Polio, DES Crack, and Proofs of Concept

In the most recent _Science_ some biologists gripe that the scientists who synthesized infectious poliovirus from its description were not doing anything novel, just a "prank". Any biologist would have known that, since you could concatenate nucleotide strings, and since polio needs nothing besides DNA (eg no enzymes) to be infectious, obviously you can synth polio. This is *remarkably* similar to cognescenti reactions to the DES Crack project. Yes, it was obvious it would work, and it was largely unnecessary (from a security-planning perspective) to actually do it. But it was proof-of-concept. Like synthesizing polio. -- "Better bombing through chemistry." -John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org on use of speed by US pilots