Obama Advisers Urge Action Against Bioterror Threat

If you are able to acquire and isolate what you're trying to copy. How would you go about recreating smallpox, or a synthetic virus engineered to only affect a specific ethnicity?

Conversely, if you're interested in a common pathogen, why bother sequencing it?

I got the impression that's a claim about identifying engineered attacks, rather than about making them easier to perform.

Granted it's been a while since I closely followed the field, but to the best of my knowledge, no one's made significant headway in synthetic organisms since JCVI's initial "hey we invented a prokaryote" splash a few years back. I doubt anyone actually in the field would make a claim to a news organization that access to sequence data would be the highest bar to clear in producing novel engineered pathogens.

On the other hand, also to the best of my knowledge, gene editing techniques leave behind traces which are pretty readily identifiable in sequencing results. So the statement makes a lot more sense in that direction. It's just that the article is poorly edited in a way that produces semantic ambiguity.

Sometimes fear is rational, and healthy. Having a respect for a powerful tool is a healthy fear.

The way new technologies behave when introduced into the open, can have profound effects on society. Once the cat's out of the bag, it doesn't go back in.

The serious question here: Is CRISPR as potent and revolutionary as atomic fission?

Biological resources are more accessible to ordinary laymen than, say, plutonium and enriched uranium. So it's probably worth asking that question.

The answer to that question will inform us as to whether this is mass media fear mongering for rating and advertising bumps.