Black Death's Genome Cracked

exceed writes: "This article on Wired, and this article on Yahoo! News states that scientists have decoded the genome of the bubonic plague bacterium. This will now (hopefully soon) lead to vaccinations and treatments for the disease it causes."

Comments

Re:Wasteful

[Alien54]

It killed 200 million people in the 14th century and continues to kill about 3,000 people each year according to the World Health Organization. Some experts are newly worried that the bug could be used as a bio-weapon in light of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Which is why you worry. People playing with bio engineering could come up with a new version that could be very nasty.

To clarify a couple points

[alewando]

1. Antibiotics help a lot with treating bubonic plague, but they're only effective if the disease is first properly diagnosed. Because people are no longer used to contracting fatal diseases (which bubonic plague always is if left untreated), and because the symptoms are not all that different from symptoms of diseases people are used to shrugging off, the disease is often not diagnosed in time.
2. Releasing the genome to the general public will help vaccination discoveries far more than it will help people who would use the plague for biological warfare. Frankly, you don't have to know the genetic sequence that underlies the organism in order to culture it and construct a suitable delivery device. In contrast, the benefits due to a vaccine discovery are obvious and numerous.
3. A couple people do die of the bubonic plague every year, mostly in Asia and Africa. In addition to the importance of antibiotic treatment and a vaccine discovery, the importance of improving hygiene standards cannot be understated. It's a three-part chain involving rodents, fleas, and humans, so if you eliminate human contact with both, then you've effectively cut humans out of the loop and eliminated human infections.