It seems that the attempt to cope with the oil pollution of the Gulf of Mexico with the first synthetic microorganism ended in disrepair. Instead of quietly eating hydrocarbons and not paying more attention to anything else, an artificially created monster named "Cynthia" began to attack living beings, including humans.
“Cheap and cheerful” - obviously, this principle was guided by TNK British Petroleum when they decided to eliminate the consequences of the 2010 accident in the Gulf of Mexico. The giant oil slick was to be destroyed by the bacteria "Cynthia" artificially bred in the USA. No costly oil containment work, no costs for chemicals …
On April 20, 2010, an explosion occurred on a South Korean-made semi-submersible oil platform for ultra-deep drilling, owned by British Petroleum, which led to a multi-month release of oil into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. From April to September 2010, at least five million barrels of oil flowed out. The hydrocarbon slick covered an area of over 100,000 square kilometers, destroying all life within its borders. Moreover, such an amount of a viscous substance changed the circulation of the oceanic waters of different temperatures, which led to the attenuation of the warm current of the Gulf Stream and extremely unpleasant climatic changes in Europe.
British Petroleum also found itself in a disastrous financial position: in addition to direct losses, it was necessary to compensate for the damage from the environmental disaster, as well as the economic losses of the fishing industry and tourism. By early 2013, BP's payments on these grounds reached $ 27 billion.
Huge financial losses, apparently, played an important role in the fact that they decided to liquidate the spilled oil in an unconventional way, using the artificially bred Cynthia bacterium. This microorganism (Mycoplasma laboratorium) was bred at the American Institute of J. Craig Venter, a pioneer in genetic engineering during the first decade of the 21st century. Twenty scientists, led by the Nobel laureate Hemilton Smith, managed, by juggling the chromosomes of the parasitic bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium, to deduce the so-called "minimal bacterial genome", called the bacterium Cynthia - an artificial organism with a completely computer-generated genome, which consists of special chains of "watermarks" and does not contain, like all other living organisms on Earth, natural DNA. Among the characteristics of Cynthia is the ability to process crude oil quickly and efficiently, while actively multiplying.
In 2011, Cynthia was launched into the Gulf of Mexico and things started to go: oil spills, indeed, began to lose weight before our eyes, the area of pollution began to rapidly decrease.
However, very soon the bacteria abandoned organic matter in the form of oil and switched to living organisms. There were massive deaths of birds in Arkansas (over 5,000), fish off the coast of North Louisiana (over 100,000), 128 BP workers involved in the liquidation of the disaster fell ill, while they were required not to go to public hospitals to avoid information leakage …
Further more. People who bathed in the Gulf of Mexico became covered with ulcers and after a few days died in agony: ulcers formed in the internal organs, causing internal bleeding and guaranteed death. The American media wrote about death from an unknown virus. The US authorities are hiding information about the scale of this disaster, but a study by the University of the District of Columbia can give an idea, according to which about 40 percent of residents of the territories adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico have acquired acute respiratory and skin diseases, and one in four plans to change their place of residence.
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An unknown disease also affects the inhabitants of the Arctic: the massive death of seals is accompanied by damage to the skin and internal organs of animals. Veterinarians from the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug note that no signs of infectious diseases or radiation injuries were found in the dead seals, and more in-depth studies are planned. A massive death of seals was also recorded in Alaska, near the city of Barrow. The signs are similar …
Meanwhile, the artificial bacterium Cynthia has the ability to multiply rapidly, self-reproducing and functioning in the cells into which they invade. Cynthia cannot be eradicated with antibiotics and can spread in the rain, causing rashes and allergies. Judging by these properties, the organism into which Cynthia falls is doomed.
Recent studies have shown that bacteria have already reached the Gulf Stream, which washes Europe. What the consequences could be if the data on the lethality of the bacillus are confirmed, one can only guess. The account will not go to the seals …
The conclusion is simple - for the sake of a penny, compared to the scale of a possible planetary catastrophe, economy, the transnational giant BP and the newly-minted "Dr. Moreau", it is likely that they let the genie out of the bottle: nature has not created anything like an artificial bacterium, respectively, there is no compensating antidote against her. Will it be possible to create it as soon as possible in order to have a guarantee against a possible pandemic? There is no certainty about this.
YURI SKIDANOV