Of course, a word in a computer file cannot kill you. Well, yes and no. In the 1990s, I ran a biotechnology laboratory. In my lab there was a machine much like a soda dispenser, only in this case the reservoirs were filled with chemicals. If I typed in a short word of my choice using the letters A, T, C and G, the machine would squirt one chemical after another into a test tube. When it was done, the test tube would contain trillions of molecules of DNA. Each would look like a necklace, with molecules of adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine (the building blocks of DNA) strung according to the word I had typed.
At that time, the 10,000-letter sequence of the H.I.V. genome was available online. I contemplated using my machine, together with well-known biotechnical methods, to create, de novo, the H.I.V. genome — an actual molecule identical to that found in H.I.V. viruses living in the wild. I had reason to believe that inserting such a synthetic molecule into a living human cell would cause the cell to manufacture full-blown H.I.V. viruses that could then be transmitted from person to person and cause AIDS.
I decided not to do the experiment, but I began to worry. If I could do it, so could others with high-tech labs.
Which brings us back to smallpox.
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