Where lab-made DNA is created — and barely policed

Almost 20 years ago, James Randerson ordered a sequence of smallpox DNA. Smallpox is the only human disease to have ever been successfully eradicated — 46 years ago as of yesterday. It’s one of the deadliest infections in human history, killing about 500 million people over three millennia — with 300 million of those deaths estimated to have occurred in the last century alone.

If someone — like a disgruntled scientist, terror group, or rogue nation — were to synthesize and unleash smallpox, we could see the reemergence of a disease that killed three out of 10 people it infected, one that the vast majority of humanity is now no longer protected against.

Thankfully, Randerson was a journalist for The Guardian writing an exposé on the lax customer screening policies of DNA synthesis compani