Bio-terrorism & SARS.

• Author: Ho, Mae-Wan
• Position: Biodevastation

In the weeks that the "allied forces" were wreaking destruction and death in Iraq to hunt down Saddam Hussein and his elusive "weapons of mass destruction," a SARS epidemic has been criss-crossing continents carried by air-passengers and spreading like molecular cluster bombs that explode to liberate further millions of infectious particles soon after a target is struck.

SARS--Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome--is a completely new infectious disease spread by human contact, and kills about 4% of the victims. The epidemic originated in Guangdong Province, South China.

The disease first struck in November 2002. In March 2003, Liu Jianlin, a 64 year-old medical professor who was involved in treating patients, went from Guangdong to Hong Kong to attend a wedding. He was taken ill soon after arrival and admitted to a hospital. He asked to be put into quarantine, but was ignored, nor did the hospital warn his contacts. As a result, nine guests in the hotel where he stayed caught the disease and carried it to Singapore, Canada, Vietnam and other hospitals in Hong Kong.

On February 10, news of the disease was posted on ProMed, an international e-mail notification service for infectious diseases outbreaks. By April 8, there were 2671 confirmed cases of SARS in 19 countries, and 103 deaths.

A palpable sense of panic gripped the health authorities around the world. "Mother nature is the ultimate terrorist," says an editorial in the journal Nature. "Powerless to stop the spread," says New Scientist magazine.

Eleven laboratories around the world participated in the hunt for the disease agent, a collaborative effort organized via teleconferencing, since March 17, by virologist Klaus Stohr at the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters in Geneva.

Malik Pieris of the University of Hong Kong was the first to identify coronavirus (which causes colds and pneumonia) just four days later. This finding was replicated in other laboratories. The virus and antibodies against the virus were detected in many, though not all infected patients, but were not found in more than 800 healthy controls tested.

There is some remaining doubt, however, whether the coronavirus is the complete story. John Tam, director of virology at Prince of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong, found another virus, the human metapneumovirus in 25 out of 53 SARS patients, as have laboratories in Canada and Germany.

Metapneumoviru belongs to the family Paramyxoviridae, which includes viruses...