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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."
Seriously, what is the point of engineering something like this?
If it was another country's research team we'd probably be invading by now...
evil adrian
which kills 100% of animals it infects - even when the mice have been treated with vaccination and anti-virals
Finally, we can destroy our mice overlords!
Yeah, don't worry, it doesn't infect humans.
Er, wait.
The work has not stopped there. The cowpox virus, which infects a range of animals including humans, has been genetically altered in a similar way.
Uh-oh.
I graduated from St. Louis University Med school last spring and I had a friend in the grad program there who had mentioned to me several times they messed with some really deadly viruses that they had created. I always figured she was exaggerating....guess not.
The interesting thing about this, according to the article, is the IL-4 gene gives the virus its potency, but at the same time keeps it from being contagious. Apparently, they are not sure why. Sounds like the real scary part will be once they figure that out and someone figures out a work around.
Don't jump the gun thinking this might be a solution to the sco problem. The article is quite clear: it only affects mice, not rats.
Don't worry folks, viruses never mutate. There's no chance that a non-contageous virus could become airborne or bloodborne, and there's absolutely no way it could start affecting people. The fact that the US military has created a vaccine proof superbug with a 100% kill rate shouldn't bother anyone.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Come on now. This is nothing new. The U.S. has been conducting biological warefare research for years with no abatement as evidenced by a number of facilities in the west desert of Utah, and high level facilities all over the U.S. I should add that the U.S. is not the only country doing this, but given the cost of biological research, we are most likely at the forefront. Why do you think that the DOD has been so interested in AIDS research? As much as I would like to believe that the Whitehouse's goals and ambitions for AIDS work are good, there are obvious biological questions that are being examined with respect to induced autoimmune deficiency. There are many other potential viral and bacterial questions that could also inform biowarefare research as well.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
The deadliness of the virus is related to the addition of a protein IL-4 which shuts down cell-mediated immune response.
Wow, just wow! I can't believe people don't realize how useful this is, and how off base the news poster really is. It was not developed to become a means to kill people. Being able to deactivate the entire immune system with a virus is such a huge leap forward. Now we can see how various biological processes work in the absence of the immune system. We have never been able to supress the immune system on this level. We can learn what functions definately need the immune system, gain new insight into autoimmune disease, and so on. Science always advances by altering or eliminating a variable and observing what happens to the others. I'm sure this sounds awfully familiar to all you CS people who spend hours debugging. Next time think before jumping to the OMG DEY R TEH Ev1L!!!11 conclusion.
I hope this never gets in the wild. I would hate to have to switch to a damn trackball.
Despite the concerns, work on lethal new pox viruses seems likely to continue in the US. When members of the audience in Geneva questioned the need for such experiments, an American voice in the back boomed out: "Nine-eleven". There were murmurs of agreement.
What has 9/11 to do with this? Could this virus have prevented the attack? Or any biological/chemical weapon for that matter?
9/11 has been used as an excuse for too long now to have any real meaning.
Americans have given up alot of privacy for nothing (as most allready know). The rest of the world has been ordered by the USA to change identification documents or face economical consequences, hand over flight information (including information which has nothing to do with the possibility of being a terrorist), Iraq have been invaded with this as an excuse whil everyone and their mother know right now that there has been no evidence of Iraq being involved with 9/11 and people are still being bombarded with laws and organisations that are supposedly to stop another attack.
I'm seriously curious: at what point do you think Christianity magically made this transition you're saying it underwent -- from the old, whacked-out ideas about good and evil to our supposed modern enlightened ones?
I have relatives in Oklahoma whose southern Baptist faith qualifies in all the areas you're laying into Islam about.
Before 9/11, the worst act of terror on US soil was by a couple of right-wing radical white guys. My Oklahoma relations were all for what Tim McVeigh stood for -- though they had some misgivings about his methods. Afterward they seemed rather torn about what had happened. They liked that it was a blow against the government, and had vague ideas about scoring points against Clinton somehow. But seeing the child in that firefighter's arms, that caused just a note of cognitive dissonance for them. Just a note.
Walk back a step. U.S. post-civil-war reconstruction was torn apart by the KKK's acts of political violence. The KKK was and is almost exclusively made up of white Christians. They think of their religion as one of the buttresses of their movement, and cite the Bible in defense of their ideas. Your shift can't have happened before 1870, then.
but the famine isn't going to visit destruction upon foreign countries.
No, our right-wing, avowedly Christian President will take care of that.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
is available for your enjoyment.
But there are other parts of his argument that are very valid:
The deadliness of the virus is related to the addition of a protein IL-4 which shuts down cell-mediated immune response.
It'd be nice to think that they are working on a way to defeat this protein so that when somebody creates a human version, we'll have something to defend against it.
Overall, though, it would be nice to just stop this kind of development anywhere and everywhere, so that we wouldn't have to think that way. But this is reality. I really have mixed feelings about it.
On the one hand, another poster was right in that if we found, for example, Iran doing this, we'd be all over them for it. On the other hand, Iran and other countries are biological research anyway, so we might as well prepare for it.
These are the things that scare me (from the article):
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Yup. We develop the weapons and refuse to stop because of the pharmaceutical industry and the KILLING they make off of germ warfare (and its side products, vaccines and medicine). Welcome to America.
IAALS.
While I agree that this research has value, lets not underestimate the danger involved. This is why we have containment procedures, etc. What would make me more comfortable with the international treaties on defensive research would be:
- Requirement of open communication on research being conducted (not to disclose HOW to do anything, but for awareness of WHAT is being done)
- Int'l standards for containment, etc. which could be verified by an int'l body.
These points allow you to prevent terror-supporting nations from abusing the loophole. If they don't tell us what they are doing and demonstrate observable precautions its illegal.Isn't that essentially how the IAEA Additional Protocol treaty works? The IAEA gets to monitor and you fully disclose what you are doing? Iran is signing on to that I believe.
Come play Moral Decay!
By some measures, the U.S. government is the most violent that has ever existed in the world.
The writer of this is an American who is very concerned about his government's participation in violence. In his opinion, a person doesn't really love his or her country unless he or she is willing to look at and understand areas where the country needs improvement. The same principle applies elsewhere. A man doesn't really love his wife if he turns his back when she is having serious, difficult-to-understand problems. And, a person doesn't really love himself or herself unless he or she tries to understand and resolve his or her own inner conflict.
Strictly speaking, it is the U.S. government that is responsible for the violence, not the people of the United States. Very, very few Americans understand the facts presented here. There are many Americans who support violence, and who angrily reject these facts, but even those probably would not want their money being spent on violence if they fully understood the financial and social impact on their lives.
The U.S. government has directly killed about 3,000,000 people since the beginning of the Vietnam war. Most of those, an estimated more than 2,000,000, were in Vietnam, a very poor country that did not threaten the United States.
Historians say that the number of people indirectly killed by the U.S. government is at least another 3,000,000, for a total of 6,000,000. For example, U.S. bombing of Cambodia left that country destabilized, and the forces of violence controlled Cambodia for years after the U.S. bombing.
The U.S. government has bombed 24 countries in the 58 years since the Second World War. The list below includes only countries bombed, not countries in which the U.S. government was responsible for other violence. The list includes only violence since the Second World War, not the extensive violence before the war. Most U.S. citizens are surprised and skeptical when they see the list, so a few links have been provided to supporting information. For more information, try the Google search engine or see the links below.
From the article:
Ramshaw's team made its initial discovery while developing contraceptive vaccines for sterilising mice and rabbits without killing them. The researchers modified the mousepox virus by adding a gene for a natural immunosuppressant called IL-4, expecting this would boost antibody production.
Instead, the modified mousepox virus was far more lethal, killing 60 per cent of vaccinated mice. The addition of IL-4 seems to switch off a key part of the immune system called the cell-mediated response.
Okay. For all of you going on and on about how useful this research for preventing bioterrorism, keep in mind that this is not at all the original intent of the researchers.
They were trying to make an contagious but non-lethal virus whose sole function was to serve as a contraceptive. Instead, they ended up creating a highly lethal, non contagious virus.
Granted, it is difficult to know exactly what the effect of mutating or altering viruses will be on the animals they're introduced into, but this is sort of my point.
If you try modifying a virus to make it non-lethal, and it turns out to be lethal for most of your test subjects, it is not a good idea to to say, "Wow! Let's see what happens when we try that in *another* virus!"
Since they don't know why the introduction of IL-4 made the viruses non-transferable, they probably don't know enough about this virus modification to assume that other strains won't be contagious when it's introduced.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
I rarely get mad at a post on slashdot. But this one got me going.
We are now guilty of illegally invading a foreign country without any direct threat of war or attack or in assistance to another country, but simply based on political agenda, public ignorance, public fear mongering, and propoganda about WMD.
Wow. First, there is no such thing as an illegal war. Frankly, there's hardly such a thing as a civilized war. Who has the athority to say "war is legal" and "war is illegal"? Last I looked on earth the highest authority is a soverign government. There is NO INTERNATIONAL GOVERNEMENT - although some would like there to be one.
The public was not ignorant about the war in Iraq. I seem to recall almost endless debate over the need for the war. It came to a vote and people with access to even better information than you and I (congress) authorized the president to take action. WMD as justification aside, there were four other pillars to the decision: democratization of the region, oil, terrorism and the plight of the Iraqi people.
The US is not a world democracy, but a world hypocrisy. We can do it, but NOBODY else can. And there is NOTHING you can do about it.
Why whould you ever think the US was trying in any way to represent the world? Last I looked only US citizens had the right to vote here. We are not a world democracy. Our government was not founded protect the world, it was founded to to protect the people who have entrusted it with the power to do so. Based on the fact we are prosperous, don't have wars inside our borders and enjoy a life where we are free to pursue our own interests, our government is a success.
As for hypocrisy, why does that even matter? Last I looked, hypocrisy wasn't a crime. Regardless, the US is not hypocritical. We are simply pursuing policy that is in our interest. What you seem to fail to grasp is that policies in the interest of other nations are often contrary to what is best for your own nation.
Do we need ANOTHER WMD? The answer is, we don't.
That's fine if you want to be bullied around by other nations. But I think I can speek for anyone who values freedom here: I'd rather have the next WMD in our arsenal than anyone else have it. Better my country be able to threaten a foreign power than be threatened by one.
-- $G
...is not that some scientists at some univeristy did this. Read "The Demon in the Freezer" or "The Hot Zone" - this kind of thing has been done a few times before. The Austrailians did this a few years ago as part of research to wipe out the mouse population in their country (which was a foriegn species that was introduced and threw off the dlicate balance of nature on an island continent). This is old news.
What is scary is how powerful this is and how easy it is to do.
It is powerful because it engineers a new virus or bacterium by mixing genes/DNA from other species to magnify it's effect. It's easy because, although the article doesn't mention it, it can be accomplished by someone with a University level of Biochem knowledge and a $100 USD kit that is sold to undergraduate students. Previouslyu this was ignored because it was thought that to get a really powerful pathogen was difficult so this technique could not be used to make really nasty weapons.
Then they began realizing that not all of the Smallpox stockpile could be acounted for. Then they realized that viruses like AIDS (originally only infected Chimps and other primates)and Ebola (Ebola Zaire, the most deadly strain, mutated to become airborne - but the strain only infected monkeys this time - a strain called Ebola Reston) could mutate and jump the species barrier. Same with prions like BSE (becomes CJD in humans).
Suddenly "mousepox" or "cowpox" seem like they could be very dangerous, if mutated naturally and enhanced artificially. It could become a serious weapon because it is transformed into a Chimera - natural pathogen DNA and DNA from a spoecies it would not normally mix with.
Back in the cold war, the Russians made such a Chimera that as a weapon could have devastaing results. According to Frontline, a Russian bioweapons scientist (who now works for us, thank god...not all of them do) combined Legionella (the bacteria in air conditioners that causes the pnuemonia-like Legionaires Disease) with Myolin. The result was a flu that went away after a few days. You seemed well but then die extremely quickly when your own immune system attacks and destroys the myolinear sheath around you neurons...and because it is in a common bacteria, it is undetectable by a doctor.
Imagine someone creating that combination with a more virulent/contagious pathogen?
That being said, if this is what we are hearing about - a non-contagious, 100% lethal virus at a university - imagine what is being done in secret for "national security" reasons....
All that to say that while I think this kind of research is good if used for treatment and research to prevent them being used as weapons, I also think that it should be done under the auspices of WHO, not the US government or any other government. Have Universities do the reasearch, but do it openly with funding and supervision of scientists and authorities from all over the world. The UN is perfect for this. That way everyone can have warning and everyone can benefit from the research.
Otherwise we risk the start of a biological arms race...and then the whole planet could lose.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Well if you consider the UN charter a treaty that the US has agreed to, then you look at that charter, especially where it says "The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members" and "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."
Then you can easily draw a conclusion that the new policy of premption is in contradiction with existing US treaty obligations.
We are simply pursuing policy that is in our interest. What you seem to fail to grasp is that policies in the interest of other nations are often contrary to what is best for your own nation.
This can be true, but international relations is not a zero-sum game. What goes around comes around.
And it will come around...
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
That was a very well written post and I agree with you that most Americans do not understand the facts. But then, neither do the French, the Russians, the Chinese, heck, the entire human race's ability for objectivism and rationality could be seriously questioned. Which is the point of my response.
While I as an American certainly do not want to let my government and my society (including myself) off the hook, laying the guilt of 3,000,000 or 6,000,000 deaths soley on the heads of America is an abuse of the facts. Violence is a global failure, not a localized one. Aggressors should be identified and appropriately dealt with (US included) -- but to excuse all other parties is to participate in a witch hunt.
I leave you with one question: Suppose the US had not killed all those people. Suppose the US had never gotten involved anywhere. Can you confidently conclude that the gross level of violence and death in the world would be any less?
There is more than one player in the world. And we ALL share in these iniquities. The violence of the US, Rwanda, Palestinians and Jews is violence of humanity and we each share in the failure.
Who said Freedom was Fair?