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 companies, rather than an aspiring bioterrorist.

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“All it took was a[n] invented company name, a mobile phone number, a free email address and a house in north London to receive the order by post,” Randerson wrote.

In the nearly 20 years since, the field has

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