U.S. Continues Biological Warfare Research

merryprankster writes "Researchers at Saint Louis University have engineered a strain of mouse-pox virus which kills 100% of animals it infects - even when the mice have been treated with vaccination and anti-virals. The deadliness of the virus is related to the addition of a protein IL-4 which shuts down cell-mediated immune response. The engineered virus is not contagious and does not affect humans but the research has drawn some condemnation as being dangerous and unnecessary."

Comments

Speaking of biohazards

[Anonymous Coward]

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Power is its own justification

[BenitoM]

The powerful need no moral justification for maintaining their power.

If you are triumphant, Machiavelli reminds us, people "will always find the means you used to have been appropriate."

Re:Seriously...

[coolmacdude]

2) Barring the current Iraq situation, the US has proven they are RESPONSIBLE with their use of WMD, and only use them when attacked

And it should be noted that the last time we used them was almost 50 years ago and even then it was an extremely hard decision for the president.

Saddam on the other hand has used them quite liberally over the last 30 or so years to repeatedly kill his own people.

Hello??!! Offtopic??!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The story in question is about biological resarch by a one university in the US.

The comment above is about US Military Operations. How is these two related?

Oh right, they're not, but the idiotic moderators will mod any anti-US tripe up to push their agendas.

More proof moderation on slashdot is totally useless.

Re:Seriously...

[canajin56]

What if a crazy biologists decides to take loads of folks out

If you read the PNAC group's papers, they REALLY want viruses that can target specific groups. They believe they could be a useful political tool. They want this to kill certain ethnic groups within the US. And also, if the weapons can be tuned fine enough, they want to be able to kill a certain person's family, but nobody else. In small towns who have had little immagration, most of the population will have some genes in common. They want to be able to wipe the town off the map if need be.

I wish I was making this up, but I'm not.
"... advanced forms of biological warfare that can "target" specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool." - Rebuilding Americas Defenses, PNAC white paper
You can confirm this by reading it online from their website. And who wrote this whitepaper? Wolfowitz and Libby, amongst others. (Assistants to Rumsfeld and Powel)
And who is a member of PNAC, besides them?
Cheney
Rumsfeld
Dan Quayle
Jeb Bush
Steve Forbes
Vin Weber

Those are just the ones I found interesting, they have a complete list on their website. The people running the US think that bio-weapons designed to kill everybody with blue eyes, or brown skin, or curly hair, are "politically useful tools." Remember that. They also have said other interesting things...