Cheap and cheerful - apparently guided by this principle in TNK BP, when they decided to liquidate the consequences of the accident in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. A giant oil slick had to destroy the artificially bred in the United States bacteria Cynthia. You of costly work on localization of oil or the cost of chemicals ...
April 20, 2010 on a semi-submersible oil rig deep drilling South Korean owned by British Petroleum, there was an explosion that led to the months-long oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico waters. From April to September 2010 emerged, at least five million barrels of oil. The hydrocarbon spot took an area of over 100,000 square kilometers, destroying all life within its borders. Moreover, such a number of viscous substance has changed the circulation of ocean waters of different temperatures, leading to the decay of the warm Gulf Stream and extremely unpleasant climate change in Europe.
In a catastrophic financial situation was and BP: In addition to direct losses, it was necessary to compensate for environmental damage caused by the disaster, as well as economic losses fishing industry and tourism. By the beginning of 2013 the payment of BP on these grounds have reached $ 27 billion.
Huge financial losses, apparently played no role in that decided to eliminate unconventional oil spill, using artificially derived bacterium Cynthia. This microorganism (Mycoplasma laboratorium) was launched at the American Institute of J. Craig Venter, a pioneer of genetic engineering during the first decade of the XXI century. Twenty scientists led by Nobel laureate Hemilton Smith managed, juggling chromosomes of the parasitic bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium, to bring so-called minimal bacterial genome, known bacterium Cynthia - artificial organism with a fully computer-designed genome, which consists of a chain of special watermark and does not contain, as all other living organisms on Earth, the natural DNA. Among the features of Cynthia - the ability to process crude oil quickly and effectively, while actively reproducing.
In 2011 Cynthia launched in the Gulf of Mexico and it went: oil slicks, indeed, have to lose weight before our eyes, the area of contamination was rapidly decreasing.
However, very soon the bacterium refused to organic matter in the form of oil and switched to a living organism. Followed by mass bird deaths in Arkansas (5000), the fish off the coast of North Louisiana (more than 100,000), 128 employees of BP engaged in liquidation of the accident, sick, while demanding from them not to go to public hospitals in order to avoid leakage of information ...
More - more. People swim in the Gulf of Mexico, covered with sores, and after a few days of dying in agony: ulcers are formed and in the internal organs, causing internal bleeding and a guaranteed death. U.S. media wrote about the death of an unknown virus. U.S. authorities on the extent of the disaster hide, but can give an idea of the University research the District of Columbia, according to which about 40 percent of residents of the territories adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico, acquired acute respiratory tract and skin, and one in four is planning to move home.
Unknown illness strikes and the inhabitants of the Arctic: the mass death of seals is accompanied by skin lesions and internal organs of animals. Veterinary specialists of Chukotka note that dead seals found no signs of any infectious disease, or radiation injury, is scheduled to conduct a more in-depth research. Fixed mass death of seals in Alaska, near the town of Barrow. Signs of similar ...
Meanwhile, Cynthia artificial bacterium has the ability to multiply rapidly, functioning and replicate in cells in which they are introduced. Cynthia can not be destroyed by antibiotics and may spread with rain, causing rashes and allergies. Based on these properties, the body, which falls Cynthia doomed.
Recent studies have shown that bacteria have reached the Gulf Stream, which bathes Europe. What might be the consequences if confirmed data on lethality bacilli can only guess. The bill will not seals ...
The conclusion is simple - for the sake of the penny, compared to the scale of possible planetary catastrophe, economy, multinational giant BP and the latter-day Dr. Moreau, is likely to let the genie out of the bottle: nature has not created anything like artificial bacteria, respectively, and no compensatory antidote against it. Will it be possible to create as soon as possible to have a guarantee against a possible pandemic? In this there is no certainty.
