Overnight, there's been an extraordinary response to the revelation that a team of Canberra scientists had accidentally worked out how to make common viruses deadly. After the news broke yesterday, they've been receiving threatening and abusive calls, letters and emails. The announcement is attracting attention around the world, sparking a debate about the real strength of regulations and safeguards covering genetic engineering and scientific discovery in Australia. Pip Courtney reports.
Serendipity is the unexpected discovery of valuable things.
It's often a factor in scientific discoveries, penicillin for example. A year ago the work being done by a team of Canberra scientists to develop an infertility virus for mice took a serendipitous turn. When a gene affecting immunity was inserted into the mousepox virus, something unexpected occurred. The mice started dying. So when we showed we were able to enhance the killing capacity of mousepox, we immediately thought of the possibility of enhancing the killing capacity of smallpox.