archives

Date
  • 01
  • 02
  • 03
  • 04
  • 05
  • 06
  • 07
  • 08
  • 09
  • 10
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16
  • 17
  • 18
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23
  • 24
  • 25
  • 26
  • 27
  • 28
  • 29
  • 30
  • 31

Biowar for Dummies

I'm a big fan of DIY biotech stories: DNA preps using you kitchen blender, buying used DNA sequences of ebay etc. tech writer Paul Boutin has gone one step further and asked the question: How hard is it to build your own weapon of mass destruction?. For example:

Brent guesses he would need a couple million dollars to whip up a batch of smallpox from scratch. No need for state sponsors or stolen top-secret germ samples. “An advanced grad student could do it,