cancer cells have different receptors from normal ones.
47:48The antibody recognizes them and attaches.
47:55Only then is the ricin activated to kill the cell.
48:05Successful genetic targeting is one of the golden prizes of medicine today.
48:10Millions of dollars are being invested in it, in the hope of finding an answer to some of our biggest killer diseases.
48:17But it is the very technology that would be needed to identify and kill specific groups of people.
48:23The work that has been done in the pharmaceutical companies in particular, looking for genetically targeted and genetically specific drugs, pharmaceutical agents to treat diseases, is of course the closest example of actually using and targeting that genetic knowledge into specific human beings.
48:43The British Medical Association believe that in the next 10 years, a lethal germ might be created that could select its victims by genetic characteristics.
48:55A biological agent that could successfully wipe out entire groups in society.
49:01The world's first ethnic weapon.
49:02An organism that could target specific people would mark the coming of age of biological weapons.
49:04For the first time, there would be no risk of infection to the aggressor.
49:05The first ethnic weapon.
49:06An organism that could target specific people would mark the coming of age of biological weapons.
49:11For the first time, there would be no risk of infection to the aggressor.
49:21More useful than a nuclear bomb.
49:24It would leave land, buildings, and your own troops untouched.
49:45And as the proliferation of nuclear technology has shown, once the knowledge is available, it is almost impossible to contain.
49:58Biological weapons have historically used new knowledge, new technology in their development.
50:08Although they've not been much used in the past, that has been about their shortcomings, their lack of specificity.
50:14Genetic targeting is possible, probably within the next 5 to 10 years.
50:20The manufacture of relatively specific biological weapons, which are lethal in small volumes, would be possible within that time period.
50:28And that we have, therefore, a very short opportunity at timescale to put in place proper control mechanisms to make sure these weapons are never developed.
50:37It has never developed.
51:07For an online chat with a biological warfare expert and more information about the subject, visit the Channel 4 website at www.channel4.com.
51:21As Hollywood stars have their implants removed, a team of scientists has declared silicone breast implants don't cause the serious diseases for which they've been blamed.
51:31Court cases are collapsing in the face of news, not only that they're safe, but breast implants might actually be good for you.
51:39One day, will we all be getting silicone implants?
51:43Equinox. Storm in a D-cup. Next Monday at 9 on 4.
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