Something's in the Air

Liberties in the face of SARS and other infectious diseases

Declan McCullagh from the August/September 2003 issue

(Page 3 of 3)

Perhaps not. While technology may aid panic-mongering, technological advance is also what makes the fight against SARS so different from previous epidemics. Technology lets researchers collaborate in ways simply not possible just a few years ago. Perhaps the most impressive way in which research has been accelerated is in the analysis of the virus' complete genetic code. More than a dozen sequences of the virus -- all demonstrating slight differences, which is typical for a coronavirus -- are up on the WHO's Website. As a result of this genetic sequencing and collaboration, companies like AVI BioPharma in Oregon think that the first drug to combat SARS could be available in months, not years.

Henry Niman, a Harvard instructor in surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, has long studied retroviruses. He says the collaborative process normally would have taken researchers at least months. "The fact that the virus has been sequenced in two weeks by two groups, that's pretty quick," Niman says. "That's unprecedented speed. You would probably not have had two groups going simultaneously if you didn't have this information out there. The exchange of information has sped things up."

Niman cautions against SARS complacency. "It's not really clear that the epidemic is that much under control," Niman says. "This has the potential to spread very dramatically. It's something that many people are trying to slow down. How successful that's going to be is an open question."

Nearly 100 years ago, the Spanish Flu tested medical science's ability to respond to a deadly worldwide threat, with researchers in 1918 venturing beyond the germ theory of disease and postulating the then-novel existence of a virus as the cause of the infection. Their attempts to unravel the mystery of influenza soon led to the creation of a hybrid vaccine administered to the British military.

Today, researchers already have used the virus' genetic sequence to create tests that weed out people who may have breathing problems but are not infected with SARS. While the panic mongers have an undeniable head start, so far the ability of modern science to deal with such a novel and destructive threat seems up to the task. Let's only hope that governments' reactions to SARS are equally careful.

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