Artificial Virus within 5 Years

from the bringing-bottom-up-alive dept.
PatrickUnderwood noted a BBC News article "Synthetic Virus Nearing Reality" in which Professor Clyde Hutchinson of the University of North Carolina and The Institute of Genomic Research, speaking at the AAAS meeting, predicts the ability to build a virus from scratch within five years. The article describes how this is a step along the way for the "Minimal Genome Project." The writer spends much of the story trying to link this to concerns about bioweapons, but gets told that "There's enough bad stuff out there now. So far, there is no reason to believe that this technology is going to make things any worse."