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The Pace and Proliferation of Biological Technologies

Posted by michael on from the it'll-be-on-you-before-you-know-it dept.

bio-droid writes "Several years ago Slashdot covered an essay in Spectrum about Open Source Biology. Here is a follow on academic paper entitled The Pace and Proliferation of Biological Technologies in the new journal Biosecurity and Bioterrorism ."

11 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Can't put a genie back... by citabjockey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Synthesize polio with mail order components? egads! One would expect that this genie can't be put back into a bottle.

    This being the case we better figure out how to minimize incentives to build weapons. Thus far we in the good'ol USofA have a rotten track record in this regard.

  2. Re:I don't wanna be open source! by Kruid · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Would you prefer to have Monsanto own the rights to your genes? Or the rights to that patch? -k

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    Your mind moves quicker than a nun's first curry. - A. Rimmer
  3. Sequence != Understand by enkidu · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The basic idea behind this article seems to assume that as sequencing and synthesis technology and skills become widely available, there will be a parallel increase in the danger from the misuse of this technology. I beg to differ. Sequencing DNA does not give you that much insight into how things really work. Nor does tweaking out protein structure. That's the easy step. But the dynamic equilibrium of a cell is maintained by the DNA, the RNA and the proteins, all simultaneous interacting in an essentially stabilized chaotic system. Sure we can "knock-out" a gene here and there, replace one protein with another, but doing so is no more a display of knowledge then is pruning a tree. We're still a long (long long long) way from designing trees from scratch or people developing the new "super-bug" in the garage or even university lab.

    That said, there is a real danger from people using the techniques described above to create hybrid strains (SARS+influenza etc.) to create new virulent strains based on existing virii and bacteria. Of course, even that is much harder than said, primarily because the only way to test which strains work, is to infect people. Any failure and your subject will develop resistance and be useless for future testing. So, you'd need a large number of subjects, or you'd need to develop on a disease which infects both humans and rats (or something) and then hope that the virulence will be analogous for humans. Fortunately, this is rarely the case, what kills rats like, well rats, often doesn't even faze humans and vice versa.

    Hmm, I wonder if I should worry about men in dark suits showing up at my door now...

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    There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
    -Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
  4. I don't get it... by Ieshan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All published science is "Open Source". You publish your methods, your statistical tests - you're even required by most Journals to submit your data to anyone who asks.

    Everything you use is referenced. The only thing that's closed is your thought process - and that's supposed to be described thoroughly in your Introduction and Discussion.

    So as long as we're talking about Published Science, I have no idea what you're all talking about.

    1. Re:I don't get it... by BWJones · · Score: 2, Insightful

      All published science is "Open Source".

      That is technically true, but the key work is published. You would be stunned to know how much science is funded and done by corporations and governments whose results are never, ever, published. However, that said, secrecy in published science also is present and many times it has its place, for instance in a coy response to a targeted question that the author is either 1) unsure of scientifically, or 2) wants to protect until they can actually publish or patent the results.

      After reading the article, I think the author of the article was also referring to the ability of "common" folks to gain access to the tools with which to perform genetic engineering and such that previously were only available to those with the funding, education and resources to ensure that certain technologies have self limiting products that are controlled by a larger scientific process and oversight.

      --
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    2. Re:I don't get it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Sure it is, in principle. But your living in the dream world of Hume and Popper. Modern science, and particularly bioscience, is carried out behind closed doors often guarded by armed staff.

      'We the people' have lost our science to corporations. In some areas there is still a popular front, all you need to start to code is a $20 second hand computer. True (popular) science works because people are naturally curious and wish to share.

      Look at all the ugly things that happen with plain old bits and bytes. Humans have a lot to learn before we can be trusted with cheap popular biotechnology. Maybe the threat of gene sequencers on E-Bay is what will finally make us put away our guns and start to behave.

    3. Re:I don't get it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I disagree that we have completely lost science to corporations. While corporate funding does account for a large percentage of research (depending on who your source is you'll hear different numbers - the NSF estimates it to have been ~$2.2 billion in 2001), government-funded research is still huge (the NSF stated that $19 billion when to American universities for funded research and development in 2001).

      I think there are two main reasons for this - the government wants 'basic' research to be open (even when the DoD funds research - ala DARPA, or ONR - they don't classify the research - and it gets published - remember we do have (D)ARPA to thank for TCP/IP and the initial development of the Internet). This is probably related to the second reason - most scientists want their research to be for the public good (i.e. the scientist that developed the brain/computer interface that lets monkeys move the mouse cursor around without actually moving the mouse did so on behalf of the DoD - but hopes the knowledge will lead to medical uses for all people). So - most university researchers will accept commercial money to do their research - but are generally happier with a nice NSF/NIH grant which lets them publish their results (which leads to more publicity - which leads to more grants - which leads to more research...).

      Of course - I say this, but my own (current) research project is commercially funded, and I won't be publishing those results.

  5. GNU, BSD and Mozilla. by Short+Circuit · · Score: 3, Insightful

    OSS would be without BSD, (developed at a university) without Mozilla, (spawned from a really old web browser I can't quite recall the name of), and without GNU (quite a bit of which came from BSD).

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    tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
  6. Re:UGH! Sick of the references to Moore's Law! by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 2, Insightful
    IMO there's a good reason Moore's law won't apply.

    Semiconductor technology had the benefit of starting from a blank slate. Moore's law started out measuring chips with only a few thousand very simple components. As the technology matures, it will eventually hit fundamental limits and the exponential growth in component count will slow.

    With biotechnology, nature has already provided a very mature technology refined over billions of years. We already have organisms that contain trillions of very complex components working together as an incredibly coordinated system. Starting from this advanced point, are very unlikely to add exponential improvements over the current capabilites year after year.

  7. Re:UGH! Sick of the references to Moore's Law! by kobukson · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I can imagine al_Qaeda right now, reading this paper written by Mr Carlson, saying to themselves: "Shit! We can buy stuff like that on eBay? Why didn't we think of that?"

    After months of observing the news and media, I have discovered a new Law (modeled after Moore's Law).

    This new Law states that the number of new and frighteningly creative ways in which terrorists can attack us grows exponentially which each instance of someone breathlessly pointing out a previously unimagined hole in our security infrastructure via public broadcast media and the web.

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    -- I hereby announce, on behalf of my great ancester Oog, a retroactive patent on THE WHEEL.
  8. No more than pruning a treee? by ahfoo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Don't you think it's more like pruning a tree's genes? I don't buy this idea that there's some inherent depth that is lost as soon as the technology becomes available at lower costs. That sounds like an outlook that subcribes to the mythology of unknown; anything that is known is somehow degraded. I believe such thinking is based in the religion metaphor of Heaven. It has to be unknown and unknowable to be powerful.
    And I'm also quite curious why people are so quick to look at the down side when there's so much up side. What about developing home diagnostic kits and even tailored therapies? Those things can't happen until this technology becomes cheap. I think the sad truth is that academic papers need funding and the money is flowing in defence, not in healing man's ills.