Well, is it hard or not?

Replicating the 1918 influenza strain is a remarkable feat of science, requiring astonishing dedication and the best and brightest minds working with state-of-the-art facilities. And we should worry that terrorists are about to do it.

Those are the two contradictory ideas in this remarkable column by Charles Krauthammer.

Can we please be clear on this? Is replicating the 1918 flu virus hard, or isn't it?

Because if it's hard, I'm not going to worry about guys doing it in a cave in Afghanistan. But if it's easy, then I don't see why we're making such a big deal about the scientific importance of it.

To be fair, I think Krauthammer has made the mistake of confusing knowing the DNA sequence of the virus and actually building a live infectious virus. This is an understandable mistake, given the popular idea (i.e. Jurassic Park) that once you know the gene sequence of a living thing, you know everything about it.

But the real world is very different. Sequencing DNA is relatively easy (as such things go), even if the samples you have are old and degraded. But building an entire organism from whole cloth is a different matter.

In order to get the entire organism, you have to not only have a complete DNA sequence, but you also have to build all the biochemical machinery and structures which allow that strand of DNA to function, replicate, and (in the case of influenza) become infectious.

It's like the difference between having a copy of Microsoft Office on CD-ROM, and having a complete computer with Office installed. Without the computer, the CD-ROM is just a pretty piece of plastic and aluminum.

Krauthammer also makes good points about the physical security of the virus sample. Now that live virus exists, it is orders of magnitude easier to steal a sample than it is to make your own.

But these considerations are no different than for other infectious agents like ebola, smallpox, and (potentially) current strains of bird flu. The appropriate response is not to panic that there is a new infectious agent in the world, but rather to make sure that all highly dangerous specimens are properly contained. This is no different than the problem we already faced, and the implication that the 1918 strain presents some brand-new risk is simply wrong.