Slashdot Mirror
Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox
Tucker clearly wrote the book believing that the use of smallpox as a biological weapon was a worrisome, but not especially likely, threat, and on September 10th, most of us would not only have concurred, but would probably never have thought that such a thing could happen; after all, smallpox remains the only infectious disease to have been eradicated by humans. After reading Scourge, you will be grateful that the mysterious sender of anthrax-laced mail doesn't have the power of this infinitely worse pestilence in his or her hands.
The smallpox virus, or variola, is a biscuit-shaped bundle of DNA and protein casing, so tiny it can only be viewed with an electron microscope, yet devastating to the human body. The disease kills up to thirty percent of its victims and leaves the rest permanently scarred after battling fever, nausea, and boils so painful that thirsty patients often refused water, unable to swallow without excruciating hurt. Perhaps to be merciful, Tucker has included no photographs of suffering victims covered in the gruesome pustules of the disease, but should you have a morbid curiosity to see one, visit the Polio Eradication Photo Gallery.
Scourge is not a story about a virus, however; it is a story about people. Tucker tells of the history of smallpox and civilizations, how political machinations combined with idealism to bring about the global cooperation that removed smallpox from the earth, and the elaborate subterfuge used by the Soviet Union to hide its research on smallpox as a potential biological weapon. Fans of Laurie Garrett's (The Coming Plague, Betrayal of Trust) journalistic style will appreciate Tucker's treatment; the major figures in the history of smallpox are presented in terms of their personalities and personal struggles, rather than in simple obituary-style listings of what they did.
In describing the early history of the disease, Scourge is fascinating. You may have known that smallpox helped Hernando Cortes conquer the Aztecs in the sixteenth century, but perhaps you didn't know that smallpox may have been the Athenian epidemic Thucydides describes in his account of the Peloponnesian war. The superstitions that existed prior to the germ theory of disease - and, in some areas, long enough to hinder the last stages of the smallpox eradication campaign in the late 1970s - seem truly impossible now, but such was belief prior to the germ theory of disease.
The conquering of smallpox remains one of the great triumphs of mankind - the only infectious disease successfully eradicated by humans. The history of the eradication campaign is one of cooperation between nations and between scientists, but it is also a story of obstacles placed in the way by reluctant governments, the rapid spread of disease due to world travel, and the stubbornness of the superstitious. Here, you will meet such figures as D.A. Henderson, the reluctant leader of the World Health Organization campaign, and Viktor Zhdanov, the man who first proposed a global eradication campaign to the WHO in 1958, then, ironically, became the first chairman of the Soviet council that oversaw the secret biowarfare program beginning in the 1970s.
The clash between the traditional openness of the scientific community, where information is shared relatively freely, and the secretiveness of bureaucracies, where being in the know is a mark of power, is a recurring theme. Often, you'll find yourself rooting for the researchers, who frequently had to reason with government officials who knew nothing about science, but you may be surprised to find yourself agreeing with the government - specifically, the Department of Defense - a time or two.
The story of the Soviet Union's successful cover-up of its research into the use of smallpox as a biological weapon is unsettling, to say the least. Do you find the aftermath of a nuclear bomb impressive? Imagine that bomb followed by an ICBM bearing smallpox - a disease that kills nearly a third of its victims in a normal situation, but would be attacking survivors of a nuclear attack, whose immune systems would be severely compromised by radiation damage. Lest you think that earlier vaccinations might have helped, the smallpox vaccine is effective for only about ten years before revaccination is required, and the United States had stopped mandatory vaccinations long before the last known case of naturally occurring smallpox was diagnosed in 1978. Such a warhead was one of the foci of the Soviet program, even as facilities were carefully disguised so as to give the appearance of compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention treaty. Western governments did not learn of the full scope of the Soviet effort until 1989, and kept the information classified until former Soviet smallpox research scientist Ken Alibek (ne Kanatjan Alibekov) told the story to the American press in 1998.
Although, officially, the last remaining stores of variola virus are kept in Moscow and at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Tucker raises the possibility that other governments - particularly Iraq - may have retained secret stores of smallpox virus, citing enough circumstantial evidence to keep his speculation from being easily discounted. He also brings up the possibility that a government might, to avoid the certain retaliation that would come from launching a smallpox attack, supply the virus to a group like al-Qaeda, then deny responsibility when the terrorists release the disease. Tucker finished documenting these speculations well before the September 11th attacks; now, one hopes they aren't prophetic.
In the case of smallpox, the truth is as morbidly fascinating as any fiction could possibly be, and Tucker tells the story of those who fought to end the scourge and those who would have preserved it as a weapon with equal aplomb, yet from the perspective of a world where smallpox was a piece of history and sophisticated biological attack a back-burner phenomenon. Now that fears of biological warfare are all too real, Scourge is exceptionally relevant - and hopefully not a prediction of what is to come.
You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.
Scientific American, Dec 1996
http://www.sciam.com/1296issue/1296cole.html
Living Terrors
Living Terrors
by Michael T. OsterholmPh.D., former Minnesota State Epidemiologist, and John Schwartz, a science reporter for The Washington Post.
Lays out scenarios for anthrax and smallpox, some history of biowar, why public health system needs to be restored.
The Johns Hopkins University Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies:
home
Smallpox
CDC reports on smallpox attack scenarios:
The scenario
Aftermath of a Hypothetical Smallpox Disaster
Part Two
CDC
Home
S,mallpox
Picture
Modeling Attacks
Public Health Links:
The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance
by Laurie Garrett
Covers emerging and re-emerging diseases such as HIV, Ebola, Tuberculosis, Smallpox.
Betrayal of Trust : The Collapse of Global Public Health
by Laurie Garrett, Steven M. Wolinsky
How the public health system, in USA and abroad, was allowed to disintegrate.
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
by Randy Shilts
A chronicle of the first 5 years of the aids epidemic.
Richard Preston (Hot Zone author) on smallpox
Best Slashdot Co
Chicken soup books will start selling again because people are going to be scared of getting chicken pox.
Sheesh! There's no more of a biological terror threat than there was 15 years ago. People are so paranoid.
The New Yorker's The Demon in the Freezer is mirrored at Cryptome, and is an excellent online read about smallpox; it takes about half an hour. And it is truly disturbing.
If you only read a few parts, read two things:
- the part where Russian scientists warn western observers that "your vaccines won't protect you" against the Soviet's new breed of smallpox.
- the part about insect poxviruses, which turn caterpillars into pure crytstallized virus.
Blech. I hope we have the courage as a nation to go ahead and make the vaccine, in mass quantities, the same way it used to be made. The main objection raised in the article is that "by today's standards" cow puss is an unacceptable vaccine. Hopefully "today's standards" are that life without a vaccine is unacceptable. But that's just my opinion.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
Slightly off topic, the anthrax attacks.
Does anyone else wonder why they just seem to have stopped all of a sudden.
Did the person(s) sending the letters run out of anthrax? Or perhaps was this just a first phase? Just a small scale experiment to see how a controlled release of antrax spreads.
I just wish the whole small pox idea was never brought up. But I guess with this book having been released even before the initial attacks, the thought was on someone's mind. I just feel now every time someone talks about small pox being used in a biological attack it increases the chances of it happening (I guess I'm not helping any).
You can thank the US government for its biological warfare research in the early 50's to late 60's for giving terrorists so many good ideas...
I can see it now, millions die after infected musquitos unleashed on the US...
BAH!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
That we know of. Read the New Yorker piece, a couple of us have linked to it. The Russian facilities are not very secure, and the inventory control there is not good.
Best Slashdot Co
When I read something like this review, I experience twinges of fear. Smallpox sounds like it is truly terrible. And yet, somehow, we, the people of this world, did manage to get rid of it. For the future of the world, we need to recognize that we are one people first, and citizens of a nation second. This doesn't mean we all need to believe the same things, etc. This is about unity in diversity. And unity isn't abstract: its about action. Getting rid of smallpox was an example of unity in diversity. The people of the world got rid of it. Now, can we get rid of AIDS? Can we get rid of Malaria? What about our physical environment? What about nuclear weapons? What about poverty? These are things that can only be solved with unity of action.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
There was a episode of Nova about the very same topic last night on our local PBS affiliate. Quite disturbing, especially in regards to the experiments of the Soviet Union even after global treaties had been signed.
The pictures of smallpox victims were even more disturbing.
Check out the schedule, maybe it's on again, for those interested.
That the US government is currently working on a program to vaccinate the entire population against smallpox and anthrax, and that they just aren't talking about it because they can't do it immediately, and talking about a program they can't carry out would only cause panic.
But I doubt it. I am guessing the powers that be are hoping that the biowar threat has "calmed down" and that we are going "back to normal". In this scenario, mass vaccination won't be considered until after the next major outbreak, when it might be too late.
We'll see.
sPh
I know this is slightly offtopic, but I downloaded a Carlin MP3 from an HBO show from 1999 that I never saw or heard before. The first ten minutes he talked about terrorists and how they're not going to be stupid enough to use a bomb, but they'll take knives and dozens of other weapons that the airlines would let you take on board. He then went into talking about how we'd all be afraid of anthrax in our drinking water.
I know it's just comedy, but he's a smart guy and that was just a little creepy hearing about this stuff from a 2 year old recording.
Probably part of the faked moon landing.
sPh
I guess we didn't bomb Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sudan in the last 15 years. Nor did $300M of Saudi inheritance and an organization devoted to the destruction of the USA (and by proxy, our Western allies) spring up. Right?
The huge difference between an entity like the Soviet Union and a network like Al Qaeda is that, while the USSR was highly prepared and enamored of the will to power, the people holding the reins were not particularly interested in dying as a means of killing others. So while the cynical machinations of the Soviet power elite produced the finest weaponization programs for biowarfare yet seen, they were only intended for use as mop-up agents after a nuclear attack.
The Islamic fundies (not particularly worse than Christian fundies or ultranationalist Israelis, just more prominent) that have taken center stage lately are perfectly willing to die for their cause, as long as they can kill a few unarmed women and children while they're at it. What better for the slaughter of innocents than an epidemic? It worked for Genghis Khan (cf. catapulting plague-ridden corpses into sieged cities). These are not conventional enemies and they are not limiting themselves to conventional warfare. Moreover, a network of semi-autonomous individuals without a distinct nationality, i.e., nothing to lose, is a much more elusive target than a static nation-state like Iraq, Libya, or Afghanistan. So the consequences of being "caught" are also different.
That, in conjunction with the underfunding and collapse of the public health systems around the world, is why I submit that a response to biowarfare is more crucial now than 15 years ago.
And the rebuilding of a worldwide public health infrastructure would be a damn nice side effect of this new urgency, IMHO.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
You're kidding yourself if you think that unemployed scientists from the Soviet biopreparat program would be totally unwilling to cart out some specimens and go work for another nation, provided the pay was good enough.
Inspections of the Soviet and Iraqi research facilities in the 1990's indicated that both had been actively working on biological agents. Yeltsin went ahead and publicly stated this, then dismantled the Russian programs. Hussein, of course, has not called any press conferences on the matter.
So, you are stating that both US military inspectors and the former president of Russia are liars. You need to provide some solid evidence of your position in order to be taken seriously!
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
while you're at it.
The use of biological agents in war is as old as war itself.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
IANAD, but it seems to me that the smallpox threat is a bit overblown. The victory over smallpox was in large part due to the characteristics of the disease itself: short incubation period, very visible presentation. These characteristics would also make it easier to fight in the case of a terrorist attack.
FWIW, my Dad had mild case of smallpox as a child. He was not horribly disfigured nor did he describe it as particularly uncomfortable as diseases go.
I don't know why everyone is so focused on smallbox, even if it's an awful disease.
Ken Alibek (formerly Kantajin Alibekov) who was the deputy director of the immense Soviet Biopreparat biowarfare research and manufacture organizion defected to the US in the early 90's, and has written a book on it as well as testifying to congress and having been thoroughly debriefed on the Soviet program.... They worked on a whole slew of biological weapons including things like marlburg virus (similar to ebola) that would make you wish you only had smallpox!
The Soviets stockpiled weaponized smallpox, plague, marlburg, tularemia etc in quantities of tens of tons each! They aqpparently killed around 100,000 nazis with tularemia in the Battle of Stalingrad.
That's true, if there is an outbreak. If there is not, then people are risking injury and death for no benefit.
I was vaccinated twice, once in childhood and again in the Army, but the latter was 15 years ago. The vaccine does wear off after 10-20 years.
Best Slashdot Co
It should be noted that a person with smallpox is not contagious until the person is showing symptoms. Therefore, a terrorist would have to have boils and rashes in order to be contagious - and therefore more likely to be identified as having smallpox. (In addition, dying in battle is different than dying a slow, agonizing death by smallpox - I think it would be harder to get martyrs to take smallpox.)
In addition, the smallpox vaccine works extremely quickly - you can be vaccinated several days later (after having been exposed) and the vaccine will work. So, although the terrorist walking with smallpox is a threat, it's not the worst.
Finally, smallpox is extremely hard to contain - so a terrorist spreading smallpox in NYC could easily end up infecting his own community (what with worldwide travel so available these days.)
The "typhoid terrorist" scenario is certainly possible, but I think it is unlikely.
Frontline special: Plague Wars
This is the most balanced, incisive, and original presentation I've seen on the topic. It was written several years ago and was not rushing to meet some deadline or focused on the current agent du jour. It's fantastic.
Anyone who likes Laurie Garrett's work (or Ken Alibek's) will find this site worth digging into, deeply.
Have "fun".
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
I haven't read the Smallpox book reviewed here. But if you're interested in the history of disease, I heartily recommend Rats, Lice and History. Not a boring text, it meanders all over the place with a very dry wit and makes a truly horrible subject enjoyable to read about.
Time to start milking cows again. At least cyberporn gave us lots of practice.
It is far more important that we, as the only superpower in the world, work NOT on additional countermeasures to combat terrorism and biological attacks, but on making such attacks irrelevant.
You're absolutely right in pointing to our hopeless foreign policy as the instigator of this entire ordeal.
If our military forces are used only in accordance with their constitutionally aligned duties, this paradigm would not exist, and terrorist attacks would be a non-issue.
Devastating weapons
Fanatical followers
Leaders bent on pure society, world domination
Using science and technology to support their own ends, even where use would appear to conflict with their beliefs.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
We keep the stocks for research into the disease. I think there's an effort underway to sequence the genetic code. Hopefully the research will lead to a safer vaccine than the one we have now. It's based on cow pus.
Best Slashdot Co
It's not the small pox I am worried about. It's the BIG pox.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
This guy is not a troll, and he does have a point (about the dolphins)... I think that if everybody were to convert to Islam (or any other religeon for that matter) people would jsut fight between sects and over minor differences. Human beings are quarrelsome, territorial, disagreeable animals and we need a reason to feel superior and we've proven over time that if we have no real reason to fight, we will anyway. If we have paradise, we'll find a way to fuck it up (and no I don't believe in the garden of eden and all that stuff, but it is a good fable, and it does illustrate my point pretty well).
As for intelligent (and even unitelligent) animals, they will be glad to see us go. Even if we nuke everything into a radioactive smoking pile of rubble i doubt we could completely eradicate the volcanic vent bacteria, nor blue green algae, or a bunch of other little seeds of life. When people talk about saving the environment/saving the planet/ etc... what they really mean is "save ourselves" (which is a fine message i guess), but we're playing with our own destruction, the planet will go on without us, and as resilliant as we may be, we're not the most resilliant species out there. Whatever, fuck-it, i'm gonna go eat lunch.
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
Get yourself informed.
One of the last smallpox outbreaks in the 70's occurred along the Iran/Iraq border.
Can u convince yourself that there is ZERO change that there were no specimens taken and preserved?
I can't.
I would strongly suggest looking up the book of _A Higher Form of Killing_ (iirc, by Harris and Paxman). It's a sobering book. I found it in our high school library in Los Alamos. I'd be curious to see if it is still there...
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
I'm an old bastard based on typical /. readership and I've have shots to protect me aginst this silly small pox crud. I don't see a problem, why should you or did someone else forget about you too?
I have Smallpox.
...
Well, it wasn't wiped out in MY house!
—Homer Simpson
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
So we wan't to catch the big pox.
Best Slashdot Co
People are afraid of biological warfare, but they forget one important thing about it. Although terrorists or resistance fighters rarely are afraid to die for their causes, they usually don't want to bring large-scale destruction to those they seek to defend. So contagious diseases are NOT good agents of bioterror for most purposes.
Smallpox is not the threat-- it is well-guarded, so it is beyond the means of the lone lunatic. The more organized people like bin Laden's group are unlikely to use it.
There is a larger threat though-- a lone lunatic COULD theoretically spread ebola, though. This is a much more scary scenario.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Then you have to think like a taxpayer. Do I spend my equiv US$8 for my dose of smallpox vaccine against a potential epidemic, or do I spend it on people I'll never see in Africa? Then remember that a large population of the States lives in what's termed the "Bible Belt" ...
The HIV epidemic in Africa is putting whole territories in danger of having an average age under 20 as often more than 60% of adults are HIV positive. The US and UK based drug companies and governments aren't doing anything about this - they have the drugs to slow the spread of HIV right now - they choose not to use them.
How is this the West's fault - like everything else in the world seems to be? The real problem in Africa isn't anything to do with drugs, it's a lack of both condoms and the inclination to use them. You see, apart from the tiny minority of cases in which a victim receives contaminated blood through transfusion, or is deliberatly and maliciously infected, AIDS is completely avoidable. Just don't have unprotected sex with strangers, and don't share needles if you insist on injecting drugs. Simple, isn't it? Until the Africans learn that, tho', there isn't enough medicine in the universe to make a difference.
A bio-terror attack is something completely different, it is a cold-blooded attack on innocent people. It doesn't even compare at all. And let's not forget, us potential victims of bio attacks are paying for our own defences through our taxes. There's no-one there to help us, so we rely on ourselves. There's a lesson there.
Given the large amount of research (and money) spent studying the "Gulf War" syndrome in the last ten years, without any conclusion, it's not sensible to blame any single factor.
But if I had to find a culprit, I would blame stress. Some people are more sensitive to stress than others. When hundreds of thousands of people are subject to such conditions, statistically there will be some extreme reactions. Soldiers coming home from wars always have some strange symptoms. They called it "shell shock" in World War I, for instance.
The only reason why people keep blaming anthrax vaccines, or "agent orange" as they did after Vietnam, is that there is a liability issue if the cause is found to be a manufactured product. Lawyers could not profit if the cause was found to be stress, since war is supposed to be stressful. At most, the veterans would get psychiatric treatment from the government, instead of "compensation" from a manufacturer.
what really scares the bejeezus outta me is modified smallpox.
to summarize the article, some guys in australia discovered by genetically modifying mousepox (pretty weak, like chicken pox) that they could turn it into a far, far deadlier virus which was pretty much immune to vaccines (!).
now, this kind of genetic modification isn't easy. but a vaccine-resistant strain of smallpox which kills somewhere up to 90% or so of people infected would really suck.
then again, maybe such a modification wouldn't work on smallpox like it does for mousepox. i hope.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
How does one come to realize that one is allergic to the small pox vaccine?
-E
This was the case with the Anthrax, which I believe has been identified as an artificial strain, traced to a US Govt. laboratory.
We also create a motive. Fear. There are many who fear the US, who believe that it is an ego-centric culture, which will crush any other culture it encounters, given time. (Honestly, I've not seen much evidence to the contrary.) The assumption that American culture is "superior" to all others does piss off a lot of people, all over the world.
(The current President's view that International Law and International Treaties are only valid if convenient, and disposable otherwise, has sparked off two International incidents and is likely to fuel further crises, as the EU takes on Microsoft, the Kyoto Accords are implemented in other countries, and Germany takes the US to court.)
In short, our very protectionistic, defensive attitude is our own worst enemy. Smallpox, Ebola, Genetically Modified insects or plants that replace native life with stuff deadly to humans... All this and more is possible, today.
And what reason, exactly, are we giving other nations, other societies, to NOT use such weapons? It seems to me that we're not only giving others plenty of reasons, we're also determined to give them the means, too. Most other countries abandoned such warfare as too random, too unpredictable, and too slow, to be of any military value, and gave up such work.
In the US, we're keeping stockpiles of deadly organisms, and are conducting GM research which would be considered unethical anywhere else in the world. We don't protect the environment (which makes it hard to detect intrusions when they can still be dealt with), and we ensure that health coverage of any quality goes to the well-off. (Who probably need it a lot less, than those who aren't!)
In short, then, we're practically giving away weapons that can be used against us, giving others reasons to use those weapons, and we're then making it impossible for us to genuinely do anything that might protect us, by pricing it out of existance.
IMHO, there is only one solution to this, and a lot of pro-Corporate people are not going to like, or understand, it. We have to take care of what we have - people, fauna, flora, habitats, EVERYTHING - as well as, or better than, ourselves.
THEN, we can detect the threats long before they even become threatening. We would be more likely to have the means to deal with it, because we would catch the problem sooner. The same way that cancer is a whole lot easier to treat, when it's starting, than when it has completely run rampant.
Further, if we learn to be more aware of our surroundings, we're much less likely to incite the kind of fanatical hatred that we have seen. Directly, or indirectly. Our fear incites the fear of others. Our awareness might, then, incite awareness in others, which might even reduce global suspicion and hostility.
Sounds utopian? Probably. Nobody said I was a realist. I am merely a software engineer, who knows that Output = fn(Input), that if you want to change the output, you must change the input, and that if you keep getting outputs you don't like, then don't keep changing the input the same way.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Assuming a leak couldn't occur from the CDC stock does seem reasonable. Assuming a leak couldn't occur from the former Soviet lab is not reasonable.
Re: We can deal with it
Not now we can't. There are 20M smallpox vaccine doses in the US now, all of which are of uncertain quality (could easily be as few as 5M still good). It's been estimated by CDC that it might be possible to use diluted vaccine to get 2x-3x but dilution has never been tried. The CDC/HHS estimate that we could have 70M doses in 3-4 months. There are 280M people in the US.
The lethality of smallpox historically is ~30% (which puts an upper bound of 84M US people if everyone is infected) in population with some natural genetic immunity. There are forms of small pox and populations without natural genetic immunity (native American peoples 200-400 years ago) which can have 90+% lethality. Since vaccination ceased in the US prior to 1978, most of the population doesn't artificial immunity so best case the 30% number applied but it could be higher. The main factor controlling the actual number is the nature of the propagation: traditional epidemics are diffusive while terrorist can make them non-diffusive.
Putting the 84M in perspective compare this to US war deaths:
Revolutionary War: 4,435
Civil War (North & South): 498,332
WWI: 116,708
Total (all nations) WWI deaths from combat: ~10M
Total deaths from Spanish Flu in 1918-1919: 21M (600,000 civilian+military US deaths, military US ~200,000 deaths - yes, more US soldiers died in WWI from flu than bullets! And 2x died from bullets in WWI than in Vietnam!)
WWII: 407,316
Vietnam: 58,168
Re: We can only hope...
So maybe we'll have enough vaccine within a year, BUT, the death rate due to lethal vaccine side effects (source: CDC) is about 1:1,000,000, or 280 deaths from vaccination, and 1:10,000 rate of moderate to severe side effects or 28,000 (bad enough to require hospitalization).
In addition, dying in battle is different than dying a slow, agonizing death by smallpox - I think it would be harder to get martyrs to take smallpox.
True, but if you're going to martyr yourself anyway, you could always put a bullet in your head (or take poison, or have a buddy put the lights out for you, etc) after you've infected a critical mass of victims.
the smallpox vaccine works extremely quickly
Sure, if you want to assume that the smallpox you're vaccinating against is the same smallpox that is causing the outbreak. If the virus has been modified, the vaccine might not work...
The Daily Build
Man, major brain cramp.
Best Slashdot Co
Smallpox was a terrible epidemic here in the states when it wqs used as a biological agent against the aboriginal populations in this country.
The Conneticut Indians saw Smallpox decimate 90% of their population. The effect of Smallpox on New England was more drastic than a Nuclear Weapon.
In a nuclear attack, you would lose 70-75% of the populated area, Smallpox killed at least 80% of the Native American population living in New England.
The vistory over smallpox came about because we used it against our old enemies and now our new ones are using it against us.
Jason Maggard
Proud to be Miami
Nothing4sale.org
AIDS is completely avoidable. Just don't have unprotected sex with strangers, and don't share needles if you insist on injecting drugs.
People who aquired their HIV before 1993 have my sympathy. After 1993, with a few exceptions, they have my scorn.
We, as a country, should help to the best of our abilities the ones who diden't know any better - the others we should view as a Darwinian cleaing of the stupid-gene.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
With Airplanes dumping powder on people's houses the proof is there that they don't need smallpox or Anthrax. Many pesticides and other common poisons could be easily as deadly.
What's worse is that this shit is going on and the media isn't noticing. Mostly to prevent panic, I'm sure, but it's pretty bad when someone lives less than 5 miles where something like this happens, and NO INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE!
If Small Pox were to break out -- unless it gets into the public eye before big-brother can step in -- don't worry, you won't ever know about it.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
"-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity."
I'm certainly not going to pay money to join a snobbish organization full of people who can't even spell "tolerance" correctly.
But you did. Sucker!
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Doesn't it only have RNA, not DNA. Most viruses have DNA. Some, like HIV, have only RNA. RNA viruses have to carry a "reverse transcriptase" enzyme that translates the RNA code to DNA, so then the normal cell machinery can start reading the DNA and cranking out copies of virus RNA and proteins.
There's an analogy between *NA and programming:
DNA is source code
RNA is the intermediate linkable code
Proteins are the executable object code.
Buying more nerf toys at toys'r'us (at least one major company still has dotcom fun) I saw a poster in the window for "POX". No mention of what it was but it did seem kind of badly timed.
Oh, my, a member of MENSA, don't like stupidity, and you spell "tolerance" incorrectly in your .sig line?
None too bright, that.
Virg
Anybody ever read Hotzone? The airborn version of ebola (Hemmoraghic fever) that was discovered in a washington suburb a decade ago LUCKILY only infected monkeys. Normally ebola infects both humans and monkeys, but luckily is only transmissible via contact with bodily fluids. An airborn version was discovered and since this disease is 90% fatal, if a strain is found that can infect humans and has the structure to live in aerosol form, would be FAR FAR worse then smallpox. Most people have no idea how close we came to global oblivion of over 90% of the human race during that infection at the monkey quarantine house. Scary stuff. Stephen King wrote that Hotzone was the scariest book he had ever read. Its terrifying. And all it would take is one guy to walk into an international airport with an airborn version of the virus. 36 hours later the world is in deep doo doo.
Goodness! You don't have very much imagination, or you don't have very much appreciation for history.
The French Revolution was born out of intense antipathy for religion, and became a bloodbath.
Stalin butchered millions, and it wasn't in the name of God; Mao slaughtered something like 50 million in the Cultural Revolution.
Atheism has quite a colored history, my friend. Wake up and smell the atrocities.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
I would suggest you do a little reading into the situation in Africa before making these 'good aids / bad aids' statements.
The majority of people in Africa over the past 10 years have not been aware that HIV exists, let alone how to prevent infection. The fault lies with their governments of the day, and the international community, for not educating them. Many of these governments are non-democratic and only retain power through the support of Shell, BP, the Diamond cartels, and other Western businesses. These in turn are supported by the Western governments.
Spend a couple of days reading into this and then tell me that its 'their own fault'.