Now this is frightening

The threat of a terrorist bio attack has always been a huge fear- well it seems that it might be much easier for terrorists to get their hands on the materials required than previously thought. A New Scientist investigation has discovered that-

Armed with a fake email address, a would-be bioterrorist could probably order the building blocks of a deadly biological weapon online, and receive them by post within weeks.

They contacted a number of companies involved in gene sequencing and found that they carry out virtually no security checks whatsoever- including screening the material they're asked to work on for their bioterror threat. Only five out of the sixteen companies, found via Google, screened every gene sequence they were asked to work on.

some firms freely admit that they run no sequence screens. "That's not our business," says Bob Xue, a director of Genemed Synthesis in South San Francisco.

Given San Fran's recent record this "nothing to do with me" attitude is hardly surprising. And it's despite the fact that open source "Blackwatch" software is available to scan for threats. The problem is that terrorists could,

order genes that confer virulence to dangerous pathogens such as the Ebola virus, and engineer them into another virus or bacterium. They could also order genes for a hazardous bacterial toxin - although many of these are also available by isolating the microorganisms from the environment.

So in effect a terrorist could create a super-Ebola-like virus to be used as a weapon. As terrifying as this possibility is, the response is utterly ineffectual-

The US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, set up last year to advise the US government on which advances in biology could be exploited by terrorists, is also considering the issue.

Avian flu is a threat which may or may not occur and yet governments are spending billions of dollars on the possibility of a pandemic- terrorists are a very real clear and present danger and yet there's no security set up with these firms to prevent highly virulent disease strains being "weaponised".