ANCIENT VIRUS REVIVED FROM DEFROSTING PERMAFROST - OIL EXPLORATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE CAN RELEASE FRIGHTENING VIRUSES

By Professor Jonathan Ball, 

Professor of Molecular Virology, Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences at Nottingham University.

 

The chilling implications of an ancient virus dug up in Siberia: Diseases from the past could once again ravage humanity.  Diseases from the past could once again ravage humanity.  Last week, some of my fellow scientists ‘brought back to life’ a virus called Pithovirus sibericum, which had been lying dormant 100ft down in the Siberian permafrost for some 30,000 years.

 

'Both oil exploration and changes in the climate are capable of releasing not only smallpox, but potentially even viruses we have never seen before'

As a professor of molecular virology, I find it fascinating that a virus could survive for so long.

We freeze viruses in laboratories all the time, as it’s the best way to preserve and store them, but the viruses we study are never more than a few years old — let alone thousands of centuries.

 

Before anybody starts to panic, the virus found in Siberia is harmless to humans, and is only really a problem if you are an amoeba.  However, as the project’s leader, Professor Jean-Michel Claverie, declared, the reanimation of Pithovirus sibericum raises the disturbing possibility that other, far more dangerous viruses could emerge from the permafrost — the layer of soil that remains frozen for years on end.  Today, some of that layer is starting to melt, and as a result viruses that have been safely frozen for thousands of centuries could emerge. 

 

But another way they could emerge is companies drilling through the permafrost on the hunt for resources such as oil.  ‘It is a recipe for disaster,’ said Professor Claverie. ‘If you start having industrial explorations, those old layers will be penetrated and this is where the danger is coming from.’  It’s that danger that I describe in the doomsday scenario above, in which the smallpox virus is released during the drilling for oil in Siberia. 

 

It is perfectly possible that an oil company could drill in an area where ancient corpses lie. Some of these corpses may contain viruses such as smallpox — a disease that afflicted many of our ancestors all over the world.  In the past century alone, some 300 million people were killed by smallpox, which was eradicated only by the huge vaccination campaign masterminded by the World Health Organisation. The disease was certainly present in the Arctic, and many people in the far east of Russia are known to have died of smallpox.

 

In 2004, French and Russian scientists found several graves in the vast Russian republic of Sakha in which the corpses were infected with variola — the virus that causes smallpox.  Of course, as this was a strictly controlled scientific project, the corpses would have been handled with the utmost care. Such excavations usually take place inside sealed tents, and anybody associated with the project is inoculated against smallpox. 

 

During industrial drilling for oil, huge cores of ice are brought up to the surface, which are then left to melt in the sun. In theory, these could be contaminated.  But let’s just say — for the sake of the scenario — there was a virus, even though the chance of that would be incredibly small.  Viruses don’t like being left alone, and they need to get on board a host quickly. The fictional David Smith would have been one of the workers handling these cores, and he could become infected.

 

This would be the crucial moment when the reanimated virus, perhaps frozen for centuries, suddenly finds some warm living human tissue in which to make its new home.  David would not realise for almost a week that he had smallpox, and while living and working in close proximity to his colleagues, he would be incubating the deadly virus.  And then, despite starting to feel wretched, he gets on an aeroplane, which are notorious places in which infections can be passed, and furthermore, spread around the world.

 

If this ever happened, it truly would represent a global emergency.  Hospitals would have to work flat out to isolate and cope with patients, and unless the health authorities reacted quickly, it is quite possible that hundreds could die, as so few of us are inoculated against the disease. For those who caught the disease and survived, they would be left with horrific scars for life.  I should, however, stress that such a possibility is extremely small indeed. The chances of such a pandemic being caused by a reanimated virus should certainly not keep us awake at night.

 

There is other good news as well. Last week there was some speculation that virus-bearing corpses exposed by the melting permafrost could also release their deadly agents into the living population.

This is even more unlikely, as the corpses that are exposed in this way spend a lot of time in what geologists call the ‘active layer’ — the surface part of the earth that is affected by the seasonal changes in temperature. 

 

For a virus, being buffeted between thawing and freezing is the worst thing that can happen, as it tends to destroy them.  However, as a scientist, I accept that there is always risk, no matter how small. Both oil exploration and changes in the climate are capable of releasing not only smallpox, but potentially even viruses we have never seen before.  If my doomsday scenario did ever take place, we would need to act fast. However, in the meantime, you should be more concerned about the viruses that are already out there. 

 

An imagined but plausible scenario:

 

At first, oil worker David Smith thought he had something like the flu. He wasn’t that surprised, as he normally caught some sort of bug after the flight from Moscow.  He spent the first day back home in Manchester in bed, head and muscles aching. He felt wretched, although he had enough strength to muster a laugh when his wife accused him of suffering from ‘man flu’. 

 

The next day, he felt a little better, and managed to take the dog for a short walk to the local pub. The next day, he thought, he would be back at work.  However, David never made it to work the following day, or even any other days, because when he awoke, he found his face, trunk and limbs were covered by a rash of small, hard spots.

 

His wife put some cream on them, all the time muttering that this was what happened if you spent your life helping companies drill for oil in Siberia.  This time, David was too weak to laugh, and by that evening, he had been admitted to an Accident & Emergency Department.  Initially, the doctors were mystified, but when the test results came through, they were astounded. David Smith had smallpox, a disease that — save for one small outbreak in 1978 — had not been seen in Britain for several decades.

 

An emergency was declared, and everybody who had come into contact with David was traced, isolated and inoculated. By the end of the next week, David had died. His wife followed a few days later.  Their deaths made headlines across the world, not least because other cases were beginning to emerge from as far away as Caracas and Sydney, all of which were connected to David’s flight from Moscow.  By the end of the month, scores of cases had been reported. One of mankind’s biggest killers was back. Such an apocalyptic scenario is, thankfully, at the moment mere fantasy, but there is a small chance that one day it might come true.

Source - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2579732/The-chilling-implications-ancient-virus-dug-Siberia-Diseases-past-ravage-humanity.html

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