The orders arrive by fax and e-mail 24 hours a day from pharmaceutical companies, government agencies and academic scientists. And every day at Integrated DNA Technologies, an army of machines responds by producing hundreds of batches of microscopic merchandise: custom-designed snippets of genetic material.

"You could buy your own used DNA synthesizer and make whatever you want in the comfort and privacy of your own garage."

"If you can go from a viral DNA sequence on paper to an infectious agent using things you can order out of catalogues, obviously that has big implications for bioterrorism."

"With a little more advancement in technology you could probably make something more complex than polio. Smallpox is probably just two or three years down the road, maybe less."

"You could get one part [of the sequence] from one company and another part from another company and completely circumvent the law."