making of morphine, he sent his draft paper to Dr. Oye, suggesting the debate become more public.
One crucial question is whether the technology is of more use to the pharmaceutical industry or drug cartels. Dr. Oye argues it is the latter.
Companies are always seeking painkillers that create less addictive euphorias or do not paralyze breathing muscles, and having a predictable process they could tweak would be useful, but they already have a cheap, steady supply of opium from India, Turkey and Australia, where poppies are grown legally by licensed farmers.
That chain will be hard to disrupt. Since the 1960s, when it was created to convince Turkey to crack down on heroin, the International Narcotics Control Board has set quotas. Thousands of small farmers, their bankers and equipment suppliers depend on the sales, and they have local political clout just as American corn farmers do.
Also, pharmaceutical companies can already synthesize opiates in their labs. Fentanyl, a painkiller 100 times as powerful as morphine, is synthetic, as is loperamide (Imodium), an antidiarrheal opiate.
Heroin sellers, by contrast, must smuggle raw materials out of lawless Afghanistan, Laos, Myanmar and Mexico. Their supply lines are disrupted when any local power — from the Taliban to the United States Army — cracks down. Brewing near their customers would save themmany costs: farmers, guards, guns, planes, bribes and so on.
One frightening prospect Dr. Oye raised was how viciously drug cartels might react if Americans with bioengineering know-how started competing with them. Gunmen from Mexican drug gangs have taken control of many secret marijuana fields in American forests.
His commentary suggested several possible steps to prevent misuse of the technology. The yeasts could be locked in secure laboratories, worked on by screened employees. Sharing them with other scientists without government permission could be outlawed.
Their DNA could be put on a watch list, as sequences foranthrax and smallpox are, so any attempt to buy them from DNA supply houses would raise flags. Chemically silent DNA “watermarks” could be inserted so stolen yeasts could be traced. Or the strains could be made “wimpier and harder to grow,” Dr. Oye said, perhaps by making them require nutrients that were kept secret.
Agent You said he did not want to comment on Dr. Oye’s suggestions, but was glad a threat had been identified by scientists before it was a reality, adding, “If this occurred across the board, it would make the F.B.I.’s life a heck of a lot easier.”
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