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To the uneducated populous the notion of a highly lethal virus, relatively inexpensively created in a lab puts off alarm bells and raises questions about bio-terrorism and national security. To some degree I believe there is need for concern but outright stopping these proceedings would be a little over the edge. Just to show how much attention this discovery has made I have attached a copy of a Congressional hearing in which requested resolutions that were passed. Within the resolutions the congress "expresses serious concern regarding the decision by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the editors of `Science Express' to publish a blueprint that could conceivably enable terrorists to inexpensively create human pathogens for release on the people of the United States." I think this is going over the top, the researchers themselves said that they got in genome of the polio virus off of an internet server and this is also a quite cost intensive procedure for an amount that would be enough to "terrorize" a nation. Not to mention that there are many people immunized to polio. But keep in mind that this doesn't pertain only to polio but this procedure could conceivably, within the future, be used for synthesis of other more dangerous viruses. Realistically speaking though, all of this is just speculation and there are more devastating and cost effective ways to enact terror: take for example the September 11th incident. .
Even though when most people hear the word "virus" they think of a disease-causing agent, but there are other uses for viruses. Texan scientists are also discovering ways to use viruses as microscopic builders. This idea was conceived from the prospect that scientists are trying to build microscopic devices. One of the researchers said, "When you"re building things as small as viruses, it makes sense to use the biology that already works at that size.