First Reproducing Artificial Virus Created

jrrl writes "USAToday is reporting that Craig Venter's research group has synthesized a virus from scratch and that it "became bioactive" (started reproducing). Particularly interesting is that it only took them two weeks to build, rather than several years that previous attempts had taken."

Comments

Should we really be doing things like this?

[Lawrence_Bird]

What kind of precautions do these people take?

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[Leroy_Brown242]

You would hope that they take great pains to make access to the virii as secure as possible.

But, things like this are very important in the fight to create vaccines to illnesses. Anyone who has taken apart and built a car, computer, or whatever will tell you that thier level of understanding is now MUCH greater than it was before they did it. Knowing how to assemble a virus, will hopefully allow us to defend ourselves against them.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[B'Trey]

My first thought on reading the headline was 'Cue the Luddites.'

We're all going to die! Nanobot virus AIs created from stem cells and feeding on the bodies of Monarch butterflies slain by the pollen from genetically engineered corn are going to destroy the world!

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[oniony]

Yeah, I agree -- these people really need to start wearing condoms.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[f97tosc]

Probably the same as in handling any other virus.

Which is perfectly reasonable. People seem to be exremely afraid of anything made in a lab, but fail to recognize that the greater danger (by far) is from natural evolution of new viruses.

By the same token, the dangers of bio-weapons seem to be greatly excaggerated, when compared to natural pathogens. Some anthrax letters that killed half a dozen people seemed to get more attention and resources than the flu and aids, which kill tens of thousands of people per year in the US alone.

Tor

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[alnapp]

And my second thought was - they could be right

panic panic etc

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[B'Trey]

Assembly is not necessarily the same as synthesis. Designing and building a computer (as oppossed to merely putting together what is essentially a kit created by someone else) certainly implies that you have enough knowledge to make intelligent decisions on how to go about protecting the computer.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[Daemonik]

By the same token, the dangers of bio-weapons seem to be greatly excaggerated, when compared to natural pathogens. Some anthrax letters that killed half a dozen people seemed to get more attention and resources than the flu and aids, which kill tens of thousands of people per year in the US alone.

Perhaps bio weapons get more attention than natural viruses simply because if a natural virus kills you, it's an act of [insert deity here] and simply one of the risks of life, like getting hit by a bus.

Bio weapons on the other hand are purposely engineered to maximize the lethality of a disease for the intentional purpose of killing as many people as possible. In other words, it's the intent that matters.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention SARS SARS SARS. What a joke. It only killed 1 in 10 people who were infected and it was old feeble types that kicked the bucket. Meanwhile the flu was killing thousands worldwide.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[B'Trey]

Anthrax is a natural pathogen, not an artifical one. It's only the vector by which it was spread that is artificial. And what makes it worthy of head lines is that it was malicious.

Right or wrong, an incident that is the result of deliberate intent is seen as much more heinous than an act of nature, even if it does much less danger. School shootings have killed only a handful of youngsers over several years. How many died from traffic incidents over the same time frame? Where is your child safer - sitting in school or sitting in the front seat of a car? You don't see parents panicking over the thought of their child riding in a car but you see huge discussions over how to make our schools safer.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[diersing]

Yesterday, NPR's All Things Considered did a nice piece on it, you can download it here

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[Waffle Iron]

People seem to be exremely afraid of anything made in a lab, but fail to recognize that the greater danger (by far) is from natural evolution of new viruses.

Unless somebody figures out how to make an artificial microbe that takes advantage of chemical processes that just aren't found in natural evolution. For example, the human body might not even be capable of attacking a hypothetical microbe that has a teflon or silicone-enhanced outer membrane.

At any rate, natural evolution proceeds at a slow rate, so the defending species has time to adapt. Anthrax, for example, implements a tricky chemical hack to breach animal cells and destroy them. Most animals are pretty defenseless against the special back door that antrax uses, and without it the anthrax bacteria would be no more harmful than a pimple. However, anthrax is a rather obscure organism that mostly lives in the dirt. The reason that animals haven't evolved a defense against its chemical attack is that it just doesn't spread that easily in a natural setting. If anthrax were contagious like a cold, animals would have evolved a defense against it long ago.

Now, people may soon have the knowledge to install anthrax's chemical attack into something like a common cold virus. This short-ciruits the evolutionary process. Instead of just having to resist natural random improvemts in microbes, we may soon also face improvements that take advantage of god-like knowledge of the weaknesses of the defenders.

By simultaneously combining the best parts of various different microbes found in nature, then adding unnatural chemical improvements and using our newly available schematics of human cell defense design, we will certainly be able to create microbes far more dangerous than anything nature is likely to randomly come up with.

I doubt that trying to control this kind of technology is going to do any good, however. Somebody somewhere in the world is going to work on this stuff whether its banned or not. Our only hope is probably to develop means to quickly detect any new microbes, along with adaptive technology to create unnatural defenses to unnatural new organisms in real time.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[gorilla]

It's not so much that it's malicious, but that it's unusual. An aircraft accident isn't malicious, but it's going to get headlines.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[k12linux]

People seem to be exremely afraid of anything made in a lab, but fail to recognize that the greater danger (by far) is from natural evolution of new viruses.

I'm not a luddite and not really affraid this new virus is going to do something horrible like download copyright music from the RIAA. But what makes this new man-made virus any less capable of mutating or evolving than any other virus?

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[f97tosc]

I'm not a luddite and not really affraid this new virus is going to do something horrible like download copyright music from the RIAA. But what makes this new man-made virus any less capable of mutating or evolving than any other virus?

Probably nothing. But my point was not that we should not be careful. My point was that there should be no need to be significantly more careful than we are with other viruses.

The original post questioned whether "we really should be doing this". My response is: are you equally concerned by the everyday handling of viruses in thousands of research labs? Why not?

Tor

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[mAineAc]

I am sure they take great pains to be very careful these are bacteriophages they attack bacteria. Just think they can work towards creating a virus that is hungry for cancer cells. We may be seeing the first signs of creating viruses that will eat oil spills or something equally great.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[kiatoa]

There are two kinds of Luddites:

1. The "I don't understand it, we're all gonna die" crowd and...

2. The "I understand it, I don't trust those irresponsible buggers, if we don't do something we're all gonna die" crowd.

Large corporations (and some small ones) have repeated proven themselves to be untrustworthy and irresponsible. Crowd #2 have every reason to fear what they fear.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[DrFrob]

You would hope. But unfortunately a lot of scientists are dumbasses just like the rest of the population. In fact, there's a researcher at my university who wanted to study some aspect of HIV. So he ordered some of the virus and claimed that he was equipped to handle biohazard level 3 (or whatever is needed --- I don't know much about the levels). But the building he works for is not equipped for this and the company bought his story anyway without checking up on anything. I think he decided to finally trash the project after he found that none of his lab assistants would do the research without proper protection. But the fact is that if they had been dumb enough to be willing, it would have gone ahead without proper protection for the lab assistants or the other people in the building.

Basically he's an overconfident asstard who thinks that rules are for other people. Lot's of scientists are like this and it worries me that the system in place to prevent these types of incidents is totally ineffective.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[Habbakukk]

Our only hope is probably to develop means to qucikly detect any new microbes, along with adaptive technology to create unnatural defenses to unnatural new orgainisms in real time.

Sort of gives the idea of keeping your virus definitions up-to-date a whole new meaning.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[buysse]

Ah. A common misunderstanding. AIDS and the flu didn't kill (or scare) any congresscritters, therefore they are much lower priority.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Probably the same as handling any other virus

No, actually.

Natural viruses live with the constraint that if they kill their hosts outright they can't spread and quickly die out. (Read "The Andromeda Strain" for a great book on the subject.)

And don't think that complexity in virual structure is required to make something lethal. Ebola is a VERY simply virus. So simple that it kills it's host in weeks by rupturing all of its cells from virus production. Fortunately, Ebola generally strikes in isolated regions of Africa where an infected person only has the potential to infect a few dozen people before the outbreak is contained.

If you recall the mouse-killing viruse from a few weeks ago was actually an accident. They were working on something that would sterilize the rodents. What they ended up with is something increadibly lethal.

A simple-self replicating virus that works in human cells could be the deadliest thing we ever produce.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[su2ge]

Naturally we aren't going to know everything about the computer(or the virus) once we have managed to create one, but it is one of the first steps to gaining that understanding. The best way to learn something that there is no documentation on is to tinker with it until you find out how it works or what makes it tick. That's how most of us learned how computers work without having to go to school for it. It'll only get worse as the generations behind us grow even more curious than ourselves.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[twofidyKidd]

The quote is "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[f97tosc]

At any rate, natural evolution proceeds at a slow rate, so the defending species has time to adapt.

Natural evolution is not slow for viruses; their genetic code does not have the copy-protection mechanisms of say mammals. That is why we have a new flu pop up every other year, or a SARS for that matter.

Anthrax, for example, implements a tricky chemical hack to breach animal cells and destroy them. Most animals are pretty defenseless against the special back door that antrax uses, and without it the anthrax bacteria would be no more harmful than a pimple. However, anthrax is a rather obscure organism that mostly lives in the dirt. The reason that animals haven't evolved a defense against its chemical attack is that it just doesn't spread that easily in a natural setting. If anthrax were contagious like a cold, animals would have evolved a defense against it long ago.

With all due respect I think you are contradicting yourself. When a patheogen spreads for natural or not so natural reasons, people may die. Some survive, the resistant genes thus become more common. There may even be mutations of strong resistance that start to spread.

When this process happens for natural reasons, you label it "evolving a defense", or "defending species having time to adapt". When it happens by an act of man, you think of it as man being caught "defenseless". Of course, in both cases the species start out as (relatively) defenseless, and end up with a better defense.

My whole point was that there seem to be no lab-made pahtogen worse than anything evolved in nature. As for spreading it by man, well, anthrax did get an assist by man. But the extent of that "outbreak" was miniscule next to the natural outbreaks that happen every year.

Unless somebody figures out how to make an artificial microbe that takes advantage of chemical processes that just aren't found in natural evolution. For example, the human body might not even be capable of attacking a hypothetical microbe that has a teflon or silicone-enhanced outer membrane.

Possibly. But then again, if such mechanisms were very successful, why did they not evolve for 4 billion years on a planet surface covered in silicon compounds. In general, it is very difficult for people in labs to compete with the lab which is our planet, and time-scales of millions or billions of years.

Tor

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US more than 95% of the privately held land is owned by only 3% of the population

They're called farmers...

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[Catbeller]

I don't believe that HIV can be transfered via the air. If the assistants had decided to inject themselves with a contaminated needle, there would be a very slim chance they could contract it. HIV is not easy to contract. I don't believe a BH level three is necessary. The scientist was right;there was little or no danger as long as you didn't inject it subcutaneously. The assistants were just scared of the word "AIDS".

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[cens0r]

If by farmers you mean monsanto and conagra...

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[jimsum]

Let's hope they use some sort of copy protection on these viruses so that they can only reproduce with the permission of the owner. That's DRM I have no trouble with.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[2short]

I agree that bio weapons get more attention than natural viruses because they involve someone doing something intentionally. But I don't think it makes sense. The way I see it the downside of my getting killed by an intentional attack is that I'm dead. The downside of my getting killed by a natural virus is that I'm dead. Whether or not anyone intended me to be dead doesn't modify that downside at all for me. If society is going to try to do some stuff to prevent me (and others) from becoming prematurely dead, it seems to me it would make sense to allocate more resources to things that are more likely to kill people.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[mcpkaaos]

Designing and building a computer...certainly implies that you have enough knowledge to make intelligent decisions on how to go about protecting the computer.

Not to flame you, but that is an arrogant and inherently dangerous presumption to make. Take for example Ted Kaczynski. Incredibly intelligent, incredibly crafty, incredibly deadly. And he's just one example. Sure, you could argue that he is insane. So take the invention of the atomic bomb as another example. Following your logic, the Unabomber would have seen the devastation of his ways and been deterred, and Einstein would have kept his findings closely guarded from government exploitation. No one needs to be reminded of the outcome of either scenario.

Intelligence does not imply wisdom, and quite often you'll find one without the other, especially in the race for discovery and/or acheivement.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[mrscorpio]

Virii is NOT a word! The plural of virus is viruses!

Chris

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[feronti]

If the lab wasn't equipped with goggles, paper masks, and rubber gloves, it shouldn't be doing _any_ kind of research.

(The only biohazard requirements for working with HIV are goggles, masks, and gloves... no fancy biosuits or anything like that. My mother worked in a hospital lab testing blood for hepatitis and HIV for years, and the only protection required were masks, gloves, and goggles.)

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[ultranova]

It would probably make more sense to catalogue everything that should be in your body, and destroy everything that fails to identity itself. That would also take care of cancer cells...

And then the virus makers would find and exploit a bug in the defensive nanobots. "Immunity Chip v. 1.01: correct the bug that was causing us to fail to detect the boogieman virus. Updates available at our website at www.immunitychip.com. NOTE: Our public servers are currently experiencing heavy load and might not be available. Sign up now for access to our premium service."

Would you pay ?

Or would you be a commie hippie fascist and use the Linux version, despite FUD from Microbesoft ?-)

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[Sgt York]

Following your logic, the Unabomber would have seen the devastation of his ways and been deterred

Just because he had the knowldege and foresight to prevent catastrophe does not imply that he has the will or desire to do so. Kasczynski lacked the desire to prevent harm, he knew what would hurt someone and he favored it. This pertains to neither intelligence nor wisdom, but to morality or purpose.

As for the Bomb, they probably either lacked the will or foresight. It is hard to believe they lacked the foresight; anyone could figure it out. The problem was that in the frenzy of discovery, they blinded themseleves to all but the esoteric. Which goes along with:

and quite often you'll find one without the other, especially in the race for discovery and/or acheivement.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[Ella the Cat]

I love that quote. I can Google, but since this is /. would you happen to know who coined the phrase?

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[feronti]

Unfortunately, neither of your examples refute the original statement. While I agree to a certain extent that the original poster's implications are not entirely valid, your examples do nothing to refute his point.

Ted Kaczynski (not sure if either of us spelled that right, and I'm not going to take the time to look it up now:) was indeed highly intelligent. However, I don't think he works very well as an example that intelligence does not guarantee wisdom. In fact, I would argue that his success for many years implies that he was indeed "crafty" (often used as a synonym for wise, or clever). His failure was not in wisdom or intelligence but in the fact that his choices were immoral (some would argue evil) to the large majority of the society. The decision to commit evil acts does not preclude the wisdom of the decision maker. Sometimes evil acts can make more sense than good ones, given the proper moral outlook.

In the case of Einstein, he knew full well the implications of application of his theories. It was a letter signed by him that encouraged Roosevelt to devote resources to building the first atomic bombs. Granted the only reason he wrote the letter was because he believed the Nazis were very close to building their own nuclear weapons, and IIRC, he said later in life that he regretted that decision. But, he never regretted publishing his theories, and anyone who claims the world would have been a better place if he hadn't is a fool. First of all, they would have been eventually discovered by someone else. What if that someone else was someone who agreed with the Fascists, and therefore took the discovery directly to his government, who didn't release it publically, and instead used the research to create atomic weapons. Only this time, no one else in the world had even the theoretical groundwork to be able to develop their own weapons to counter. Also, Einstein's theories created a revolution in physics, allowing us to discover not only nuclear weapons but integrated circuits and other modern technologies. I think more benefits have come out of Einstein's work than bad, and that the wisest decision possible was to publish it and allow it to be referenced freely.

Does this mean that intelligent people are inherently wise? Not at all. There are countless examples of intelligent people doing stupid things--Maxim created his machine gun believing that the massive volume of fire would so frighten people that war would be impossible. Elia Kazan provided names, the names of many of his friends, no less, to McCarthy and the Un-American Activities Committee, names that were promptly blacklisted. These are far better examples of naivete and foolishness among the intelligentsia.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[B'Trey]

I'm aware of the original quote. I think my version is better, as incompetence has a much wider range of application than stupidity. I'm not stupid but I'm completely incompetent in a number of areas, ranging from sweater knitting to brain surgery. All too often, the problem isn't really stupidity so much as it is people being completely out of their element.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[zecg]

Read this for more in-depth information about things that shouldn't be done:

http://www.thebulletin.org/issues1/2003/so03/so0 3t oc.html

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[DrFrob]

You're probably not qualified to decide whether or not HIV should be classified biohazard level 3. The point is that he took it upon himself to disobey safety policies that are put in place for a reason and potentially put people into danger unknowingly (the other people in the building that don't know HIV research is being done).

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[B'Trey]

Not to flame you in return, but I made no such claim as you seem to be attributing to me. Having sufficient knowledge to build something implies a reasonably deep understanding of how it functions. I made no claim about that understanding having any effect on wisdom or on the desire to use that knowledge in any particular way.

Someone who has sufficient knowledge to build a functioning virus knows a great deal about how they work, and thus has information which is quite valuable in figuring out how to stop them from working. That person may use that knowledge to develop cures for disease, or he may use the knowledge to try to design a super bug that wipes out entier human race. How he uses the knowledge is completely independent of the fact that he has the knowledge.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[twofidyKidd]

I believe it's Hanlon's Razor.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[Ella the Cat]

Thanks! Here's the #1 hit on Google http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/h/HanlonsRazor.ht ml

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[Smallpond]

Unfortunately, this is not true. The downside of getting natural anthrax is that you get sick, the downside of getting weaponized anthrax is that you die very quickly. The 5 people who died in 2001 were the first confirmed deaths from anthrax in 20 years.

These first synthetic viruses may be OK, the problem will be who gets to use the new technology and what they decide to use it for.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[Golias]

In the US more than 95% of the privately held land is owned by only 3% of the population.

Of course, you had to use the "privately held" qualifier, becuase the majority of the land in the US is owned by the public and managed by the government. Massive expanses of land throughout the west have been Federal land reserves since the TR administration, and the states all hold a lot of land themselves.

Such facts about the socialist ownership of resources in the US dispells the myth that America is a nation of chaotic free-market capitalism run wild, so I can see how a reactionary would want to factor them out before calculating percentages.

Steering back on to the topic of a virus created "from scratch". If it truely was a case of creating a virus (one of the simplest life-froms) from non-organic matter, that would be big news. Unfortunately, the article is very vague about what their starting materials were. If their "synthetic genome" was built using organic material, it would represent a much less signifigant feat.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[twofidyKidd]

What the quote tends to take aim at are competent individuals that lack the common sense to have done it correctly in the first place. So rather than to assume that someone fucked something up just to make your life hell, you should first realize that they probably weren't thinking much...

Since this IS slashdot, I can safely use MS products as an example. It's obvious that they were made by programmers, since they wouldn't work at all otherwise, but because their products cause really stupid things to happen, its safe to assume that the programmers themselves weren't out to make trying to piss you off, but probably were...well....stupid.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[rifter]

And of course the reverse was asserted in Ambrose Bierce's _The_Devil's_Dictionary_

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[4of12]

Knowing how to assemble a virus, will hopefully allow us to defend ourselves against them.

As long as the rate at which the virus reproduces and the level of devastation it causes is not too fast or too irreversible.

Consider the effects of some natural virus and other life forms that have been unleased.

A fungus from the Eastern hemisphere pretty well wiped out the American chestnut tree in short order.

Russian thistle, introduced to North America in the 19th century has likewise become endemic, to the point where tumbleweeds are considered an essential ingredient in any Western film set.

Rabbits in Australia, etc., provide some indication of how rapidly reproducing organisms can spread and how much change they can cause.

Do we trust our knowledge of virus mechanics enough to believe that an inadvertent release of "grey goo" can be undone?

To put it another way:

Even if I'm extremely knowledgeable about cars, have built them from scratch, repaired them, etc., is that sufficient assurance I will be able to stop a speeding car running straight at me in time?

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[Johnny5000]

"Possibly. But then again, if such mechanisms were very successful, why did they not evolve for 4 billion years on a planet surface covered in silicon compounds. In general, it is very difficult for people in labs to compete with the lab which is our planet, and time-scales of millions or billions of years. "

An artificially created virus created to kill as many people as possible in a short period of time would have a different 'life' cycle than a natural virus.
If a natural virus is too deadly, it won't allow the host to live long enough for the virus to reproduce and spread. If that happens, the cycle of infection will end as soon as the initial host dies.
In a weaponized virus, that would more likely be seen as a beneficial trait. Following a massive initial infection, everyone dies, and the infection cycle of the virus is finished.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[B'Trey]

If my sig were a quote, it would be in quotation manrks and attributed.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[B'Trey]

Thanks for making my point for me. With the possible exception of an occasional idiot savant, I don't believe anyone who can learn to program a computer can be classified as "stupid." The fact that they produce poorly written software indicates that either they are incompetent themselves, or that they are not allowed to utilize their competence by incompetent managers. In either case, the problem is most definitely that they are stupid and incapable of learning safe programming practices.

Stupid means that they lack the intellignece to learn. Incompetent means they do not have the requisite knowledge or skill. What you described is not stupidity. It is incompetence.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[mcpkaaos]

Right on, thanks for the reply. I appreciate that you further clarified what you were saying. If I misinterpreted your point, I apologize. From the initial statement, it sounded like you were inferring wisdom from intelligence. My point really only was to cover that presumption, so if I was mistaken, I retract it.

I think I just broke a major /. tradition by this post, but what the hell, rules are made to be broken, right? ;)

Cheers.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[Quino]

It would probably make more sense to catalogue everything that should be in your body, and destroy everything that fails to identity itself

I think that's exactly how white blood cells work (my bio class was a while ago, maybe the details are all off), they recognize all the proteins that all your cells make, and destroy any cells that they encounter that are making stuff that's not recognized. I seem to remember that they are "trained" in the bone marrow, before they are let loose in your body to make sure they have a complete "catalog" of your bodily chemicals (proteins?) and don't go out and attack normal cells.

I'm not sure why this isn't effective with cancer cells (hmmm... are cancer cells completely normal cells, and thus not attacked as foreign, except that they are reproducing uncontrollably fast?).

As to your question, hmmm ..., I'm not sure that I'd trust MS with my immune system -- can you imagine? We would end up literally absorbed by the Collective then, looking like the Bill Gates icon on slashdot.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[__past__]

Of course it is a word, what else should it be? You just used it in a normal sentence. You may not like this one, but it is as much a word as "blog", "burger" or "hexadecimal", and not even that much more stupid then them.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[mrscorpio]

Ok, let's analyze...

"blog" and "burger" are shortened forms of "weblog" and "hamburger", that, while technically are not words in the English language, follow all conventions thereof. I'm not sure what your problem with Hexadecimal is, meaning a Base 16 number system, so I'm going to ignore that.

One of the reasons for a slang word to appear in general use is because it's easier or shorter to say than the word it is used in place of, or has some cultural reference. "Virii" fits none of these categories, nor does it follow the standard conventions of the English languages with its double i somehow signifying it as the plural form of "Virus". If it was supposed to follow the format set by words like "Octopus", the plural would be "viri" (like Octopi). However, the plural was set long ago, and it is "viruses", and it is not difficult to say, spell, or understand for anyone with even the most basic knowledge of the English language; or enough to know what "virus" means and what a plural is.

Finally, it's not even something like "ain't", a non-word that has been co-opted into speech and culture often enough to be accepted (somewhat begrudgingly) into dictionaries everywhere. As far as I know, the only place "virii" is used is Slashdot, and for some reason here otherwise intelligent people use this word when needing a plural form of the word "virus".

The end.

Chris

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[nounderscores]

Well, maybe not a car, but if you know the weak point is on the top and rear armour of a tank...

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[_xen]

I think my version is better

I agree. On the other hand I consider you an arrogant sod for saying so! ;)

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[nusuth]

If you have a connection to the source, why not?

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[__past__]

I'm not sure what your problem with Hexadecimal is, meaning a Base 16 number system, so I'm going to ignore that.

Pity. Given that the argument against "virii" usually is that it isn't correct latin (which nobody claimed anyway), it's rather funny that people claiming that don't have any problem with a crude mixture of greek and latin like "hexadecimal" (or even "automobile", which should either be an "ipsomobile" or an "autokines"). This isn't a valid word in any language than english (and the languages that adopted it from english) either.

Sure, "virii" is not the correct latin plural of the latin word "virus". In fact, the latin "virus" is a mass-word anyway and simply has no plural form, so even "viruses" would be strange if you would care about the latin roots that much. But we deal with an english word and an english plural form of it, no matter its etymological roots. Sure, "virii" is not that usual an english plural, but it's not the only word with a strange plural either (what kind of rule does "penny"-"pence" follow? Or "mouse"-"mice"?)

Note well, I fully agree that "virii" is pretty a stupid and needlessly unusual word, and certainly a slang word most often used at least half-joking, like "boxen". But it is still a word. Linguistics are empirical sciences.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[B'Trey]

LOL! Thanks. I needed a good laugh.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[B'Trey]

There was a reason I did that originally, but I'm damned if I can remember now what it was.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[__past__]

The plural of "radius" is "radii", for example. However, this hasn't much to do with "virus" (it would if it would be "virius" and actually had a plural form at all). But the point is that latin doesn't matter that much anyway, because we don't speak latin here - we just borrow some words, rather liberally.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[crazylinux]

It sounds like Open Source

Biorganisms.

I wonder if the art of bioscience will take the same road as Open source and proprietary source code.

Vaccines that you pay for and vaccines that are Open Source and free of charge.
And good thing is that Open source sometime does better job than proprietary code.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[Hentai]

Well, a virus can't eat oil - virii require biological entities to survive in. You could make a species of bacteria that eats oil, though.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[2short]

"Unfortunately, this is not true."

What's not true? I'm saying I think resources and attention should be allocated in proportion to how likely something is to kill me (or people in general). It is true; I do think this.

Yes, weaponized anthrax is a bigger problem than natural anthrax, because natural anthrax is essentialy not a problem at all. But I'm not arguing how resources dedicated to fighting anthrax should be allocated. I'm arguing how much resources should be allocated to anthrax at all. Other natural illnesses kill so many people that 5 deaths in 20 years does not begin to compete. 5 deaths in a month would not compete. It's silly to spend large amounts of resources trying to be prepared for just one very specific potential threat out of the basically limitless modes of attack terrorists could choose. Especially when it (inevitably) means you can't use those same resouces to address real threats that are killing a lot more people right now.

"These first synthetic viruses may be OK, the problem will be who gets to use the new technology and what they decide to use it for."

I agree with this but I think you could say: These first <any new scientific breakthrough examples> may be OK, the problem will be who gets to use the new technology and what they decide to use it for.

Re:Should we really be doing things like this?

[Golias]

How (and why) the hell are they supposed to create a virus from "non-organic matter"? You want them to fuse atoms to make their carbon? Or are you suggesting that they make a completely inorganic virus, i.e. one that contains no carbon-based molecules whatsoever? ... Maybe you're just mis-using the phrase "organic material."Carbon is an element. Not all carbon compounds are organic. You are the one mis-using the phrase "organic material."

As for my comment that I'm only impressed if they started with non-organic matter, I mean exactly that. "Synthesized" DNA which comes from organic matter as the base materials is not nearly as impressive of a feat as creating a living organism from raw elements.

And no, it would not help us understand how viruses work necessarilly, but it would help us understand a little something called the origins of life on Earth. A field of study not without merit, unless you are from the "it's turtles all the way down" set.

eesh

[devphaeton]

Anymore these days, i have to re-read titles like this one to try to determine if it's a organism-disease virus, or a computer-disease virus.

heh.

These guys are writing fork bombs with DNA

Re:eesh

[jon787]

Thinking on the computer virus side I like this Hawking quote:
"I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image."
-- Stephen Hawking

Re:eesh

[B'Trey]

Horsefeathers. Matter is not the essence of a thing. Form and function usually (but not always) are. Transformation into another form may not destroy the mass but it most certainly destroys the thing that existed before.

Re:eesh

[Lispy]

Agreed. If you look at a virus that writes zeroes all over your harddisk all it does is to increase entropy in the universe. Wich restores order. Bad luck if the files in question were your pr0n collection.

Re:eesh

[Tim C]

It may also destroy the mass, if you manage to create a nuclear reaction and convert some of it to energy.

Unlikely with a virus, I know...

Re:eesh

[Sgt York]

Matter cannot be destroyed. Energy cannot be destroyed. Information can be destroyed. In fact, because of entropy, the destruction of information is a requirement of the universe. That is, if you see information as a form of order.

Re:eesh

[B'Trey]

That depends on your definition of "destroy" and "mass." Arguably, mass and energy are two forms of the same thing, and conversion from one form to another is no more an act of destruction than is melting an ice cube.

Re:eesh

[Razor Blades are Not]

To Destroy :

To ruin completely; spoil: The ancient manuscripts were destroyed by fire.

To tear down or break up; demolish. See Synonyms at ruin.

To do away with; put an end to: "In crowded populations, poverty destroys the possibility of cleanliness" (George Bernard Shaw).

To kill: destroy a rabid dog.

To subdue or defeat completely; crush: The rebel forces were destroyed in battle.

To render useless or ineffective: destroyed the testimony of the prosecution's chief witness.

I don't see any definition of "destroy" that is explicitly contrary to the conservation of energy.

Re:eesh

[Anonymous Coward]

You meant to say "decrease entropy".

But anyway, the processes on the level of say, data on a hard drive, are so far removed from any actual thermodynamic `order in the universe' that this is meaningless. Any and all personal computer operations increase entropy (until/unless reversible computing becomes normal). There is absolutely no order being restored unless the virus actually reverses the flow of time and restores the original particle states which once represented the blank HD.

Re:eesh

[cayenne8]

"These guys are writing fork bombs with DNA"

I thought a virus was RNA only??

Re:eesh

[Hatta]

Why is evolution necessary for life? If we could produce an android like Data with self consciousness, but didn't reproduce or evolve, I think it would still be clear that it was alive.

Or more fundamentally, every class of living objects we know of evolves. Yet, no single instance does. Still, we refer to individual organisms as alive. Even if they are incapable of reproduction, as so many sterile people (or slashdot readers, hehehe) are.

I think he's right to equate computer viruses with physical viruses. Though I'm not sure it's right to call either of them "alive".

Re:eesh

[devphaeton]

I thought a virus was RNA only??

Crap, you're right. I totally forgot about that.

Use it or lose it.... :-(

Re:eesh

[cpeterso]

just because he can rap doesn't mean he knows everything about biology or computers.

Anyways, I think the destructive nature of computer virsues is vastly overhyped. What percentage of computer viruses and worms actually format your hard disk? Very few, I think. Most just propogate themselves and annoy. If virus writers were truly malicious, they could easily add a "format c:" feature to their viruses. But they don't. Why not? This is what makes me think that many viruses are actually written by the virus scanner companies. Job security, you know. :-)

Re:eesh

[B'Trey]

I'm not sure what you mean by "...explicitly contrary to the conservation of energy." Are you saying that converting mass to energy is or is not an act of destruction?

If you have an ice sculpture in the shape of a swan that that melts, was that an act of destruction? If you think in terms of the swan, then the answer was yes - the swan was destroyed. If you think in terms of the water, no destruction occurred. The water was ice, it's now liquid. It changed form but it still exitsts.

I'm quite certain that a physicist would tell you that a reaction which converts mass to energy does not destroy that mass. However, there was some object who's essential identity was tied into the form of that mass, and that object will have been destroyed.

Re:eesh

[nikkipolya]

I would say any process that is _not_ *reversible* entails destruction. well, you might say conversion of ice to water is reversible. But, can all of the *information* that can be ascribed to the ice prior to its melting away be restored?

Re:eesh

[B'Trey]

I certainly wouldn't argue with that, but I would point out that no process is completely reversible. We decide what aspects are important in any particular form, and tend to ignore other aspects of that form. If we can reverse the changes which affect the aspects we decide are important, we call the process "reversable" and blissfully overlook the fact that there are other changes which were not reversed. At a sufficient level of detail, not only is no process reversable but no form is sustainable. Entropy increases. It's not just a good idea, it's the law.

Re:eesh

[colmore]

I'm not quite up to date on the information theory definition of entropy. Would all zeros be less ordered than random bits?

Re:eesh

[Razor Blades are Not]

I'm replying to the anal-retentive coward who claimed "nothing is ever destroyed in the Universe, it is transformed into other forms, but not destroyed."

So effectively, I think we agree. Mr Anon.Moron seems to think that the only definition of "destroy" is one that seems to contravene the conservation of energy. I was merely providing a suite of alternative definitions which are not so limited.

A physicist (such as Hawking) might well use the word "destruction" to describe the total conversion of a mass into energy, depending on his frame of reference at the time he made the statement, and his abililty to turn a phrase.

Resident Evil anyone?

[Orien]

Are we sure this wasn't put out by the Umbrella corporation?

Re:Resident Evil anyone?

[John Courtland]

No, no silly, it was the Majestic 12.

Re:Resident Evil anyone?

[mahdi13]

As long as Bob Page and Walter Simmons stays out of it I'll be content...

Scared now

[Daikiki]

Well, not really terrified I guess, but the whole "We've created life and it's procreating" thing is something that doesn't exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy,. And why did it have to be a virus. Why not a cute little kitten or something?

Re:Scared now

[Feyr]

why not a cute little virus? nothing wrong with em

Re:Scared now

[Lord Omlette]

Because "the T-Kitten" doesn't sound nearly as interesting to venture capitalists.

Re:Scared now

[monadicIO]

Why not a cute little kitten or something?
All cute kittens have a fair number of virii inside their bodies. I guess they are just starting with those. Then they'll make the bacteria in their guts, the ticks/germs on their fur, and finally the kitten.

Re:Scared now

[Councilor Hart]

Just wait until they evolve into a humanoid-like species.
You do know what we did to the Neanderthals?

Re:Scared now

[Java Pimp]

And why did it have to be a virus. Why not a cute little kitten or something?

Do we have another candidate for the Darwin Awards perhaps?

Re:Scared now

[mrtroy]

I think they should try and make some new organic stuff.

Now that we have created some procreating life, lets go a little bigger here.

What about making some mini-human race, so we can use them as slaves. I would like about 20 little guys running around doing everything for me. And I could make them , cuz im bigger! Also, make them eat old tires or garbage or something, so they dont steal my pretzels. If you have any more questions regarding this mini race, please email me at god@slashdot thnx.

PS> They can also be used for entertainment...like cock fighting. And you can gamble on these little guys over just about anything they do. "20$" says he humps my secretary's leg in under 5 minutes!

Re:Scared now

[SmallFurryCreature]

Yah, so the terrorist unleash a cloud of "Cute little kittens" tm. Not going to be exactly a red alert situation now is it?

Anyway smuggling kittens is hard as they set off the sniffer dogs.

Remember weapons of war must look hard and menacing, not cute and fluffy.

Re:Scared now

[greechneb]

Because you have to start simple. Viruses first, then ameoba, then lawyers....

No, wait, that's viruses, lawyers, ameoba..

Re:Scared now

[Plug1]

Technically it's not life. There is still a bit of dispute as to whether virused are alive or not. They contain genetic material, but are not necessarily living organisms. Or that is what some bio major told me once.

Re:Scared now

[DrEldarion]

I shall call him... "Mini-me".

Re:Scared now

[pmz]

Worse, they could have created real-life Tribbles but didn't. How can they call themselves scientists yet not pursue the future laid out before us by Gene Roddenberry?

Re:Scared now

[Saige]

All they actually did was to take commercially available DNA, link it together to duplicate the DNA of an existing bacteriophage, and pop it inside a cell, and watch it go on. They just demonstrated that they have the technology to make a copy of the DNA of an existing virus.

As anyone can tell you, learning how to copy something that already exists doesn't really mean you know that much more about how it works. Just because I could write out a copy of a Chinese story doesn't mean I know anything more about what the story says, just that I can duplicate the writing correctly.

Creating NEW life forms, not just copying existing ones, is still a ways off.

Theoretically, they should be able to do this with a mammal like a feline. Sequence the DNA, build a copy, and replace the DNA in a freshly fertilized egg, and it should grow up just fine. Though the complexity of the animal would add issues that I'm not educated enough to be aware of, certainly.

Re:Scared now

[Jooly Rodney]

Yeah -- as I understand it, it's more like a bunch of protein that knows how to get itself replicated.

Re:Scared now

[Deflagro]

Silly...viruses and lawyers are the same thing...Ameobas do come next though.

Re:Scared now

[Anonymous Coward]

dominUS -> domini
radiUS -> radii
virUS -> viri

If you're gonna be pseudo-latin-like instead of using the correct ``virusses'', at least get rid of ONE FRIGGIN `i'!

Re:Scared now

[Rorschach1]

Just wait. The warm and fuzzy feeling comes after the flushed and nauseated feeling, and just before the vomiting and burning feeling.

Re:Scared now

[bubblewrapgrl]

A virus can't self-replicate. It's a bit like a parasite in that it needs a host. Basically, all that composes a virus is a piece of DNA encapsulated by some protein. It can't reproduce because it doesn't contain the necessary organelles, such as ribosomes to make proteins and mitochondria to provide energy, that a cell has. So, when a virus infects a cell, it incorporates itself into the host's DNA. Then, when the host DNA gets replicated, the virus DNA gets replicated along with it. From there, the DNA will either get turned into more DNA (to make new cells that have the virus DNA) or make proteins (which can cause infection by making toxins and more viruses). The virus DNA can also be dormant in the host for awhile by not incoporating itself into the host DNA.

In regards to this synthetic virus, my main question is whether or not the researchers have looked what happens to cells that get infected by the virus. You can't kill a virus like you can a bacterial cell. Basically, your body has to recognize the virus as foreign and make antibodies to kill it, which is why we have to get immunizations. That's a little frightening to me - the possibility that they've created somthing horrible lytic that no one has ever been exposed to.

Re:Scared now

[f97tosc]

Technically it's not life. There is still a bit of dispute as to whether virused are alive or not. They contain genetic material, but are not necessarily living organisms. Or that is what some bio major told me once.

Whether virus is life or not depends on the definition of life. There is no consensus on this defintion, so debates on the matter are rather meaningless, it is really disputes over the definition of a word.

What makes viruses controversial is that they cannot reproduce by themselves; they need to infect antoher cell. But then again, many parasites cannot live without some other organism, and they are usuually considered alive.

Tor

Re:Scared now

[lildogie]

> And why did it have to be a virus. Why not a cute little kitten or something?

Because PETA won't tar and feather you for killing a virus.

Re:Scared now

[lordmetroid]

Actually a virus is not life... You should regard is as a bunch nasty molecules instead... The definition today on what life is, is that it needs a seperate enviornement screened from it's soroundings with metabolic activitiy, and hence virus is not life.

Re:Scared now

[RogueProtoKol]

It's viruses, there is a very good page about it, but I can't find the link, so you'll just have to say viruses

Re:Scared now

[Theatetus]

Aren't our mitochondria pretty much viruses?

Re:Scared now

[El_Smack]

Best one yet. You get 1 virtual mod point.

Re:Scared now

[JamesP]

Because you have to start simple. Viruses first, then ameoba, then lawyers....

You forgot McBride, right before viruses...

Re:Scared now

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole bit of the immune system isn't that it needs to know exactly what it's fighting [although that helps] -- it just needs to know it's *different*.

Re:Scared now

[Mr. Sketch]

It would actually take quite a bit of extra work to make lawyers, after all, you would first have to figure out how to make creatures un-dead.

Re:Scared now

[EvilTwinSkippy]

The problem with lawyers is that they accumulate in the food chain. Predators don't eat them out of professional courtesy.

Re:Scared now

[plugger]

A parasite taken away from its host can survive for some time, however short. A virion outside a cell is just some RNA and proteins, incapable of any life processes.

Re:Scared now

[clambake]

No, wait, that's viruses, lawyers, ameoba..

I thought you said life... The undead don't count.

Re:Scared now

[jdavidb]

Theoretically, they should be able to do this with a mammal like a feline. Sequence the DNA, build a copy, and replace the DNA in a freshly fertilized egg, and it should grow up just fine. Though the complexity of the animal would add issues that I'm not educated enough to be aware of, certainly.

One interesting issue with this approach that was only recently brought to my attention is mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondria in cells carry their own DNA inherited from the organism's mother (they are descended from the mitochondria in the egg). Currently, it's not known what if any dependencies there might be between the organism's genetic makeup and the mitochondrial DNA. It's conceivable an organism with mismatched mitochondrial DNA might have severe flaws. Or it might not have any effect at all.

Re:Scared now

[jdavidb]

IIRC, some high school biology textbooks actually add "6) and are made up of cells" to the five other criteria for life in order to rule out viruses.

Re:Scared now

[EvilTwinSkippy]

A parasite simply obtains it's food source from a host. It reproduces either sexually or asexually like any other organism.

Viruses are RNA or DNA with a protein skin. They don't even metabolize. They simply hijack cells and reprogram them to be virus factories.

Re:Scared now

[daeley]

Is that the future with the green dancing girls? I like that one!

Re:Scared now

[pmz]

Yes, most especially the one with the green dancing girls. And don't forget the changlings from DS9! They can become anything.

Re:Scared now

[ghislain_leblanc]

Another common criteria in the biological definition of life is the presence of a metabolism. That would mean things like breathing, eating, producing waste, etc...

I eared it was the biggest concern as to wheter viruses are living organisms or not. Most current biology books consider viruses as non-living.

Viruses are basicly just some DNA or RNA in a shell, linking to bacterium with specific proteins.

Re:Scared now

[drinkypoo]

Also, if they took commercially available DNA, then it didn't just take them a few days as suggested by the story; It took them a few days, plus the amount of research that went into producing the materials which they used; those giants in turn stood on the shoulders of others...

Re:Scared now

[Lodragandraoidh]

I thought virii were non-reproducing outside of a host cell?

If these things reproduce, and do damage to host cells, then we have a serious problem if they get into the wrong hands... (hot zone X 10).

Re:Scared now

[tho 1234]

Cloned animals like dolly the sheep have mismatched mitochondrial DNA- the DNA in the nucleus comes from the cloned animal, which is injected into a donor egg from a different animal. The mitochondrial DNA in the organism all come from the donor cell. (so i guess technically none of those animals are 100% clones, unless mitochondrial DNA has little overall effect)

There have been reports of numerous defects and health problems in cloned animals, but there are a billion possible reasons (such as shortened telomers resulting in early aging) of which mismatched mitochondrial DNA could be one possible explanation.... But since cloning has been possible, this would suggest that any dependencies are very small....

Re:Scared now

[mabhatter654]

Now we all have to learn "bianary" DNA language [just 4 letters, 2 combos, a helix, and a final 3D shape...it's actually simpler than most C++ programs]! After all, computer programmers that spend all day working in assembly or binary code could probably kick the pace of virus development up several notches once a sutable sumulator is developed. I'd venture that computer virus writers are more adept at this type of cut-n-paste than most of the skilled biologists!

Now what happens when the tools go public and these people start using the web to transfer files? As soon as a couple cracks get their hands on the code, the potentially could modify it before it gets to the "building" process lab. Then the lab would unknowingly create stuff described in the file that was order-of-maginitude worse than they think they know!

Re:Scared now

[Wraithlyn]

"What makes viruses controversial is that they cannot reproduce by themselves; they need to infect another cell."

Hmm, I shall have to double check when I get off work, but I'm fairly certain that: I cannot reproduce by myself; I need to infect another human. :)

Re:Scared now

[owlstead]

Well, not really terrified I guess, but the whole "We've created life and it's procreating" thing is something that doesn't exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy,. And why did it have to be a virus. Why not a cute little kitten or something?

We tried that, it was called a "Furby" and it spread like hell. We should never try that again.

I want the fire back.

That's a can-do. My nephew created a central heating unit for in the living room.
http://www.designvormgeving.nl/fotopagina/gshow15. htm

Maarten

Re:Scared now

[StikyPad]

I believe the breakthrough was not in creating the virus from synthesized DNA, but in creating that DNA in just two weeks. It's logical to establish that a manufacturing process is sound before you go about changing what that process manufacturers. The fact that they didn't alter the DNA is irrelevant. The ability to synthesize DNA is the issue, and is somewhat more complicated than creating kanji with a few brush strokes.

Since they've made this project "open source," I'm sure we'll learn much more about the specifics in the near future.

Re:Scared now

[csguy314]

[pedant]
While that's true, not all viruses work this way. Not all viruses have DNA. RNA viruses infect cells and just take over the cell's resources to reproduce their RNA. Or retro-viruses infect cells and then reverse-transcript their RNA into the cell's DNA. They then take over the cell's resources to produce more RNA viruses. AIDS is a retrovirus...
[/pedant]

Re:Scared now

[Saige]

It wasn't a criticism - just pointing out to the person I replied to that this was not nearly the type of thing he seemed to be so scared of. I was quite impressed with what they've done here, but understand that this alone doesn't mean rogue biologists can start unleashing custom viruses into the world.

Chilling

[Space cowboy]

Yeah I know. Luddite reaction. Yadda yadda yadda.

I still don't really think the benefits (gene expression research, gene therapy in general) are good enough, considering the potential problems.

I'd like to know who's funding them. Is it civilian or military?

As if there weren't enough virii on the planet already, we have to go making more. Fantastic academic achievement, but wish they hadn't done it. A bit like a nuclear bomb, in its own way...

Simon.

Re:Chilling

[PhoenixFlare]

I'd like to know who's funding them. Is it civilian or military?

I know it's too much to ask around here sometimes, but maybe you could at least glance at the article?

- The project was funded in part by the Department of Energy

Re:Chilling

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe.

It's funded by Dept of Energy,
One of the things they're hoping to do is produce improved versions of the bacteria which eat nuclear waste.

Re:Chilling

[gujju]

If the virus could be designed to attack cancer cells, there might be an enormous benefit to it. Though, how they are going to invent a virus that does that, I don't know...
Maybe this is "One small step for "a virus-developer " but one giant leap for "cancer eating virus kind" "

Re:Chilling

[TomV]

Can't remember where I found it, but there's a lovely quote about Nikola Tesla's idea for a resonator capable of splitting the planet: "The scary thing isn't that he was crazy enough to think of it, the really scary thing is that he was smart enough that it might well have worked".

Sometimes it feels like this might apply to Craig Venter. I mean his intellectual achievements are staggering, world-class, unimpeachably brilliant. but his choice of topics is sometimes very unnerving.

Re:Chilling

[Space cowboy]

There is a very very small difference between a cancerous cell and a normal cell. They're identical except the cancerous one keeps on dividing. Just how much did you want that cancer-eating virus ? Given how often virii mutate ?

Simon.

Re:Chilling

[pmz]

the potential problems

Actually, they are potentially exponential problems. I'd worry more about a new virus getting loose than any amount of unaccounted-for plutonium in the world.

Re:Chilling

[mikerich]

You can practically smell the plea for more research money can't you?

I think the full case goes:

'Our new virus could help society meet its energy needs, clean up pollution, bring about World peace, reunite the cast of 'Friends', immunise the World's population against the threat of Jennifer Lopez movies and produce a Starbucks espresso that tastes faintly of coffee.'

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:Chilling

[Abcd1234]

No benefits? You mention gene therapy (the only promise for people with certain types of inherited disorders). But did you realize that some of the most promising cancer research these days involves using bacteria to destroy cancer cells? These techniques are showing *amazing* results in animal models (we're talking complete remission). Imagine if we could custom-build a virus that would latch onto cancer cells and destroy them?

And these kinds of techniques could easily be extended to other areas. Imagine a virus which was designed to only infect malaria parasites? Or a bacteriophage that would wipe out salmonella?

Of course, that's not to say that ethical and safety concerns shouldn't be part of the debate. But don't discount this research just because *you* don't see any benefit. Because, trust me, cancer patients all over the world would probably disagree with you.

Re:Chilling

[BasilBibi]

The biosphere probably creates billions of harmless 'new' (as in never-seen-before) self-replicating species/entities every day. The chances are vanishingly small this one would become life threatening if released into the wild.

As for the technology, what should we expect? It was only a matter of time before this happened. Big-Pharm & Big-Chem have been funding this kind of research for decades and it's led to really useful technology like um... GM. At the end of the day all we have to fear is the majority vote of their shareholders - our new overlords.

Re:Chilling

[crush]

Craig Venter's funding is private and commercial. When he first started TIGR (The Institute for Genome Research) he got a lot of flack from scientists that worked for research sponsored by society through taxes being used to pay for NSF and NIH grants. The accusations were that he (and his speculative commerical backers) were leeching off publically funded science and not sharing their data back rapidly with the rest of the scientific community. This hiding of results is a big no-no in scientific academia -- both culturally and historically. So your worries about military vs. civilian might be extended to military vs. private_company vs. public. Venter's new virus is owned and controlled by civilians that aren't controlled by you and me.

Re:Chilling

[Abcd1234]

Actually, what you're talking about, virotherapy for cancer, is being researched right now, as we speak. See this Scientific American article.

Re:Chilling

[Chris Burke]

That's stupid. It's VIRUSES, now please stop using that insane bastardization.

Oh, and it's stupid to say that the only difference between cancerous and non cancerous cell is that one divides endlessly and one doesn't. Unless you think that there's no reason that one is dividing endlessly and one not, which would contradict what we already know about cancer. And would be pretty stupid. So yeah, that comes up again.

Not that you're stupid. Just what you said was stupid. :)

P.S. Please never use the non-word virii again.

Re:Chilling

[chef_raekwon]

Virii is not a word.

i beg to differ. if enough people use this word, and it means 'plural of virus' to all of those people, it will infact force it into the language. amazing how democratic a language can be...

and as for your flamebait comments on fighting progress....well my friend, ever heard of AIDS - a little nasty that came from a monkey(??) yeah right. manufactured. SARS? oh yes, from an apartment building in China (what??).

put that in your crake pipe and smoke it.

Re:Chilling

[Space cowboy]

I didn't say there were no benefits. I said "I don't think the benefits outweigh the potential problems".

I have no problem with sick people getting better, none at all.

I didn't discount the research ("fantastic academic acheivement"), and I have just as much right to my *opinion* as anyone else does to theirs, that's what the post was about.

My cousin died of cancer last year, we were very close. She was diagnosed and dead from a brain tumour in 4 days. I know something of the grief that cancer can bring. I can fully understand that cancer patients would love a cure, but we were talking about ethics, not individuals.

Nothing in what you said (apart from wrongfully accusing me of seeing no benefit) addresses what I wrote. I don't think the risk is worth the reward. Hey, I've been wrong before, and I will be again, I'd love to be wrong this time too.

That said, since we're talking about bio-engineering something designed to attack human cells (of a particular type, and I take on-board what another poster said about different gene expressions on the cell membrane), and that the mutation rate of virii in the wild is pretty high, and that we'll be making them by the billion then injecting them into an uncontrolled and uncontrollable environment (someone's body), I think there's room for a shed-load of caution. And that may not be sufficient.

There's just so much that can go wrong. Catastrophically (used technically) wrong.

Simon.

Re:Chilling

[the_consumer]

Nature beat us to it.

Re:Chilling

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Well you answer a question with a question. The Department of Energy does bith Military and Civilian research.

The DOE does nuclear testing amoung other things. And I don't mean scantron sheets for plant operators. They used to blow things up with nuclear weapons. Since the test ban treaty they have been blowing up simulated thing with simulated nuclear bombs inside of massive clustered computing arrays.

The array runs Linux, BTW. Remember that the next time someone calls Linux a religion^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Operating System for beatnicks and hippies.

Re:Chilling

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Well except that Ebola by itself is a "harmless" virus that produces copies of itself by the billions. It just so happens to do so inside of mammalian cells.

Once a cell is infected with a virus, it is hijacked and reprogrammed to produce new copies of the virus until the cell literally explodes.

Re:Chilling

[Linux Ate My Dog!]

No! It can't be done! You madman! Nothing can stop Jennifer Lopez movies!

Re:Chilling

[plugger]

If existing viruses can be altered to exhibit different effects, then the creation of completely novel viruses doesn't really make things any worse.

Re:Chilling

[PhoenixFlare]

Well you answer a question with a question. The Department of Energy does bith Military and Civilian research.

Well, seeing as the person that's heading the project they're funding is president of a civilian biotech firm, and it states right in the article that they're hoping to get microbes that can clean the environment or produce hydrogen...I would lean toward the research being largely, if not completely, for civilian purposes.

The DOE does nuclear testing amoung other things. And I don't mean scantron sheets for plant operators. They used to blow things up with nuclear weapons. Since the test ban treaty they have been blowing up simulated thing with simulated nuclear bombs inside of massive clustered computing arrays.

So? What does this have to do with the question at hand? Simulating bomb blasts and creating microbes for environmental cleanup/fuel generation have nothing to do with eachother.

The array runs Linux, BTW. Remember that the next time someone calls Linux a religion^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Operating System for beatnicks and hippies.

That's real cool and all, but again, it has absolutely no relevance to this thread. Save the evangelizing for another time.

If you're going to reply again, please at least try to make it relevant beyond the first sentence.

Re:Chilling

[seanadams.com]

There is a very very small difference between a cancerous cell and a normal cell.

So, what you're saying is that neither of them is a tiger?

Re:Chilling

[Corpus_Callosum]

A bit like a nuclear bomb, in its own way...

Well, a nuclear weapon can kill at most, what, 30 million people? 60? What is the most populated geographic region in the world that a nuke could take out? I am reasonably certain that it couldn't happen by acciedent, however...

A bad virus could kill, what, almost all of us? And it could be an accident... (The movie Andromeda strain comes to mind)... hmmm....

There is a high cost of progress here. However, it is progress. It may be the only way to combat certain viral diseases and deliver gene therepy (introducing custom viruses)...

Chilling is right...

Re:Chilling

[efflux]

As if there weren't enough virii on the planet already, we have to go making more. Umm... as far as I understand, this wasn't a "new virus", but merely a clone developed from scratch.

Re:Chilling

[UserGoogol]

Hacker hacker hacker hacker. :)

Yes, language is flexible, and if enough people use Virii, it will become acceptable, but its etymology is still based on ignorance, and you're an idiot for using the word. Also, it's really not an accepted word yet, as shown by all the people calling you an idiot.

And HIV and SARS are not manmade.

Re:Chilling

[Cincinnatus1984]

This is blatantly not true. The cellular processes that regulate the proper division of cells are simple individually, but the effect of them is a cascade, and their interactions are so complicated they are still not properly understood, if they were so similar to regular cells, there would only be one kind of cancer in many different places. (well not exactly but this is slashdot)

Re:Chilling

[jpop32]

That's stupid. It's VIRUSES, now please stop using that insane bastardization.

But, it is 'fungii', right? ;-) Sorry, couldn't help myself.

An software anecdote

[h4rm0ny]

Just to find a metaphor that will bring this home to some of us...

I once had a prolonged discussion on the pros and cons of GM food and the mixing of seperate genetic organisms (as has produced this virus) with a Phd in Computer Science. Eventually I grabbed a textbook on UML from his desk and waved it at him. "Look," I cried, "they're breaking encapsulation!" My friend immediately reversed his stance on Genetic Engineering and wanted more testing.

Re:An software anecdote

[NanoGator]

"My friend immediately reversed his stance on Genetic Engineering and wanted more testing."

My kingdom for a babel fish!

Oh no!

[wo1verin3]

Quick! Lets blacken the skies, they won't be able to live without light!

Re:Oh no!

[Gettin'_Fatter]

If we blacken the skies they'll just figure out a way to use us as an source of energy and food...oh wait- that's what virii do.

Re:Oh no!

[sketerpot]

Somehow I doubt that these viruses are adapted well enough to survive as our pathogens. Our immune systems would crush them like bugs unless they have quite a bit of evolution outside their controlled clinical environment.

Re:Oh no!

[wo1verin3]

>> As a representative for Canon systems I would
>> like to recommend our sky blackening system

Dear Sirs.

Please cease and desist manufacturing, product, and marketing of said 'sky blackening system'. This product is in violation of US Patent 6,254,254 titled 'Skin light exposure control methods'.

Re:Oh no!

[Soul-Burn666]

Naaa... that's what robots do :)
(The Second Renaissance)

Re:Oh no!

[ross.w]

You do realise that you've just created another joke for the /. trolls to wear out?

By the way, I for one etc, etc, etc

Its ALIVE!

[mekkab]

Great! Now lets make this barbie doll "bio-active" in the shape of Kelly Le Brock!

nah, screw that. Let's just get Kelly Le Brock!

Re:Its ALIVE!

[Hayzeus]

Let's just get Kelly Le Brock!

Not to burst your bubble, but I think she's like 70 years old by now and likely incontinent. I know I am.

Now....

[Terov]

If they can get it down to seven days then we'll have something ;)

Viruses and weapons

[Fux the Penguin]

I think the wonder of any scientific advance should be tempered by a clear-headed analysis of the dangers it might create.

I don't think anybody should be making any new life forms or modifying any existing life forms, at least until we've had a serious societal discussion regarding its possible role and impact on terrorism and biowarfare.

Imagine a scenario where terrorists could alter a disease or organic biological weapon gene by gene to make it immune to current antidotes. Beyond that, I worry that the US itself might use it for its own cache of new-age weapons.

If WE convert it to a weapon, what's the difference? We can claim we're the good guys and we won't use it. But we can look at Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

I hope I'm not fear-mongering here, but, I worry.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Sheetrock]

You're not. This is a valid point that is all but ignored by scientists seeking continual funding and rationalizing that if they don't do it someone else will.

However, I think this sort of research is as or more likely to radically benefit society as it is to create catastrophe. Look at the genie released when we first split the atom; I'd argue that the current and future benefits from nuclear power alone outweigh the concern about the misuse of this knowledge. But I feel that ethical concerns must become a stronger part of scientific research and funding, not only because of this breakthrough but because of the ones we're about to make (nanotechnology will present similar worrying potential...)

Re:Viruses and weapons

[herrvinny]

Not to be a troll or flamebait, but look at Pearl Harbor.

If any country had to be in possession of these things, it should be the US. You don't want it to be the US? Well, let's look at the alternatives:

1. Middle Eastern countries? Yeah, right. Entire place is a hellhole.

2. Russia? If that place is secure, then a kid holding a slingshot and a stone is wielding a WMD.

3. Asia? Countries like Pakistan, India and China? Malaysia? Forget it. Pakistan or India would likely use the bioweapon against each other. China? Not the most friendly to human rights.

4. European countries? Well, maybe, but I'm not terribly happy with that idea.

5. Any country in Africa/South America? You must be joking, right?

Re:Viruses and weapons

[maomoondog]

Lots of new research that's affecting our lives has to do with leveraging the power of "network effects". Peer-to-peer sharing, distributed processing, dna sequencing, nano-fabrication, and countless other technologies depend on systems that harness new resources without the operator putting in extra effort. This is the next "simple machine" for us to master -- the use of self replicating systems. And it's going on in many feelds besides virology.

What's crucial is that the same effort be applied to the study of replication-resistant systems -- Biological, chemical, social and informational barriers that have sufficient functional diversity to resist infections that take advantage of systematic weakness.

This probably sounds like a crackpot unification theory, but I think a lot of the same types of analyses could be applied to studying all of these systems.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[igaborf]

I think the wonder of any scientific advance should be tempered by a clear-headed analysis of the dangers it might create.

Agreed. But even with the most benign intent and the strictest controls, it's the liklihood of unintended consequences that worries me most. The automobile was a great boon to mankind. Back in the early part of the 20th century when it was new technology, who knew it would befoul the air and skew the world political landscape like it has?

I'm not saying we should halt all progress for lack of ability to foretell the future, but some technologies appear inherently susceptible to future problems, and this is one of them.

I hope I'm not fear-mongering here, but, I worry.

You've got a lot of company.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Dixie_Flatline]

I agree. This is a dangerous thing to have in the hands of the wrong people.

HOWEVER, I really think that we should be celebrating that we can do this at all. A virus is pretty much the simplest form of life (and it has been argued that it's pretty close to not actually being life at all) and that's probably why they started with that, rather than kittens.

But for a moment, put aside your fears and realize what a tremendous accomplishment this is. Creating life, from scratch. This is something creationists have largely claimed wasn't possible, and was God's domain. Anything that humans can do, nature can do, on its own, with no intervention. This is just another piece of information that allows us to claim that life DID spring up spontaneously one day, unaided by any guiding hand. (It's not PROOF, just evidence, of course.)

Exciting times, and exciting to know that we can do it. It doesn't mean that we SHOULD, but it's good to know that we CAN.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[lobsterGun]

Bio warefare is a lot older than that.

LINK

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Major_Small]

I think the wonder of any scientific advance should be tempered by a clear-headed analysis of the dangers it might create.

so your saying we shouldn't go forward with science at all? apply that term to the renaissance where if people asked that, we would all still think god did everything for us.

Imagine a scenario where terrorists could alter a disease or organic biological weapon gene by gene to make it immune to current antidotes. Beyond that, I worry that the US itself might use it for its own cache of new-age weapons.

and what makes you think they're not already doing that?

If WE convert it to a weapon, what's the difference?

just because it's a virus doesn't mean it's deadly... a cold is a virus... read this from the article:

Venter cautioned that the creation of artificial human or animal life is a long way off because the synthetic bacteriophage -- the virus that was created -- is a much simpler life form. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria.

The project was funded in part by the Department of Energy, which hopes to create microbes that would capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, produce hydrogen or clean the environment.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[pmz]

at least until we've had a serious societal discussion regarding its possible role and impact on terrorism and biowarfare.

This is probably a case of science getting ahead of society. There is too much religious fanaticism in the world, right now, and, unfortunately, there will be religous fanaticism for pretty much all of the future, too. In every large group of people, there will be a small group that hates it, and it is getting easier for the small group to wipe out the entire large group with one motion.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[radish]

You're american right? Doesn't it strike you as kind of an odd coincidence that you come up with the US as the only "responsible" country in the world? Whilst you may be right (you actually missed out an entire continent) I'd hardly call your analysis objective.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[glgraca]

If those countries are so terrible,
why do you keep selling them weapons??

Who sold Saddam chemical and biological weapons?

The US insists on a monopoly on WMD technology
not for the safety of the world, but for
its own economic interests and to maintain
its power.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Grech]

This is a very easy position to take. However, it falls down on a couple of important points.

Ethics are not the same the world over. If X can be discovered with current technology, then someone somewhere (probably several someones in several somewheres) are busily discovering X as we speak. If X can be used as a weapon, then you can be doubly sure of this. You cannot halt the progress of science. In a 'best case', you can halt the progress of science by law-abiding and well-intentioned people. This is worse than the alternative.

Yes, new technologies do pose threats to our way of life. Usually, these disruptions are for the good. In the case where they are for ill, then it behooves us to understand them, rather than to intentionally blind ourselves to them.

Imagine a scenario where terrorists could alter a disease or organic biological weapon gene by gene to make it immune to current antidotes. Imagine further a victim nation whose biologists shrug their collective shoulders and say, "We know nothing about plague engineering. Try next door, it's legal there."

Re:Viruses and weapons

[jrumney]

Not to be a troll or flamebait, but look at Pearl Harbor.

Yeah, I'm looking. How does a strategic attack on a military base compare with the total devastation of two whole cities?

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Kjella]

Imagine a scenario where terrorists could alter a disease or organic biological weapon gene by gene to make it immune to current antidotes. Beyond that, I worry that the US itself might use it for its own cache of new-age weapons.

Except that with bio-weapons, there's a big problem... There's no "safe haven" for those that release it. Even the wackiest of terrorists want their people to survive. If you ram a couple planes in a building (US), gas the subway (Japan) or even nuke a city off the map (Nowhere... yet), you know where the damage is. But if you release a bio-weapon anywhere in the world, you can suddenly find it in your own back-yard in a week.

Releasing a reproducing bio-weapon with no known antidote requires a level of insanity unmatched in human history. Never before could anything truly endanger the entire human race, not even in the worst nuclear holocaust scenarios of the Cold War. Think something like the black plague, except 100% lethal, air-borne and spreading at 800km/hr by plane until someone realizes just how deep shit we're all in. And yes, I mean all, friends and foes alike.

Kjella

Re:Viruses and weapons

[DCowern]

I personally think that research like this should only be allowed on the moon colony... oh... wait... nevermind.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[MKalus]

Yeah, I'm looking. How does a strategic attack on a military base compare with the total devastation of two whole cities?

Because otherwise so many brave americans might have died on the beaches of Japan if they attacked.

The idea to blow up an uninhabitat island was brought up but easily forgotten, after all nobody would have taken the US seriously by doing this.

You think I am kidding, right? But that was an argument that was brought forth by some people who still think it was just a great idea to reduce to cities to rubble.

However "good" the US might be, they are still so far the only country in the world who has used Nuclear Weapons in a war time scenario, and let's not forget things like the Firebombing of Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo, just to stay in the second world war.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[TGK]

Gotta clear up a few things here.

1 - Terrorism isn't generaly a R&D effort. The act of terrorism isn't anything new, contrary to what GW Bush Inc. seems to belive. For centuries people have been committing acts of terrorism, but these are not the organizations that develop the new and frightening weapons of war.

Terrorism is, by it's very nature, a low budget enterprise. Until Mr and Mrs Smith can grow little Susie a custom built kitten with neon pink fur by hitting some buttons on the Recombinator (tm) you won't see gene level modifications as something available to terrorists.

2 - We've been making viruses resistance to treatment/immunization for years now. Read Ken Alblik's autobiography on his roll in the Soviet Bioweapons program. Until the 1970s the United States was engaged in offensive biological warfare . Today we still research defensive biowarfare, which means that we use developing treatments as an excuse to weaponize deadly organisims.

The former Soviet Union (according to most sources) weaponized the small pox virus. Weaponization, for the unaware, is a process of making a virus resistant to treatment and immunization techniques while increasing it's kill rate.

As was pointed out elsewhere in this thread, if you have something insanely dangerous and you want to it to fall into the wrong hands, the best thing you can do with it it hand it to the Russian Army to guard.

I have the utmost respsect for the scientific community. The work they do is amazing and valuable research, but this isn't something I'm worried about. Somehow, I doubt that a bunch of PhDs in a lab can come up with anything (much) more deadly than billions of years of evolution and 50 years of cold war has produced.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Lord Ender]

Life is quite common throughout the universe, however, the reason we have not contacted other life is that technology naturally advances until a discovery is reached which causes a planet-destroying chain reaction.

I can't prove it is right, but you can't prove it is wrong.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Gettin'_Fatter]

"I'd argue that the current and future benefits from nuclear power alone outweigh the concern about the misuse of this knowledge"

Yes, but how many atom-splitting advances can we pile up before we wipe ourselves out? I'd argue that the threat level goes up exponentionally with each "advance". Sooner or later we're going to stumble across something that spins way out of control and devastates the human race with unintended consequences. It's really only a matter of time.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[herrvinny]

Well, let's start with the almost complete destruction of Battleship Row and go from there. Let's try the fact that we never attacked Japan before Pearl Harbor, no state of war was announced, no nothing. Fortunately, the USS Enterprise, an aircraft carrier, was away at the time of the attack.

Let's also keep in mind that General Curtis LeMay's 21st Bomber Command killed more people with firestorms than the nuclear weapons. Here's a quick timeline of firebombing in Europe, A good picture describing firebombing, Wiki of how Tokyo was firebombed, and the wonderful bomber that made this all possible.

I can't find the link now, but do you know why those cities were picked? Because they had manufacturing facilities. Heard of Mitsubishi? They built planes, and engines, and bombs. They had factories in/near those cities. Those were also military targets, as much so as Pearl Harbor. Or do you not know that a lot of civilians lived in Pearl Harbor as well?

Re:Viruses and weapons

[TGK]

God I suck.

That should be the United States was engaged in offensive [biological weapons research].

Re:Viruses and weapons

[ishark]

If any country had to be in possession of these things, it should be the US. You don't want it to be the US?

Considering the recent record of the US of bombing and invading countries on purely imaginary perceived threats and very real economic reasons, I'd rather NOT have the US be the only one with such a weapon. I'd like a lot of different people to have it. Balance of terror is bad, but I've come to appreciate the advantages of unstable equilibrium compared to a (albeit very stable) death.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[glgraca]

Recent? How many years of peace has
the US had since WWII?

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Anonymous Coward]

Not very many. Rioting in the streets almost every year, incessant and absurdly high death tolls from gang warfare, government agents deciding they own your land, and killing you when you defend it from them. The USA is never at peace. Except in the FOX News "everthing is okay now take your soma!" way.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Dr Caleb]

Not to be a troll or flamebait,

In the same light, the US has never created a weapon it has not used.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Chris Burke]

even nuke a city off the map (Nowhere... yet)

It's happened twice. What, it only counts if terrorists do it?

But anyway, insightful post.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[bigberk]

Imagine a scenario where terrorists

Oh geez, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists, we're all so afraid of terrorists. You may be a terrorist, your neighbor might be a terrorist, and I'm petrified by fear. I'm so paralyzed by fear that I think we should pull the plug on any project that might be potentially used by terrorists. Whether it's technological, or medical... hell, who cares that we might be coming up with new biological agents to help fight cancer... throw that research out the window! The terrorists might somehow morph the results of the research and create an Osama-superbug that's even wors that SARS and anthrax!!!

Re:Viruses and weapons

[mesocyclone]

In the same light, the US has never created a weapon it has not used.

This is absolutely not true. The US created many chemical weapons which it did not use (I don't know if we used chem weapons in WW-I, but we enver used them since then).

The US has NEVER used biological weapons (even the recorded use of smallpox against Indians was done by the British before the American Revolution).

The US has never used a hydrogen bomb.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[SlashDread]

Bulldroppings.

Thats stupid and dangerous thinking.
A scientist should consider NOT the consequences of science as a matter of MUST. For a scientist only Science is a MUST.
ALL science has good and potentially bad consequences. Trying to "debate" Science into a "less dangerous" direction is both a fallacy and censor invoking mind control device.

"/Dread"

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Jheaden]

I don't see the proof or the evidence here.

1. They didn't create life from scratch, they copied an existing virus
2. How could this possibly be evidence that life sprang up spontaneously unaided by any guiding hand when by definition the virus they copied was copied by a human (i.e. a guiding hand)

While I will agree that many creationist believe only God could do this, I'm not one of them. My belief is that he gave us the intellect to learn, understand, and manipulate our environment for good or ill. Just my two cents.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[elmegil]

Releasing a reproducing bio-weapon with no known antidote requires a level of insanity unmatched in human history.

I think you underestimate the power of human insanity.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[dillon_rinker]

Last time I checked, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are both still on the map. I believe what the previous poster was referring to was a blast so deadly it renders the area uninhabitable.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[plugger]

5. Any country in Africa/South America? You must be joking, right?

Why, because they might decide to turn the tables on the people who have historically exploited African people and then allowed them to be ruled by whichever regime was most convenient during the cold war?

I wouldn't want to see WMD in the hands of many African governments either, but don't just dismiss them as a bunch of nutters, the white man hasn't exactly gone out of his way to help the place get sorted out (me included).

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Performer Guy]

Yea the US should just wait for the perceived threat to kill untold thousands or even millions of their citizens and countless others. That way they can live up to glorious European record of permitting and nurturing genocide while ignoring obvious threats even in the face of blatant provocation and agression. How dare they defend themselves against naked agression, clear threats asymmetric warfare and odious govenrments with no redeeming features.

Get over the propaganda and bullshit you're being fed. Get a sense of history and try and be a bit less sanctimonious.

The U.S. deserves a lot more credit for their conduct than you or your puppet masters would give them.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[canineK9]

Newsflash. The Soviet biowarfare program in years past already made more than one bioweapon that did not have a currently available vaccine. The primary mover in the Soviet program is now in the USA working for a defense contractor (i.e. CIA/NSA). This may be the first step over the brink but it is a baby step. This virus will only infect specific bacteria. In fact, natually occuring bacterial viruses have been used as an antibiotic in some infections. (The problem with silver linings is they always come attached to a cloud).

Re:Viruses and weapons

[cheetah]

You can say that if you wish. But in the 40's EVERONE thought that bombing cities was a good way to "break the will of the enemy" and thus end wars. But as WWII showed if anything bombing cities only strengthens the will to fight. Also as Germany proved it is possible to increase total produdction even during city bombing campains. The thing that I also always like to point out when people talk about the Atom bomb's in Japan is the fact that the fire bombing raid of Tokyo a few weeks before hand killed more people than BOTH of the Atom bombs put together.

It is clear that the Japanese were ready to give up before the bombs. I don't buy that dropping the bombs saved our troops from landing in Japan. But I don't see it as being that much worse that the fire bombing of Tokyo... I know that some people might say that I am wrong because of the effects of radation years later... but Dead is dead and the fire bombing killed more people even after the fact. Japan would have given up before we invaded without us using the Bombs. But who knows how many more people would have been killed before they gave up. I don't know and I don't think anyone can say for sure...

If you want to talk about something that was totaly wrong that we did during WWII just look at the bombing raid on Dresden(sp?). That was just to show-off to the Russians what power the we had before the end of the war. All of those people died just becuase they got in the middle of the pissing match between the USA+BG vs the SU...

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Lumpy]

I don't think anybody should be making any new life forms or modifying any existing life forms, at least until we've had a serious societal discussion regarding its possible role and impact on terrorism and biowarfare....Imagine a scenario where terrorists could alter a disease or organic biological weapon gene...

see you have the same wierd logic that the gun control nuts have.... Make it illegal and it goes away.

sorry, the terrorists and evildo-ers will still do nasty things. no matter what anyone says is right or wrong.

same as how criminals can get guns, grenades, and rocket launchers.. they dont OBEY LAWS!

Re:Viruses and weapons

[GlassHeart]

Releasing a reproducing bio-weapon with no known antidote requires a level of insanity unmatched in human history. Never before could anything truly endanger the entire human race, not even in the worst nuclear holocaust scenarios of the Cold War.

You are wrong. The prevailing nuclear doctrine of the Cold War was known as "Mutually Assured Destruction", in which both powers knew that escalated use of nuclear weapons will lead to doom for all. A hypothetical unstoppable virus has the same effect, so a doomsday virus to ward off attacks is terrifying, but not insane. That's what nuclear weapons aimed at other nuclear states have been for decades.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[gilgongo]

> I don't think anybody should be making any new > life forms or modifying any existing life forms

My grandfather bred chickens. His father corresponded with Charles Darwin about it (my aunt has the letters). Breeding animals to enhance or supress certain traits has been going on for ages.

> Imagine a scenario where terrorists could

I can imagine any scenario "where terrorists could.." do just about anything (brainwash my children into blowing up their schools... putting poison in the water supply... the list is frickin endless). But that is not a good reason not to conduct this research. If it was, the world WOULD be run by terrorists.

> I hope I'm not fear-mongering here, but, I worry.

Don't worry - you're just being ridiculous, that's all. We can all be ridiculous occasionally :-)

Re:Viruses and weapons

[cens0r]

korea, vietnam, cambodia, libya, panama, columbia (ongoing), iraq, bosnia, iraq again. Sure some of these may be justified. And they weren't technically wars... but try telling that to the people who died.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[ross.w]

Do you, perchance, work for Fox news?

Because you sure sound like them.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Dixie_Flatline]

Yeah, the article wasn't entirely clear on this, and I read what they actually did LATER. Still, quite an accomplishment.

However, humans as a guiding hand are pretty primitive. In a Universe as vast as ours, it's generally accepted that there isn't anything that we can do that the Universe cannot also do on its own. (This comes up especially in physics, when we try to see if we can circumvent or manipulate physical laws to our advantage. Or theorize about it, at least.)

Alas. I'll curb my enthusiasm for when they manage to create life outright.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Paradise Pete]

The idea to blow up an uninhabitat island was brought up but easily forgotten, after all nobody would have taken the US seriously by doing this.

Well, since they didn't give up when the first actual city was hit, then probably not. Also, they didn't exactly have a huge supply of bombs.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[soft_guy]

You are thinking of the world from a zenophobic perspective AND indulging in what "ought to be" rather than what is.

The US is not "more responsible" than Australia, Iceland, Sweden, the UK, or Japan. In fact, the US is the most likely to actually use a new super weapon in war. The US is the only country so far to use an atomic weapon in a war.

Plus, the guy in power right now in the US is a warmonger.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[djneko]

This is absolutely not true. The US created many chemical weapons which it did not use (I don't know if we used chem weapons in WW-I, but we enver used them since then).

Agent Orange?

Re:Viruses and weapons

[mesocyclone]

Not a weapon.

Agent Orange was a defoliant, not intended to hurt people or destroy property, and to this day there is no solid scientific evidence that Agent Orange is dangerous, in spite of vast numbers of people exposed and many, many studies.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Chris Burke]

You see what those places looked like after the bomb dropped? "On the map" was pretty much the only place they were. Maybe they rebuilt in the last 50 years, ya think?

Uninhabitable is relative to your tolerance for increased cancer rates.

And it's just silly to say it doesn't count because the fallout wasn't so bad that people couldn't potentially live there again. Would it not count if whatever biological weapon he was talking about only killed 85% of the people in a city? Yeah.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[HBI]

The artillery the US Army used in WWI was primarily of French manufacture, the 75mm gun being a very common one in US use. The issue was ammunition supply for actual US guns. Well, also that most US artillery sucked at the time.

Some data about one US Field Artillery regiment.

Any war gas used during WWI by Americans would have been supplied by Britain or France - US chemical weapon manufacturing capacity was near nil during the war. However, tests with war gases were conducted in the US during and after the war. Some gas-filled WW1 vintage shells were found at a former test firing range located in the Meadowlands, very near to Giants Stadium in NJ (and about 10 miles from NYC).

Can't find a web link - this happened in the early 90's. Fun stuff - the shells had phosgene, mustard and Lewisite, from what I understand. Mostly were still intact, even given the swampy environment.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[MKalus]

Well, since they didn't give up when the first actual city was hit, then probably not. Also, they didn't exactly have a huge supply of bombs.

I am not sure they had time, it was what? Three days between the bombs? They could also have tried to find a military target instead of a city, no?

M.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[HeghmoH]

The best kind of research is research where the result is not known. If you already know the result, then it's not that interesting. It can still be useful, to round out our knowledge or whatever, but all the truly great research is, almost by definition, going into uncharted territory.

In that case, how exactly do you consider the ethics of something that nobody has ever seen, has never been built, and nobody even knows what it can do? It's all very easy to look back and say, well, this group should have considered ethics more carefully when they came up with what they made. But it's all hindsight; the scientists working in the Manhattan Engineering District didn't forsee MAD, they were just building a big bomb. This big bomb does kill lots of people, but that was happening already; just look at Dresden, or the Tokyo firebombing, or dozens of other examples during that war.

It's all well and good to say that ethics should be a bigger part of it, but it's not something that ultimately makes sense. You may as well require scientists to file environmental impact statements for their basic research as well.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[HeghmoH]

MAD never would have lead to doom for all, only for the countries participating in it, some of their various allies, and certain unfortunates. Even in the US and Russia, in a MAD scenario, not everybody would die. Civilization in those countries would certainly be wrecked, and a vast number of people would die, but not all of them. As far as the world goes, for most people it would be a horrible, sad event, and probably lead to a great deal of disruption, but life would go on. The popular SF idea of nuclear war making the planet uninhabitable was never anywhere close to being true.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Nucleon500]

I'm not worried - I've got my duct tape!

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Performer Guy]

No. But they can't be all bad. Anythings better than listening to Peter Jennings and other socialist nuts masquerading as enlightened internationalists.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Performer Guy]

This just illustrates how bullshit gets repeated until some dopes think it's fact. "Every" intelligence agency in the world warned the US? That's is a lie. Moreover, there were some vague warnings without specifics, including internally in the US from its own agencies. Heck anyone who's read Tom Clancy is aware of similar predictions, but a vague generalization is completely useless except to propagandists filling the heads of fools like you with bullshit. You can warn of any number of things, but without concrete facts nothing's going to prevent them. You don't consider the thousands of warnings of dire events where nothing ever happens. What credence do you put in a warning with no specifics scant evidence and no means to prevent it?

Now, let's look at the context of this discussion, someone is complaining about preemptive action. So the U.S. actually does something in anticipation of preventing future even worse calamities from a known funder of terrorism and still gets bashed for it. Damned if they do and damned if they don't.

As for the rest of your demented diatribe, it just illustrates how sick your mind is. This wasn't the US' fault by any stretch of the imagination, but it's clear you'd like to see more of the same or at least see the US prevented from doing anything about it. In your sick Anonymous Coward mind you blame the US for doing nothing, then blame the US for deserving to be attacked because they bestow the bounty of foreign trade upon others. Doubtless you also blame the US for arming Iraq first like the other morons of your ilk, when you're to dumb to realize that it was T72 tanks, BMPs, Russian RPGs & SAMs, Chinese radar, & sundry Russian & French weapons of various types etc they were facing in Iraq, hardly US armaments.

Your nonsense about the US raping other countries seems to revolve around the us showering it's dollars upon people through free trade which they turn round and buy goods back from the world with. You complain about the US installing dictators (which they don't in general they merely work with the incumbent) but then also complain when at last they remove a dictator and try to install a democracy. You hypocrite. The economics is simple trade relations and it's the only reason a dumb son of a bitch like you can pollute the internet with your sick ramblings about the death of 3000 innocent civilians in the US. Like most other dopes you aren't even smart enough to realize that the impact of that or similar attacks on the US could be one of the worst things to happen to your miserable existence merely through the economic ripples it sends throughout the world.

Your metaphors about beating raping and torturing the world are a childish fantasy. There were real men women and children having this inflicted on them in Iraq yet you don't give a shit about that, you'd rather spout crap about the US and imagined ficticious slights. Prosperity and rejuvenation invariably accompany American influence in the world.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Dr Caleb]

So where did they test these biological weapons again? Where did they test H-Bombs again?

You can't test if you don't use.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[mesocyclone]

I'm a Vietnam Veteran, I'm just not too scared of the whole thing. TCDD is very deadly to rats, there is no question about that. If I were a rat I would be very scared (of course, I would also be long dead).

However, there is no good epidemiological evidence that it is significantly harmful to man. It is still treated in the US as a horribly deadly carcinogen, in spite of the lack of evidence. Go look closely at your own links and read the *scientific* report from the National Academies instead of all the propaganda.

To give you an idea of research on the subject, consider that there was an accident in a industrial plant in Seveso which released 5 kg of dioxin into the atmosphere. People received the highest doses ever recorded, and many developed chloracne (unlike those in Vietnam). Many small animals died. And yet, here is a quote from Medical and Toxicological Informion Review: "The Serveso 15-year update has been published. The findings, surprising many, including IARC, concluded there were no statistically significant reports of cancer for individuals exposed to Dioxin in 1976. See Epidemiology 8 (1997): 646-652"

There is an entire industry devoted to getting money for Vietnam Veterans because their health problems were "caused by Agent Orange." There are a number of cancers, which, if I get them, I can get compensation for as "Agent Orange" service connected health problem.

The communist government of Vietnam of course blames all birth defects on it.

As far as eye witnesses, that claim is utterly absurd. The ONLY known short term harm of extremely high dosages of dioxins is a non-fatal skin condition known as chloracne. Thats at HIGH DOSAGES, not the trace dosages Americans, Australians and Vietnamese got from the defoliation.

Cancer mortality among Vietnam Veterans is INVERSELY proportional to Agent Orange exposure.

If you carefully read the National Academies reports, they are able to find some associations between *pesticides* and an increased cancer risk - among farmers who use the pesticides a lot for a long time.

They have been unable to find any statistically significant evidence of Agent Orange damage to Vietnam Veterans. Go read the report.

Now, when you consider all the other things going on in Vietnam at the time, and the high level of violence, and the risk level which is so low that it has yet to be reasonably measurable after 35 years, calling AO a chemical weapon is utterly and completely absurd. That's like calling a bulldozer a weapon because it clears jungle.

Notice your own quote "TCDD's are thought to be harmful to man." If there were scientifically valid evidence, that statement would read: "TCDD's are known to be harmful humans." In fact, many of the chemicals we used in our aviation work were more dangerous that AO.

All the evidence indicates that AO was less dangerous than gasoline or oil or many of the other chemicals used by people in their daily lives. Furthermore, the evidence from those who got vastly higher doses than anyone in 'nam is that the slight risk observed is more likely due to the pesticide than the TCDD.

Furthermore, significant amounts of dioxins are produced in nature. One dioxin scare in the US was traced to the clay used in a food processing phase... clay from a many millenia old stratum.

If you have the ability to read scientific reports, try: Birth Outcomes of Women Exposed to Dioxin in Seveso Italy

The obvious conclusion is that dioxins may be slightly toxic in low doses, with possibly a very small risk of future cancers, but this has not been proven. They also have known effects, at high dosages, on sex ratios in human births.

This is hardly a chemical weapon!

As to your offensive attitude, mate, I suppose it's what to expect th

Re:Viruses and weapons

[mesocyclone]

Chemical weapons meaning chemicals produced to kill or seriously injure people quickly. That's pretty much the standard definition. Quickly because that's all that counts on the battlefield. The last known use of chemical weapons was by Saddam Hussein. Before that, it was the Italians in Ethiopia prior to WW-II. Chemical weapons were commonplace in WW-I, although nerve agents were not developed until WW-II, by the Germans, who didn't use them except in their extermination camps.

Biological weapons are normally pathogenic microbial life forms or their natural toxins (such as Botulin toxin, although personally I think of as a chemical weapon, since it isn't alive). We have never used biological weapons, although we did develop them. We destroyed our stocks of them in 1969. The last known use of biological weapons was by the Japanese in China before and during WW-II. The greatest amount of biological weapons were produced by the Soviet Union under Gorbachev by the Vector organization, and were put in ICBM warheads. These included smallpox, anthrax and several others.

DU, if you look at any scientific literature, has no harmful effects unless you are in the tank that gets hit with it.

There was NO fallout in Japan. Those weapons were not planned to cause fallout, and the phenomenon was not known or considered to be harmful until tests injured some people in the Marshall Islands in the '50s (which was, obviously, not a weapons use, but a test).

We used no bio weapons in the Korean war. There was a North Korean propaganda campaign to the effect that we had, and many American prisoners were tortured to elicit confessions of such use (a few were obtained). If you choose to believe the Stalinist regime of (at that time) Kim Il Sung, that's pretty sad.

Re: Agent Orange...See my other article in this thread. It was not a chemical weapon, but an herbicide. It was not designed to kill people, and was sprayed on our own troops, often at their request.

I started this subthread to refute an offhanded (and rather offensive) comment that the US had never produced a weapon that was not subsequently used, which is utter nonsense.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[mesocyclone]

You've got it backwards. You usually don't use unless you test, although one type of bomb dropped on Japan (enriched Uranium) was never tested before use.

The biological weapons were tested on ANIMALS at Fort Detrick in Maryland and Dugway Proving Grounds (Utah), and maybe other locations. No doubt they were also tested against human cell lines at Ft. Detrick. Harmless microbial agents were released in San Francisco and I think New York City to analyze the spread of the agents under city and subway conditions.

The H-bombs were tested in the South Pacific. They were not used, just tested.

If you wish to assert that thest test *was* a use, at it appears, I suggest you try a more reasonable line of reasoning, because that is purely idiotic.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Wraithlyn]

I can however, assert a very strong probability that some races will get off their planet before they destroy it.

After all, we have... not sustainably of course, but there's no reason to think a self-sustaining extraterrestrial colony is impossible before the homeworld is wiped out by virus|nuclear winter|Dubya's general stupidity|asteroid|zombies|other.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[efflux]

Sanctimonious? Who the hell is being sanctimonious, and in what way?

Re:Viruses and weapons

[dillon_rinker]

You see what most German cities looked like in May of 1945? "On the map" was pretty much the only place they were. Maybe they rebuilt in the last 50 years, ya think? Granted, radiation is bad. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were very bad. "Bombed off the map" is worse. If your vocabulary for destruction ends with "Hiroshima and Nagasaki" then may I suggest you invest some mental capital in a study of the current arsenal?

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Performer Guy]

Read this, 'nuff said.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Art ic les/000/000/003/378fmxyz.asp

Re:Viruses and weapons

[tyler_larson]

From the article:
But the questions ethicists have raised about such work are numerous: Should we be playing God?

Man has been playing God for over 3000 years. We build our own fires and water our own crops. We've made lightning, hail, thunder and rain. We've built boats, airplanes, televisions, refrigerators, and all sorts of devices allowing us all to be gods in our own right.

Shold man be playing God? The very question itself is just a declaration of one's own ignorance and fear.

So what, then, if some evil terrorist uses our new technology to kill us all? It's possible, sure, but that's not our decision to make. The technology already exists for any one determined man to destroy the world. Perhaps tomorrows invention will do us all in, but then perhaps it will end up saving us from certain destruction.

In history, technology has saved us more often than it's killed us. We didn't lose one third of our population during the last viral outbreak like we did a few hundred years ago. Our own survival is due almost entirely to a few men "playing God" as blatantly as possible when they created various medicines and vaccines. Scientists could just as likely kill us all by avoiding an important discovery that would save us as they could by creating the device that would destroy us.

Nature has caused more death and destruction than man alone has ever done, or could ever do. Yet we rarely curse the volcano or say mother nature screwed it all up when she created the hurricane. The latest scientific progressions are just as much a part of nature as anything else out there, because we are just as much a part of nature as anything else.

We cannot destroy the ultimate course of nature because we are part of nature. We're an evolving species now, just as much as ever, just like any other on the planet. Our technology doesn't hinder or advance evolution: our technology is evolution.

A lot of people died at Heroshima, just like a lot of innocent people died at Pompei. Both events demonstrated the awsome and potentially destructive power of nature.

Our race is driven to progress and evolve by our own instinct--by nature itself. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't stop it from happening. We can control ourselves, but we cannot control our species. Perhaps mankind will progress indefinately, scattered across myriad worlds, as far as immagination can propel us. Or perhaps we'll all find an end in a blaze of glorious descruction. That's not our decision. We simply have to watch and let nature run its course.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[StikyPad]

Pretty funny, but even more funny when you replace "terrorist" with "communist." Same paranoia, different era.

Oh geez, communists, communists, communists, we're all so afraid of communists. You may be a communist, your neighbor might be a communist, and I'm petrified by fear. I'm so paralyzed by fear that I think we should pull the plug on any project that might be potentially used by communists. Whether it's technological, or medical... hell, who cares that we might be coming up with new biological agents to help fight cancer... throw that research out the window! The communists might somehow morph the results of the research and create an Osama-superbug that's even wors that SARS and anthrax!!!

Re:Viruses and weapons

[jrumney]

Or do you not know that a lot of civilians lived in Pearl Harbor as well?

Perhaps your image of Pearl Harbor comes from the movie.

There were 68 civilians killed or missing after the Pearl Harbor Attack, compared with 2500 military personnel. I don't think the US has EVER had such a record in war.

The comparisons made immediately after 9/11 by US politicians to Pearl Harbor made me sick. However, Pearl Harbor was similar to 9/11 in one very important way. In both cases the US government did not act on intelligence information that was readily available, and in both cases that cost American lives. It is fairly certain that Roosevelt failed to act deliberately, in order to sway public opinion in favour of war. I hope it does not turn out that Bush did the same.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[efflux]

Read this, 'nuff said. Not really, especially consindering the page is missing (and yes, I removed the space).

At any rate, you were calling the now great-grandparent poster sanctimonious. I want to know how he was "affecting piousness : hypocritically devout". If this describes anyone, it describes GWB.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Chris Burke]

You see what most German cities looked like in May of 1945?

If your point was that it is possible to conventionally bomb cities off the map, then you wasted your keystrokes.

If your vocabulary for destruction ends with "Hiroshima and Nagasaki" then may I suggest you invest some mental capital in a study of the current arsenal?

Oh, please. Is that really what you thought I was saying? That nothing could be worse than Hiroshima?

If a terrorist took a Hiroshima-sized bomb and blew it up in a Hiroshima-sized city and blew it Hiroshima-off-the-fucking-map, would it not fucking count?! Is that not enough of a bad thing for you? "What? Oakland, California was destroyed by nuclear weapons; terrorists blamed? What was the yield of the bomb? They're estimating 30 kilotons? Oh... *yawn* Okay..." Yeah, right.

My point is and still remains: Two cities already have been "nuked off the map", and that's still true even if we later made bigger bombs.

And yeah, it could be worse.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[bigberk]

Pretty funny, but even more funny when you replace "terrorist" with "communist." Same paranoia, different era.

Good call! People need to be afraid of something (clearly somebody in power believes this). Look how much network television news broadcasts are about fear mongering.

What me worry?

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Performer Guy]

GWB? Ha ha, just keep throwing the mud, you only demonstrate your bias. It's the same old tosh, "he's a moron", "he's arrogant" "he's.... whatever.....

You're conceited attack on GWB does not excuse anothers sanctimonious garbage. It's pretty clear what was sanctimonious, your only problem is you agree with his sermon, so you don't see it.

For the article if it's missing pop up a level & look, ain't my fault they don't provide persistent URLs (pretty lame of them really, some publications just don't 'get' the web).

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Performer Guy]

For that link, Go here:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/

And select the "Case Closed" link.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[efflux]

I did "pop up a leve & look", and was denied access. BTW: I called GWB sanctimonious because he invokes religion. The fact that I find him somewhat hypocritical *is* a value judgement on my part... but that does excuse your usage of the word. Why don't you find out what it means to be sanctimonious first (and consequently pious), before speaking out of your ass. here's a dictionary if you need help.

Re:Viruses and weapons

[Performer Guy]

It's one thing to be a pedantic, smarmy smart ass and play the grammar police but you look like an uneducated shit for brains when you attempt it with no clue about what you're criticizing your respondent over.

I know what it means, I don't need your your patronizing ill conceived link to a dictionary, your post was sanctimonious. That you don't understand plain English or it's use is your problem. That you went to a dictionary looking for the narrowest definition you could informs me that you're a clueless fool who doesn't understand the use of the word or English in general.

Since you just don't get it read here:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sanctim on ious

The most appropriate interpretation would be "feigning ... righteousness", (with a touch of hypocricy in there too especially in the following sentence). Since YOU also insist in being a sanctimonious horses arse it looks like it's a common characted flaw. Please don't look up horses arse in an encyclopedia then ask me in which way you are a horses arse. If the description confuses you just move along, or maybe study some English interpretation before posting again.

See my other reply for that article link.

Perhaps this is a good thing...

[LegendOfLink]

Think about it, if you can build a virus (kind of like coding it like you code a computer program) could you then be able to set it to beneficially help the human body instead of harm it?

Maybe this could be used to create a kind of "police" virus that will destroy the HIV virus in infected patients. I dunno, people scorn new technology, but in my opinion, this might be a step in the right direction for cures of current diseases that are only treatable.

Re:Perhaps this is a good thing...

[glassesmonkey]

Sure, the number one thing scientist will is make 'helpful' viruses.. Maybe YOU should review the US annual expenditures in the areas of research..

Re:Perhaps this is a good thing...

[krin]

As a living organism could it not mutate into something harmful?

I definitely see the pros to what they have done. Man made viruses could help us fight diseases we don't know how to otherwise.

But really, how do you control something like this once it's released into the wild (human body)? Send more man made viruses after it?

Re:Perhaps this is a good thing...

[SmallFurryCreature]

Not a completly stupid idea this. One of the ways in fighting virusses is to get the body adjusted to a lesser variant of the virus you want to fight against. It is called innoculation (or something) and it is extremly widely used. Problem with the aids virus is that there doesn't seem to be a lesser variant around we can use to prepare our imune system. Meaning the innoculation will kill you. Not good.

Perhaps an artificial virus can come close enough to build up our defence system but not actually kill you in the process.

Of course the bad news is that people tend to screw up so we might end up with an aids virus that spreads through the air.

We're all gonna die!

[raider_red]

Okay, probably not, but I do worry over the implications that this kind of breakthrough will have on us. I'm sure that there are lots of beneficial appliccations yada yada, blah blah blah, but the unintended consequences have the potential to be devastating.

Re:We're all gonna die!

[fr2asbury]

"Okay, probably not, but . . ."

Eh, I'd say most certainly.

Re:We're all gonna die!

[raider_red]

Okay, let's not get too picky. You know what I meant.

I thought bill gates and co.

[bushboy]

... had cornered that field of research ?

duh.. I guess humans will do it themselves

[glassesmonkey]

What is wrong with people!!?!

I saw a news report on goats the made to have genetic information of silk spinning spiders.. They are milking the goats to extract commericial production levels of silk!!!!

What happens when they engineer a virus and design it to only activate (attack) a specific genetic sequence (or genetic defect common in certain races).. tinfoil hat people are right, the Nazi's didn't disappear.. they are just working for the US military.

Re:duh.. I guess humans will do it themselves

[SlashdotLemming]

We're at the top of the food chain, so we must come up with new and creative ways to eat ourselves.
Its all part of Nature's master plan.

Re:duh.. I guess humans will do it themselves

[joephish]

It would be pretty hard to do...

Viruses mutate quickly and there's no guarantee they would remain specific to the product of a single allele of a gene.

i.e. the virus would most likely evolve to be able to infect everybody.

Re:duh.. I guess humans will do it themselves

[TheSync]

The challenge here is that you can't have a genetically-targetted race-killer, because race is a social concept and not really a genetic one. Besides the vagueness of race (such as "white" or "black" when both are full of incredible genetic differentiation), even "racial" phenotypes do not always stem from identical genotypes.

There are plenty of examples of people from different races who are closer genetically to each other than to many others of the same race.

Now an individual or family target, that is a different matter...

Re:duh.. I guess humans will do it themselves

[Griim]

Actually, I've thought of this before, and thought it would interesting to engineer and release into thw wild, viruses that "turn off" weak genetic traits...I really don't know enough about this to say which conditions are genetic, and by "turn off" I just mean to either surpress them or remove them from a person's DNA makeup so they don't get passed along...for instance Cistic Fibrosis (again I'm not sure if this is a genetic disease that is passed along)...perhaps a better example would be something like genetic heart disease.

Of course the problem with using technology like this is, at what point do we draw the line? What if something we remove now, later on becomes something that actually helps survive?

Re:duh.. I guess humans will do it themselves

[glassesmonkey]

Umm, strictly a social concept eh?

There are a great number of genetic markers which are overwhelmingly present in certain populations. This obviously doesn't apply to every individual, but say when 80% of what we call a race has a specific genetic condition, that is probably good enough for the next Hitler.

There are clearly different races (genetically) and until very recently humans were not as mobile as they currently are. Breeding was once a tribal concept and we live in a much different world than we were genetically created in. I hate to be the one to break this to you but people's appearance and the social concepts you speak of are based on their genetics. That's what makes some one 'black' and someone else 'white'.. it's the genes that dictate what social concept is applied. (or more exactly, our obserations about genetics that we have put names to)

Re:duh.. I guess humans will do it themselves

[TheSync]

"Black" in the minds of most Americans is "of African descent." There are plenty of people from South Asia who also have dark skin, yet would not be considered "black" by most Americans. That is the problem with trying to define a race by genetics.

Show me a genetic marker that applies to 80% of a "race."

I can think of a few markers that are highly concentrated in a few races (Sickle cell ~10% of Africans, Tay Sachs in ~30% of Ashkenazi Jewish), but none that are found in 80% of a "racial" population.

Moreover if you went after something like Tay Sachs, it would also take out a large number of Arabs as well as Jews. Of course, I suppose that didn't stop Al Quaeda in Turkey...

Re:yes, but does it run Linux?

[Robotech_Master]

When they get to the stage of building multicellular organisms from scratch, would it count as a Beowulf cluster?

Nanotechnology + Artifical Virii merging...

[scovetta]

I think that this is actually a Good Thing. Sure, there are dangers of creating super-viruses, but then we can make super-anti-viruses to beat up the super-viruses, ya know? Imagine injecting AIDS-infected people with a virus that targets infected cells and destroys the cell, or even replaces the DNA with "good" DNA. The possibilities really ARE endless. As soon as we can create a Thing that you put in your body and you can manipulate your cells at the genetic or even molecular level, things open up. You've got SoftICE running on the human body.

Re:Nanotechnology + Artifical Virii merging...

[Threni]

>Imagine injecting AIDS-infected people with a virus that targets infected cells and
>destroys the cell, or even replaces the DNA with "good" DNA.

Imagine infecting non-AIDS infected peopel with a virus called AIDS.

Wait, that's been done. Check out "A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Chemical and Biological Warfare" by R. Harris and J. Paxman (Yes, *that* Paxman, if you're from the UK).

At a House Appropriations hearing in 1969, the Defense Department's Biological Warfare (BW) division requested funds to develop through gene-splicing a new disease that would both resist and break down a victim's immune system. "Within the next 5 to 10 years it would probably be possible to make a new infective micro-organism which could differ in certain important respects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious diseases." The funds were approved.

AIDS appeared within the requested time frame, and has the exact characteristics specified.

Playing God

[jetkust]

Should we be playing God? Does the potential for good that new life forms may have outweigh the harm they could do?

Well, you can stop yourself from doing it. But can you stop your enemies?

Global death fun

[pubjames]

I studied biology and one of the lecturers was an expert in viruses. He is convinced that there is a high probability of a global, deadly flu-like virus sometime in the near-term future. (I remember one of his memorable phrases - be thankful that the HIV virus is so difficult to catch, you have to have sex with the carrier. Imagine if they just had to sneeze near you...)

Anyway, what do you do when this deadly virus breaks out? Apparently the thing to do is head for the hills - take a caravan somewhere remote, for instance, and live there for six months or so. With a shotgun, just in case things get really desperate.

Just so you know. Although perhaps I'm going to regret posting this on Slashdot. I'm not sure living in a world in which only the nerds survive would be worth it...

Envoke the DMCA!

[Ridgelift]

"It's a very important technical advance," says Gerald Rubin, a molecular geneticist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "You can envision the day when one could sit down at a computer, design a genome and then build it. We're still inventing the tools to make that happen, and this is an important one."

Now imagine the parallels between modern computing and modern genetics & biology. I'm sure there will be DMCA-like legislation put in place to thwart attempts to infringe on corporate interests.

The problem with guarding knowledge is it prevents being able to "build on the shoulders of giants", like Linus Torvalds and others have done. Copyright laws need to change to not only protect the short-term financial gains that are necessary for companies to invest in new ideas, but release those ideas back into the public so that they can be built back upon.

Hopefully our lawmakers will understand this.

Not really new

[wes33]

More than a year ago live polio virus was constructed from component DNA. This is not a "artificial" virus but a working copy of phi X bacteriophage. Note that this is an infringement of God's copyrights and patents and trade secrets!

(from NY times, July 2002: Scientists construct virus from scratch for first time, synthesizing live polio virus from chemicals and publicly available genetic information; work was conducted by scientists at State University of New York at Stony Brook and financed by Defense Department as part of program to develop biowarfare) countermeasures ... )

Re:Not really new

[Jubedgy]

This was in the article, they mentioned that the polio attempt took 3 years (for 7500 base pairs I believe) while phi X was created in only 2 weeks (containing 5000 base pairs).

Re:Not really new

[Saige]

What do you think you're doing, reading the article and commenting intelligently on it? Don't you know this is Slashdot, and that type of thing is not allowed? Your comment is the first one I've seen that actually recognizes that the headline here, while not incorrect, is misleading. That the virus is not new, just a copy.

I would say that it is artificial in a way, since the virus copy they created had it's genome pieced together out of DNA from other sources.

This does mean that the technology they're using to assemble DNA sequences has gotten really quick and accurate, compared to even a year ago with the polio virus. It does seem to have the potential to open the opportunity to learn about genes by piecing them together and seeing the results. Let's hope if that route is taken, that a LOT of safety precautions are followed to prevent against the possible dangerous virus being constructed.

Re:Not really new

[pmz]

This is not a "artificial" virus but a working copy of phi X bacteriophage. Note that this is an infringement of God's copyrights and patents and trade secrets!

While I am wary of these artificial viruses, I have to say that if God didn't "want" us to discover the elemental aspects of the universe, we wouldn't have the brains that we do. Nor would Buddhism have been allowed to develop. Thus, we have "free will."

Re:Not really new

[pcraven]

>Note that this is an infringement of God's copyrights and patents and trade secrets!

And we all know what happens when you infringe on God's IP:
http://www2.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Movies/10/24 /gibs on.passion/

Re:Not really new

[pmz]

He does stuff all the time which he can't control.

Or that "free will" is simply a part of the little toy called Earth.

Finding a host . . .

[Varitek]

Has it attacked Windows yet?

bill gates and co.

[bushboy]

Cornered this artificial virus thing a long time ago - old news !

Re:bill gates and co.

[ViolentGreen]

Oooh...Oooh...Mod this guy up for originality!

Sensationalist reporting again

[MSBob]

While this is significant in its own way the life form created is not artificial in that it was made from a pre-existing virus. Build one from basic chemicals and I'll be impressed. Calling this artificial life is a stretch.

Re:Sensationalist reporting again

[ponxx]

> Build one from basic chemicals and I'll be impressed

that's what they did.

It is a copy of a well-known virus, but it was made from entirely from basic chemicals.

Are you impressed now?

Ponxx

Journal Science link, NOT life

[mfago]

The article starts out:
It is the stuff of science fiction and bioethical debates: The creation of artificial life.

A virus can reproduce, but does not consume energy -> they are not alive in a technical sense.

Also see this news from Science.

Incredibly cool.

Re:Journal Science link, NOT life

[zhenlin]

Virii don't even self-reproduce. They hijack the machinery of another cell (bacteria even) in order to make more of themselves.

And you can guess the origins of the terminology for computer virii. Computer virii require humans to do their reproductive bidding.

Re:Journal Science link, NOT life

[MagnaMark]

Actually, viruses do consume energy; they require energy to reproduce. They just don't produce energy on their own. They steal energy and raw materials from their "host" cells.

I'd argue that viruses are alive. They reproduce. They have DNA or RNA genomes. They're just primitive life forms that depend on their hosts.

Re:Interesting thoughts...

[47F0]

Sigh, Do you people ever get tired. Here's an idea - Maybe evolution IS intelligent design. At it's heart, these creation so-called science arguments have one fundamental flaw - because we cannot comprehend anything more complex than ourselves, we make our creator as dumb as we are. Evolution happens all around you - it's real, it works, get over it. "Man is certainly stark mad: He cannot make a flea, yet he makes gods by the dozens." - Montaigne

Full Article

[dannyelfman]

Scientists create a virus that reproduces By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY It is the stuff of science fiction and bioethical debates: The creation of artificial life. Up until now, it's largely been just that.

But an important technical bridge towards the creation of such life was crossed Thursday when genomics pioneer Craig Venter announced that his research group created an artificial virus based on a real one in just two weeks' time.

When researchers created a synthetic genome (genetic map) of the virus and implanted it into a cell, the virus became "biologically active," meaning it went to work reproducing itself.

Venter cautioned that the creation of artificial human or animal life is a long way off because the synthetic bacteriophage -- the virus that was created -- is a much simpler life form. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria.

The project was funded in part by the Department of Energy, which hopes to create microbes that would capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, produce hydrogen or clean the environment.

But the questions ethicists have raised about such work are numerous: Should we be playing God? Does the potential for good that new life forms may have outweigh the harm they could do?

Arthur Caplan, who heads the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics, says yes. This technology "is impressive. It's powerful and it should be treated with humility and caution," Caplan says, "But we should do it."

A genome is made up of DNA "letters," or base pairs, that combine to "spell" an individual's chromosomes. The human genome project was completed in April.

This summer, researchers at Venter's Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives bought commercially available strands of DNA and, using a new technology, coaxed them together to form a duplicate of the genome of a bacteriophage called phi X.

"It's a very important technical advance," says Gerald Rubin, a molecular geneticist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "You can envision the day when one could sit down at a computer, design a genome and then build it. We're still inventing the tools to make that happen, and this is an important one."

Venter notes the synthetic bacteriophage has 5,000 base pairs in its genome. The human genome has 3 billion, so similar work in human form probably won't happen in this decade, he says.

To date, the largest genome that was synthesized was the 7,500-base-pair polio virus. But that was only semi-functional and took three years to complete.

The researchers chose to put the new technology into the public domain for all scientists to use. It will appear in the next few weeks on the Web site of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The technology raises safety issues, says David Magnus of Stanford's Center for Biomedical Ethics. Even putting it in the public domain is "a double-edged sword," he says. That presumes that allowing everyone access will keep the good guys ahead of the bad guys. "It's a gamble. ... It's a bet that everyone has a stake in," he says.

Not the first time

[Brahmastra]

This story indicates that it was done more than a year ago.

heh

[alexandre]

Good to know that some people are preparing for the next genocide...
</sarcasm>

"irreducibly complex"? not accordin to talk.origin

[Anonymous Coward]

Claim CB200.1:

Bacterial flagella and cilia are irreducibly complex, indicating that they must have been designed.

Source:

Behe, Michael, 1996. Darwin's Black Box, The Free Press, New York, pp. 59-73.

Response:

This is an example of argument from incredulity, because irreducible complexity can evolve naturally. Many of the proteins in the flagellum are similar to each other and/or to proteins for other functions. Their origins can easily be explained by a series of gene duplications, which obviates irreducible complexity's challenge to evolution.

One plausible path for the evolution of flagella goes through the following steps:

A secretory system evolved. The type III secretory system forms a structure identical to the rod and ring structure of the flagellum [Hueck, 1998].
A proto-flagellar filament arose as part of the protein secretion structure.
An ion pump with another function in the cell fortuitously became associated with the structure, giving it some mobility.
Further refinements make the flagellum more efficient for motility.

The flagellum is not irreducible. One third of the 497 amino acids of flagellin have been cut out without harming its function [Kuwajima, 1988]. Behe claims that 240 proteins are necessary for the flagellum to function, yet only 256 genes are necessary to produce an entire survivable bacterium [ref. in Ussery, 1998]. Different bacteria have different numbers of flagellar proteins (in Helicobacter pylori, for example, only 33 proteins are necessary to produce a working flagellum), so the particular example which Behe considers might be reducible [Ussery, 1998]. Behe himself suggests (pg. 72) that taking 40 of the 240 proteins out of a flagellum leaves a working cilium.

Eubacterial flagella, archebacterial flagella, cilia, and undulopodia use entirely different designs for the same function. That is to be expected if they evolved seperately, but it makes no sense if they were the work of the same designer.

Links:

Dunkelberg, Pete, 2003. Irreducible Complexity Demystified http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/icdmyst/ICDmyst.htm l

Musgrave, Ian, 2000. Evolution of the Bacterial Flagella. http://www.health.adelaide.edu.au/Pharm/Musgrave/e ssays/flagella.htm

References:

Hueck, C.J., 1998. Type III Protein Secretion Systems in Bacterial Pathogens of Animals and Plants. Microbiol Mol Biol Rev 62: 379-433.
Kuwajima, G, 1988. Construction of a minimum-size functional flagellin of Escherichia coli. Journal of Bacteriology 170: 3305-3309.
Ussery, D. (see below)

Further Reading:

Ussery, David, 1998. A biochemist's response to "The biochemical challenge to evolution". Bios (July 1998). http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/staff/dave/Behe.html

--------------

Life?

[Izago909]

I thought the general agreement was that viruses aren't considered life because can't metabolize energy. A virus looks like a simple lego block compared to the complex architecture of a single bacterium.

Re:Life?

[Saige]

That may be the case, but I have never been comfortable with classifying viruses that way. They reproduce, evolve, and are definitely not inert. If they're not "life", then they're dead things doing a fairly convincing imitation of life.

Re:Sometimes...

[AKAImBatman]

What is up with Mods these days? Apparently EVERY FRIGGIN THING is offtopic! Anyone else notice that?

Re:Interesting thoughts...

[TheCrazyFinn]

Except that non-detrimental mutations tend to stick around, if useless. Witness Human Hair.

So, the necessary mutations don't have to happen at the same time, merely in sequence, as long as the individual mutations do not adversely affect survival.

Inteligent Design is merely a pseudo-scientific handwaving over Creationism.

Ibola Anyone?

[drosoph]

How many base-pairs are in the ibola virus ?

Re:Ibola Anyone?

[iggymanz]

first was e-business, then i-business...now we have e-bola and i-bola. These marketing droids are so lame.....

Re:Ibola Anyone?

[drosoph]

Wow, and I even did a google on EBOLA/IBOLA before posting .... I guess the internet is again WRONG !

What they did, why it is hard

[sam_handelman]

The human genome (which is DNA), contained in each of your cells, contains the instructions needed to make a cell (much like a computer program.)

However, in order to use these instructions to make a cell, you need a cell of the same kind to read them.

Analogy: You have a computer program that tells you how to manufacture computers but this doesn't do any good unless you already have a computer OF THE SAME KIND on which to execute it.

So, even if I assemble an entire human genome, I can't use it to make a person unless I already have a human cell. Kapish?

A VIRUS, which is what was made here, is NOT A CELL. It is a parasitic piece of DNA that hijacks an existing cell and contains the instructions to make viruses. The DNA that the virus contains is, in the best case, sufficient to hijack the cell all by itself, and convert the cell into a factory for making viruses. Viruses CANNOT make more viruses by themselves. The similarity to a computer virus, I assume, is obvious.

So, if you can make VIRAL DNA, this will be sufficient to make the virus, if you have cells that the virus can infect.

Even making the genome of a virus is very difficult. The "commercially available" DNA mentioned in the article is made chemically. DNA is made up of a chain of monomers; each monomer has a 5' end and a 3' end that can attach together to form a chain. In order to add monomer n+1 to a growing chain, this is what you do (description meant to be accessible to people who don't know a lot of chemistry): ...(Monomer n-1) 3' - 5' (Monomer n) 3'(BLOCKED)
-> **add reagent to unblock**
-> wash ...(Monomer n) 3'
-> add 5' (Monomer n) 3' {BLOCKED}
-> add reagent to attach 5' and 3' together ...(Monomer n) 3' - 5' (Monomer n+1) 3' {BLOCKED}
and repeat for Monomer n+2. Recursion is good.

Now, this is done in parallel in thousands of molecules of DNA (the 5' end of each molecule is fixed to a plate.)

Every time you add the reagent to remove the BLOCKS, it has a percentage chance, which can be very small, of failing.

So, for example, if, on one paritcular molecule, it fails at position 10, then instead of:
ACGTACGTACGT
you will get,
ACGTACGTAGT.

DNA that makes proteins has something called a "reading frame", consisting of codons which are three monomers long. If you shift the reading frame over by 1 monomer, it completely changes the meaning of the message.

So, a single nucleotide deletion, which I describe above, is disastrous - the synthetic DNA becomes useless.

Even if the chance of failing to remove a block is small - typically about 0.1% - if your DNA molecule is thousands of bases long, the chance of successfully adding every base to any individual molecule is slight.

Of course, you can make two different 100-base long molecules by the above technique and then ligate them together (recursion by splitting the task in half) which is, I believe, what's been done here. This has technical difficulties of it's own, of course, but with refinements it woud allow you to make useful DNA of length n*2^m instead of DNA of length n.

This is a frightening prospect because it would allow you to make ebola "from scratch", or just from the the string of letters that represent the genome (which is so short I could write it out by hand on a stack of cocktail napkins.) We're not to that point yet but it is a scary possibility.

Re:What they did, why it is hard

[ponxx]

> This is a frightening prospect because it would allow you to make ebola "from scratch", or
> just from the the string of letters that represent the genome

I don't think it's possible for all viruses. In this case i believe just adding the DNA to the cell was sufficient to create an infected cell. Other virii might need some of their own proteins to start the process. I'm not a virologist, but i don't think it's always as easy as this...

Ponxx

Re:What they did, why it is hard

[maomoondog]

Right... most viruses include a special reverse transcriptase to turn their RNA from a form that can be turned into proteins into a more stable form DNA that can be copied multipled times and duplicated in the nucleus.

Also, most viruses need to create proteins that act as shells for their DNA, which allow them to bind to the outside of a host cell and inject their DNA. The researchers could escape this in the first generation, since they injected the DNA manually.

At that point, the virus could reproduce itself, but if its code doesn't create that structure, it would not be able to infect other cells. It's not clear from the article whether the replicated viruses were capable of infecting new cells without assistance.

Re:What they did, why it is hard

[Necromancyr]

Similar methods to this - altering existing genomes, creating DNA genomes from RNA viruses, etc. - have been done and is actually very easy. It doesn't actually say in the USA Today article (big surprise) WHAT they did that was so amazing. We make viruses that are not 'natural' as a matter of course - all you need to do is take some genetic material, modify it, toss it into a cell line and blamo. Mutated/altered virus you 'created'. If what you say is true (that they created the DNA 'from scratch') it's really not all that amazing to me. It's hard from a technical standpoint, but from it's analogous to not using the xerox machine and instead having ultra realistic artists recreate 1" square pieces then shrinking them down, taping them all together, and producing a finished copy. Basically, the roundabout way to get something done. In other words, time consuming != amazing. The work is something that amazes the masses, and is just 'Oh, thats nice' for many scientists in the field I believe. If anything, just making DNA that large from scratch is the big thing. I, personally, would be much more amazed if they took multiple viruses, amplified out certain genes and actually recreated a replication and infection strategy. For example, create a single stranded DNA version of single stranded RNA virus that uses proteins from a single stranded RNA to replicate and work but uses the protein coding for structure from a single stranded RNA virus. (Ignoring protein binding issues related to binding the genome would make it insanely hard, but it would still be amazing.)

Re:What they did, why it is hard

[Eosha]

>This is a frightening prospect because it would allow you to make ebola "from scratch", or just from the the string of letters that represent the genome (which is so short I could write it out by hand on a stack of cocktail napkins.) We're not to that point yet but it is a scary possibility.

Think of the implications of this. If this technology became at all widespread, then a string of characters (CD, book, radio transmission, etc) would be all that's necessary for someone (terrorist, etc.) to acquire some of the deadliest things our world has ever produced.

The legislation this idea could produce is terrifying. Every possible medium of communication could be used to carry Ebola into terrorist hands, and therefore must be restricted...

It'll be interesting to see what effects this technology has in the future, if any.

Re:What they did, why it is hard

[ghettocat]

Take this from a practicing biochemist: Really this is nothing that we could not do, even 10 years ago, using recombinant DNA technology. The fact that they chemically synthesized the sequence is technically challenging, but nothing really new, either. [micro]injection into cells is a non trivial technique, and quite demanding, but again has been done for years. NOTHING SCARY HERE, MOVE ALONG!

Re:What they did, why it is hard

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't there an enzyme or some other chemical in the cell that has the function of going up and down the newly synthesized DNA strand and correcting errors?

I could imagine a machine into which:

You type the letters of a desired DNA sequence.

It attempts to make a certain number of copies of the DNA sequence. The number is such that statiscallly at least some of them are without errors.

***This is the hard part*****
You determine which is the good copy. I don't know how.
***This is the hard part*****

You use this good string of DNA as a template to produce mass quantities. The mass quantities are checked against the original and known good copies of the original. You do the checking with the same mechanism real cells use.

The end result are thousands, millions of copies of the original virus.

If such a machine could work, you are basically at where computers were when people programmed them in machine language, typing in hexadecimal code.

By analogy, assemblers could be written. Programmers type in amino acids instead of individual letters.

Compilers might allow you to just input the component proteins. (Fortran).

If we ever learn enough about how proteins are made from DNA and how they fold etc. We may be able to create languages that describe features of an simple creature. We could reverse engineer an existing simple organism and write patches, and then recompile the code to produce a nucleus that could be implanted into a zygote using cloning techniques. (Simple Organism == C.elegans??)

Eventually, people who are good at patching existing organisms might develope tools and libraries that would let them be able to write new creatures from scratch, basing them on an existing creature, sort of like Linux is based on Unix.

People could trade the codes for making purple frogs and flying pigs on the Internet.

The downside is that someone is going to come up with DRM for this sort of thing the day after someone invents it.

Re:What they did, why it is hard

[Saeger]

Not even a totalitarian world government could prevent the inevitability of increasingly advanced tech from falling into psychopaths' hands.

So no, our best hope isn't in trying to relinquish or limit the technology, but rather in coming up with equally advanced defenses. i.e. we'll need molecular nanotechnology in order to create artificial immune systems for both bio-based humans, AND as an active shield for the planet as a whole. Hopefully these all-encompassing systems are under democratic control, otherwise government could actually prevent drugs from reaching your brain, etc.

--

Re:What they did, why it is hard

[sam_handelman]

That is effectively what they did, and more.

When they "infected" the cells with synthetic phage DNA, only working phage DNA replicated. This is how you identify the "good" copies of the DNA. So, in the bacteria you already have a system that replicates only the good copies of the DNA.

This phage DNA, when it is replicated, actually benefits from (many) of the processes that check quality of DNA duplication in the bacterium.

So, tada.

Now, the problem is that one molecule of phage DNA isn't enough - the odds of any particular molecule successfully infecting a bacterium are small (they go up "in the wild" because the phage has something called a protein coat, that helps it to infect cells, in the lab with purely synthetic DNA you must use cruder methods.) Upshot: you need not one but a LOT of "good copies". More than previous groups were able to manufacture.

For this reason, until this work, no-one had ever gotten a synthetic molecule of this size to infect cells and produce viable virus offspring.

Re:What they did, why it is hard

[Cincinnatus1984]

DNA never makes protiens, it must first go through mRNA, this is not trivial. There are more types of viruses than DNA viruses, mRNA viruses are common and important, (AIDS, etc.) The problem with the second approach, the SCARY possibility that ebola could be made from scratch relies on a known sequence from ebola before you can even start to make a "copy", and every virus known contains the same AGTC (U) as we do, not really a scary possiblity, it relies on the same technology as we would need for biotech crops.

You Must Be Thinking of Canopy

[Myriad]

Are we sure this wasn't put out by the Umbrella corporation?

You must be thinking of Canopy. Easy mistake though.

Blockwars: a free multiplayer game

Re:Interesting thoughts...

[al_fruitbat]

"irreducibly complex" is probably a void concept.

A half-working flagellum is still better than no flagellum for all sorts of things (e.g. it might not allow properly directional movement, but it enables some movement).

I admit, the article you've linked to does have some impressive pseudoscience, but the basic arguments are not well thought out.
What the proponents of 'Intelligent Design' (I'll call 'em creationists from now on in, cos that's what they are) usually conveniently forget is that part of the evolutionary system is to evolve 'down' the complexity ladder, to produce gorgeously efficient systems.

You begin with something clunky (but effective), and over time small perfections are evolved, flaws are ironed out and efficiency and beauty is refined. Creationists then trot out this perfect system and say "how could this perfection spring out of random chance?", which is an invalid question in a single step.

Re:Interesting thoughts...

[jokerghost]

Pascal's Wager "probabisitically" explains this? Riiiiiiiiight. Are you sure you know what the hell you're talking about?

Read the following before you make another illogical, appeal to authority, point:

http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/wager.ht ml
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/

-jokerghost

Anyone else...

[xaoslaad]

have a flash back to 12 monkies?

Jeffrey Goines: You know what crazy is? Crazy is majority rules. Take germs for example. James Cole: Germs? Jeffrey Goines: Uh-huh. Eighteenth century, no such thing, nada, nothing. No one ever imagined such a thing. No sane person. Along comes this doctor, uh, Semmelweis, Semmelweis. Semmelweis comes along. He's trying to convince people, other doctors mainly, that's there's these teeny tiny invisible bad things called germs that get into your body and make you sick. He's trying to get doctors to wash their hands. What is this guy? Crazy? Teeny, tiny, invisible? What do they call it? Uh-uh, germs? Huh? What? Now, up to the 20th century, last week, as a matter of fact, before I got dragged into this hellhole. I go in to order a burger at this fast food joint, and the guy drops it on the floor. James, he picks it up, he wipes it off, he hands it to me like it's all OK. "What about the germs?" I say. He says, "I don't believe in germs. Germs is a plot made up so they could sell disinfectants and soaps." Now he's crazy, right?

Re:Interesting thoughts...

[barjam]

Intelligent design isn't a valid scientific theory. It can't be tested or observed, it is no better than creationism in that respect.

It is not science to say "because we can't explain it today, it must be intelligent design". At one point we couldn't explain feather evolution (and people cried "Intelligent design!!"), now we can explain it fully (or nearly) with the fossil record. (Consequently, it looks like dinasaurs had feathers, and even flight type feathers long before birds).

The only reason why we have the "theory" of intelligent design is so that the more "able minded" creationists would have a theory to cling to that wasn't as full of holes as creationism. ID also doesn't suffer the possibility of being proved wrong, it can't be proved or disproved, a much easier position for the religious to defend.

ID = Creationism + spin.

Political intervention required..

[peterdguru]

Current legislators are so overwhelmed with the whole human-cloning, stem-cell and abortion debate which centres on individual rights that they have completely ignored an important avenue of bio-research that affects EVERYONE. No person should be allowed to create a self-replicating virus that could infect all of humanity without some sort of licensing and bureaucractic oversight. Politicians have their priorities skewed in the current bio-research debate. This should be a wake-up call. We hope...

Re:Interesting thoughts...

[EddWo]

The usual argument for intelligent design is that "There is no such thing as half an eye." That the eye is too complex to have evolved naturally. I tend to believe that the eye could have evolved over time, first as a patch of photosensitive skin, then perhaps a lump filled with fluid and on to the lens and the complexity we have today.

I don't know the whole story of this flagellum but I suspect a similar thing may have happened. Is it now also possible that a creature could have mutated drastically in a few generations as a result of being exposed to a DNA altering agent such as a virus?

Press release, what this is to be used for

[mfago]

Here is the press release from Craig Ventner's 'Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives.'

What an odd name: reading about IBEA at the site's homepage, it seems that their goal is to create fuel using designer microbes to extract carbon from the atmosphere.

MMMmmmm carbon!

A virus can have very compact codebase

[G4from128k]

This feat is not that hard because a virus can have such a simple, compact codebase. I remember studying a biological retrovirus that had only 4000 nucleotide bases (equivalent of only 1 kilobyte of data) and only 4 genes total. Gene 1 encoded a reverse transcriptase to convert the virus' RNA into DNA that could be replicated by the host. Genes 2 and 3 encoded two self-asssembling capsule proteins that make the shell of the virus. And gene 4 was actually a corrupted dud (so the real code base was actually smaller than 1 kB).

For better or for worse, it does nto take much to construct a virus.

Morals Schmorals

[Pedrito]

I don't really care about the morality of this. Frankly, from a scientific point of view: Cool! On the other hand, what does concern me was this quote:

The project was funded in part by the Department of Energy, which hopes to create microbes that would capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, produce hydrogen or clean the environment.

Okay, so let's assume we do something like this, with the perfectly innocent intention of cleaning up some level of carbon dioxide. Okay, well you're counting on the virus to reproduce, but what if it gets out of control? It eats up ALL the carbon dioxide. All the trees and plants suffocate and die, but that might not happen before the atmosphere goes up in flames since that carbon dioxide is being turned into hydrogen.

Maybe not a likely event, but my concerns are a bit more on the practical side. Frankly, I'm all for creating new forms of life and bringing back extinct ones, just for the coolness of it. I just hope we don't go doing something foolish, which we always seem to manage to do.

Re:Morals Schmorals

[HarveyBirdman]

It eats up ALL the carbon dioxide. All the trees and plants suffocate and die,

Of course, the microbe would presumably die as well, and much more quickly than the plants, while the CO2 is replenished by mammal activity.

but that might not happen before the atmosphere goes up in flames since that carbon dioxide is being turned into hydrogen.

Well, if they can create a microbe that can transmute a carbon and two oxygens into hydrogen, color *me* impressed.

Hmm... would that require or release energy? Forget about going up in flames, the atmosphere might undergo spontaneous nuclear fission. :-o Hey, wasn't that in Battlefield Earth? :-P

How about a microbe than can split water into hydrogen and oxygen?

Re:Morals Schmorals

[Pedrito]

I would guess since it's biological that the hydrogen would be the result of breaking down the carbon dioxide using some sort of hydrocarbon which would release hydrogen as part of the byproduct. I doubt it converts the oxygen or the carbon directly into hydrogen. That would be quite a feat.

Re:Morals Schmorals

[IgnorantSavage]

Actually, there is no plan to convert carbon dioxide to hydrogen with any kind of organism. That would require nuclear transmutation, which so far as I know has never been done in a biological organism.

I think the plans are for a bacteria or virus that traps carbon dioxide or uses photosynthesis to convert it to carbon and oxygen (lots of stuff that already does this, of course). There are also known bacteria that can split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Sorry, I have not tracked down any references...

The problem with 'eating up all the CO2' is certainly a consideration, but likely not as big a deal as it may sound since the organism would be designed (like existing ones) to reach a balance at an appropriate level, possibly related to an inability to survive with less than a certain amount of CO2 in its environment.

Re:Morals Schmorals

[Superfreaker]

Well, what we can do is this,
We engineer the virus without the ability to synthesize l-lysine on its own. We will ahve to provide it for them. If we take the supplement away, then they will die in three days (unless of course some crazy mutation occurs- nature finds a way! Chaos theory)

Copyright Steven Spielberg

Re:Morals Schmorals

[KieranElby]

Actually, there is no plan to convert carbon dioxide to hydrogen with any kind of organism. That would require nuclear transmutation, which so far as I know has never been done in a biological organism.

You'd certainly think not, but incredibly it does seem likely that a natural nuclear reactor was constructed by bacteria some 1.8 billion years ago in Africa - see e.g. NATURAL NUCLEAR REACTORS (OKLO).

Re:Morals Schmorals

[freeweed]

All the trees and plants suffocate and die, but that might not happen before the atmosphere goes up in flames since that carbon dioxide is being turned into hydrogen.

1. As other posters have already pointed out, you can't convert CO2 into H2, short of nuclear transmutation, ie: alchemy. We can hardly do this in labs to any great extent, so I doubt someone is going to create a virus that can. (If anyone knows of actual commercial element transmutation on a large scale, and NOT radioactive, please correct me. And no, you can't have radioactive hydrogen :)

2. Even if this were possible, hydrogen released into the atmosphere doesn't tend to stick around very long. It either escapes into space (gravity just isn't strong enough on Earth to maintain a hydrogen atmosphere), or quickly combines with ambient oxygen. You'll never get any siginificant build-up of hydrogen, which would be required in order for the atmosphere to "go up in flames".

3. They aren't planning on a bug that does all three of these things at once. Check the sentence, and remember your boolean logic: capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, produce hydrogen or clean the environment. OR != AND.

Your concerns are the furthest thing from practical that I've ever seen, as introductory high school chemistry/physics pretty much negates them.

Re:Morals Schmorals

[grassy_knoll]

You might want to check out Zodiac, by Neil Stevenson:

Amazon Link

I dont want to give any spoilers, but the plot covers your concerns.

Re:Morals Schmorals

[Dunark]

...And no, you can't have radioactive hydrogen :)

Yes, you can. It's called Tritium, and it's a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that has two neutrons.

Re:Morals Schmorals

[spankalee]

How about a microbe than can split water into hydrogen and oxygen?

Ok, there's a scary thought. Don't let that one go down the drain! Who needs Ice-9 when you have a microbe that can destroy all the water on the planet while making the atmosphere quite flammable?

Re:Morals Schmorals

[Random832]

If you know a way to turn carbon dioxide into hydrogen, your skills would be better put turning lead into gold

Re:Morals Schmorals

[freeweed]

/me slaps head.

Duh.

Thanks :)

Re:Morals Schmorals

[ryanvm]

but that might not happen before the atmosphere goes up in flames since that carbon dioxide is being turned into hydrogen.

Not to nitpick or anything (gawd - what a disgusting phrase), but no microbe is going to be able to turn carbon dioxide into hydrogen. That would require fission and that's going to require a lot more "tools" than any microbe can carry.

The DoE quote was giving three different scenarios, not a chain of processes.

Re:Morals Schmorals

[drooling-dog]

Well, if they can create a microbe that can transmute a carbon and two oxygens into hydrogen, color *me* impressed.

Heh heh. That's the Slashdot funny of the day...

Re:Morals Schmorals

[drooling-dog]

The project was funded in part by the Department of Energy, which hopes to create microbes that would capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, produce hydrogen or clean the environment.

Well, you have to realize that all research grant proposals are required to promise to (a) lead to cures of dreaded diseases (especially cancer), (b) reduce our dependence on foreign petroleum, or (c) shed light on the Origin of the Universe. Or, at least that's what you're supposed to tell the public!

Anyway, viruses can't do any of the metabolic stuff you mention; you need a whole cell system for that!

Re:Morals Schmorals

[michael_cain]

I just hope we don't go doing something foolish, which we always seem to manage to do.

I am much more scared that SOME of us will manage to do something foolish ON PURPOSE. I don't want to be a Luddite -- I like many of the ways that technology improves my life. But I am scared that in the next 30 or so years, some people will manage to perform BIG-TIME EVIL with the technology that is at their disposal. It seems inevitable that, within that time frame, $100M will make it possible for you to buy a "designer" disease. Too many people will know how to do it. The raw materials and basic technology will be too readily available (unlike the raw materials for building a nuke, which are relatively scarce and easy to track). Some nut case will come up with the money, build the disease, and release it. Evolution is cool with the idea of killing off 98% of the population in order to gain resistance to a particular disease, but I'm really unhappy about that prospect.

I'm old enough now that I may not live to see it, but I'm seriously concerned about what things my children may have to live through.

Re:Morals Schmorals

[kavau]

...the atmosphere goes up in flames since that carbon dioxide is being turned into hydrogen.

Umm... and exactly how would the virus turn carbon dioxide into hydrogen? A virus that triggers nuclear fission - cool!

Re:Morals Schmorals

[dave1g]

"The project was funded in part by the Department of Energy, which hopes to create microbes that would capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, produce hydrogen or clean the environment.

Okay, so let's assume we do something like this, with the perfectly innocent intention of cleaning up some level of carbon dioxide. Okay, well you're counting on the virus to reproduce, but what if it gets out of control? It eats up ALL the carbon dioxide. All the trees and plants suffocate and die, but that might not happen before the atmosphere goes up in flames since that carbon dioxide is being turned into hydrogen."

Um that was a "this,this, or this" statement not an "and" statement so there would be no carbon dioxide to hydrogen conversion going on.... instead it might be one OR the other

Re:Morals Schmorals

[PsiPsiStar]

>The project was funded in part by the >Department of Energy, which hopes to create >microbes that would capture carbon dioxide in >the atmosphere... ... ya mean, like plants do?
I had a plant once. I developed it from a seed. But I was careful not to let it go outside or it might reproduce and DESTROY THE PLANET. AHHHH!!!

Microbes are already plentiful. They're not going to take over unless they have some tremendous advantage. One characteristic of life that has been cultivated by human beings is that it's usually more adapted to serving humans than it is to surviving by itself in the wild. Most of the plants that people harvest don't do well if they're left to their own devices. It isn't until you start making plants resistant to pesticides or pests that those genes pose a danger, because they escape and integrate themselves into weeds and give those plants an advantage ( a serious problem with plants of the mustard family which have weedy relatives ).

But things like bioremediation, where a plant can remove toxic lead from the soil, is not somthing that's going to spread like wildfire and take over the planet. There isn't such an amazing selective advantage to the trait that would make other plants survive longer if they had it. The traits we're discussing help us, the life forms that will be altered.

History

[johnmrowe]

This is not the end, it is not the beginning of the end, but perhaps it is the end of the beginning.

Re:Interesting thoughts...

[Planesdragon]

Note: I'm a firm Christian who believes in God, and that He intented our world to look exactly as it did when sentient life first looked at it, AND that He has a stated goal of hiding Himself from us.

That said:

evolution/natural selection is the natural effect when beings are subjected to adversity: only the strong surviveI

Evolution doesn't say that the "strong" survive. Evolution is the simple observation that in any given environment, the creatures most fit for that environment will thrive the most--and, ergo, creatures that thrive the most will be those most likely to survive.

The odds of a mutation creating all parts simultaneously are astronomical, and consequently, the only accepted theory that can sanely describe such a thing is intelligent design,

We don't know what the odds are of any mutation--though we do know that, just in the last 10,000 years, there have been 3,652,500 days. So if the odds are one in a million that a one-day generational organism will evolve a certain set of traits are one in a million, it will have happened three times just since the Neolithic revolution began. And, of course, science believes that Earth is several orders of magnitude older than 10,000 years.

which has been hinted at in many different real-life examples as well as probabistically explained by Pascal's Wager.

Pascal's Wager has nothing to do with evolution, and as a mathematical statement it is flawed based on its treatment of faith as a binary equation. (What if you worship the wrong diety?) God intended there to be doubt in the world, and He is perfectly capable of remedying said doubt when He sees fit.

So as skeptical as I am of intelligent design, I can't help but notice how much of our biological model it predicts.

Intelligent design, like most theories, is little more than untestable conjecture about the past. The uncertainty that must be applied to theroums about archeological past are so great that competetly opposite theories (ID and Evolution) can exist based on the exact same evidence.

Re:Ebola Anyone?

[Jeremy Erwin]

Ebola Zaire: 18959 base pairs
Ebola Reston: 18891 base pairs

Marburg: 19112 base pairs

Re:Sometimes...

[AKAImBatman]

And BTW, my original post was speaking to the point of the work being completed in a very short time, thus showing up a lot of other scientists. It was merely a comment on how amusing that is. But it seems that the mods have a vendetta to kill any and every post that doesn't fit the "SlashBorg" collective mind. Next thing you know, we'll see trolls getting modded up.

Re:wow

[AnonymousNoMore]

I remember dicussions (maybe 15 years ago) about engineered bacteria that would eat toxic waste and produce nontoxic by-products. They would be used to clean toxic spills and were to be self regulating in that when the toxic "food" was all gone, the organism population would starve and be gone. Among the problems with this included the possibility that the organisms would evolve to consume other than the toxic target. Another issue, as you suggest, is terrorism. If the organisms were designed to consume an oil spill, they could be easily introduced to an oil field and potentially eliminate the resource.

Uh... From scratch?

[stienman]

Please note that when they say, "From scratch" they mean that they created a synthetic genome (probably from portions of other genomes - I doubt they know enough about the base pair sequences to actually have done it base pair by base pair) and inserted it in a 'living' cell.

The cell then started reproducing. They didn't create the cell. They probably didn't design the genome as much as patch one together from other genomes (though they may have 'created' it - physically manufactured it)

They say it's safe because it only infects batceria. Unfortunately, humans depend on bacteria to survive, so it's not nearly as innocuous as one might like to think.

However, these are nano-machines that might do real work safely (cleaning up chemical toxins, etc) - I'm just worried about mutations and how they will develop. You can't create life and expect it to reproduce itself without change over time. Pretty soon it'll discover that human skin is much more plentiful than the chemical toxins it was eating, and it'll change its diet.

-Adam

Re:Uh... From scratch?

[freeweed]

The cell then started reproducing. They didn't create the cell.

You're right, they didn't create any cells at all. Viruses are acellular organisms.

I'm just worried about mutations and how they will develop. You can't create life and expect it to reproduce itself without change over time. Pretty soon it'll discover that human skin is much more plentiful than the chemical toxins it was eating, and it'll change its diet.

Well, we've had viruses on the planet for as long as we've been around, and they mutate constantly. Yet, we're still here. Our immune system might have some small part to play in this. Besides, there's nothing inherent in a man-made virus that would make it accquire a taste for human flesh any more than natural viruses do.

Yikes, what's with all the Luddites who never took a biology/chemistry class popping up whenever one of these stories comes along? You didn't ALL just take computer science, right?

Re:Uh... From scratch?

[stienman]

Well, we've had viruses on the planet for as long as we've been around, and they mutate constantly. Yet, we're still here. Our immune system might have some small part to play in this. Besides, there's nothing inherent in a man-made virus that would make it accquire a taste for human flesh any more than natural viruses do.

I just like doing a cost/benefit and risk analysis before deploying something. If that's a luddite, then I suspect you may have a very broad definition of that term.

Your sentence says, in essence, "Mann can create nothing worse than what nature has already created." and "Man can control it's creations once let loose."

I suspect that this re-wording puts your position in a new perspective for you. Nature created radioactive materials, man made them explode. Nature created viruses, man made vaccines stronger than the virus (with the help of the natural immune system) Nature creates bacteria and modifies it all the time - man creates tragetted antibiotics.

Man creates a bacteria that would not have evolved naturally. He does so before he really understands exactly how what he created operates.

Now you say, "If it mutates, it will be as innocuous as anything else mutated by nature up until now." No, it will mutate differently, and since it was not naturally created, it will not mutate according to the mutations seen up until now.

Sure. It's unlikely that anything we create is going to be dangerous to us now or in the future. Like DDT.

Go ahead. Create your bacteria, get it to do what you want, but don't assume that just because we created it that it's safe.

Life is a tricky thing to play games with.

-Adam

Re:Uh... From scratch?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

You're right, they didn't create any cells at all. Viruses are acellular organisms.

I hate to bust your bubble. Viruses are bundles of protiens that hijack living cells. They lack the means to do anything on their own. That is their M.O. It is what they do.

From Dictionary.com:

Virus: pl. viruses
1. a) Any of various simple submicroscopic parasites of plants, animals, and bacteria that often cause disease and that mostly consist of a core RNA or DNA surrounded by a protein coat. Unable to replicate without a host cell, viruses are typically not considered living organisms.
b) A disease caused by a virus.

2. Something that poisens one's sole or mind. Ex. The pernicious virus of racism.

3. (Computer Science) A Computer Virus

Re:Uh... From scratch?

[110010001000]

2. Something that poisens one's sole or mind. Ex. The pernicious virus of racism.

God, that was from dictionary.com??? "sole"? "poisens"? Who maintains that site - CmdrTaco??? :-)

Re:Uh... From scratch?

[freeweed]

Actually viruses are [D/R]NA strands which often have a protein coat, like your definition 1.

They're not cells, hence acellular, which is how I described them.

If by "burst your bubble" you're referring to my use of the term "organisms", note that at no time did I use the word "living" - even though we still have no consensus on what life is, nor whether or not we should describe viruses as "alive". Contrary to some online dictionary, this issue is still being debated in scientific circles. To me it's semantics anyway.

Thanks, I almost Mastered in Virology. Considering the source you're quoting (note the spelling of poison and soul), don't be too cocky when you try to correct people. Especially when they're already correct :)

Re:Uh... From scratch?

[Inuchance]

Actually, with the way biology works, it'll be more like it changes its diet, and THEN discovers human skin is much more plentiful. =P

Re:Uh... From scratch?

[rtaylor]

Just like when you create an strawberry pie from scratch.

It's not like you go out and start planting wheat for flour, etc. wait 6 months harvest your goods, make the flour, churn the butter, etc. then bake the pie. The components have been premade, but you still need to select them in the right quantities, mix them at the right time and a fair number of other steps.

Re:Uh... From scratch?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Mea Culpa.

Re:Interesting thoughts...

[Wumpus]

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html

Can I play God?

[geekmetal]

But the questions ethicists have raised about such work are numerous: Should we be playing God? Does the potential for good that new life forms may have outweigh the harm they could do?

Can I play God? Oh wait a minute I AM GOD! and who thinks I haven't created life forms whose bad has outwieghed the good (for humans)?

human interference....

[mtrupe]

with nature seems to work so well, why not? I live in Illinois and each fall we are swarmed by millions upon millions of Japanese Lady-Bug-Like Orange Beatles. They were put here to fight Aphids, but they have no predators (birds won't even eat them because they emit this foul stench). They area all over the place and nothing can stop them.

So, what kind of checks and balances will there be on man-made viruses? None- you just cannot introduce anything into nature so quickly. I think the possible outcome is clear. This is downright frightening. I think I'll go rent The Stand this weekend.

Huh?

[Jasonv]

Some scientests take two weeks to create a self-replicating virus? Big deal. Like this Hasn't been done before. Heck, I could manage it in a couple of hours, and I hardn't know how to program. Why the hell is this news?

<RTFA>

Oh. You mean a *biological* virus.

Nevermind.

</RTFA>

This is called the "argument from incredulity"

[roystgnr]

It goes roughly like: "I can't imagine how biological feature X could have evolved; therefore it couldn't have evolved." The only novelty is that it's now being advanced by people who aren't ignorant of biology, so we get examples like flagella where it is harder to find surviving intermediate forms, instead of examples like the eyeball where you can simply look at smaller and simpler creatures to see viable intermediate stages.

In this particular case, apparantly there is a large subset of the flagellum that is homologous to a secretory system in other bacteria. Of course, this isn't a problem for creationists (oops - I mean "Intelligent Design Advocates") who can simply switch their arguments from "The flagellum is irreduceably complex!" to "The flagellum is made of two parts each of which is irreduceably complex!" without batting an eyelash, but hopefully if you're still on the fence you'll be able to see the logical flaws.

Why is it

[bigjnsa500]

Why is it some of the greatest minds on the planet can create a virus, but they still can't cure the common cold?

More Articles

[maomoondog]

Google News rocks! Here's some better articles about the same thing:

New Scientist
Nature
The Economist

Not exactly first time.

[photonic]

This looks very similar to a story one year ago. Seems that they did it in two weeks this time, instead of in 3 years.

Dibs! Already reported'em to Microsoft for $250K!

[tstoneman]

I've already reported him to Microsoft.... waiting for the check any day now!

I wonder if I report every single researcher that I can collect $250K per researcher?

1. Turn in virus researcher
2. ???
3. Profit!!!

Intelligent design fails to impress...

[OmniGeek]

The odds of a mutation creating all parts simultaneously are astronomical, and consequently, the only accepted theory that can sanely describe such a thing is intelligent design, which has been hinted at in many different real-life examples as well as probabistically explained by Pascal's Wager.

Alas, the Intelligent Design theory is based on an intuitive misunderstanding of how long a few hundred million years is, and how much mutation can occur in that time. Hundreds of million years is unimaginably long in terms of a human lifetime, and is EASILY long enough to lead to so-called "irreducably complex" systems like the modern eye through a series of successive approximations and evolutionary refinements, many of them taking place in parallel. Given an astronomically long period of time, the astronomically unlikely will happen.

Open Source...

[47F0]

Ok, this is the Craig Venter of Celera fame. Remember the great Human Genome race? Celera wanted "to patent those parts of the genome it thinks are important and useful, charging researchers who want access to the sequences. Celera has already filed preliminary patents for 6,500 genes."

But the knowledge to produce viruses for whatever purpose goes open source. Bizarre - this guy wants to patent the air we breath and then make fusion weapons technology open to everyone, on the theory that white hats will always prevail.

Problem is, some things are not readily defended against, and viruses have to be one of the things we are least effective in blocking. Sorry Craig, I'm not sure we need to turn a thousand tigers loose before we've REALLY learned to tame the ones that are out there already.

"The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents."

Re:Open Source...

[Samrobb]

<cynicism>
Oh, no - it makes perfect sense.

Really!

See, it's a probability thing - if they make it common knowledge abotu how to create new viruses, what are the chances that someone will create a new virus that can only be cured using one of their 6,500 patents?
</cynicism>

And what about a Bush brain eating virus?

[TheMidget]

No, bad idea. It would starve.

(And if any Secret Service goon is reading this: it's a frigging joke!)

Re:wow

[ce110ut]

The project was funded in part by the Department of Energy, which hopes to create microbes that would capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, produce hydrogen or clean the environment.

append: ...or invade human blood cells, hijack and multiply until resources are completely exhausted. being that in some respects, humans can be perceived as a force that perpetually pollutes the environment.

if it isn't a virus, it'll be the machines!

I for one...

[Hard_Code]

...welcome our new "grey goo" overlords.

NOT

It's "viruses"

[ifwm]

according to dictionary.com

"virus P Pronunciation Key (vrs)
n. pl. viruses "

and encarta online

"virus (plural viruses)"

and Wikipedia

"Despite frequent claims to the contrary, the only correct English plural of the word for any of these senses is viruses. The Latin word does not appear to have had a plural. Virii would be the plural of the word virius, and viri was the plural of the word vir, meaning man. See [1] for more on this."

So please stop. It's viruses.

Re:It's "viruses"

[BagOBones]

Go look up router, according to the dictionary most geeks pronounce it wrong.

www.onelook.com to meta search almost all on-line dictionaries.

Re:It's "viruses"

[cdrudge]

And the dictionary would be wrong. Look up router at Merriam-Webster. (link)

An example of one that is wrong is MSN's Encarta Dictionary. (link) Of course they also mispronounce the other from of router (the woodworking variety) as well. Go into any woodcraftsman store and ask for a "root-er" and they are going to look at you funny.

Re:It's "viruses"

[plugger]

Depends where you are. Go into a hardware store here in the UK and ask for a 'R-ow-ter' (as in 'ow, that hurt'), the man behind the counter is going to look at you funny. So it depends for whom the dictionary was written.

The 'ou' sound is a can of worms anyway, consider:

plough, rough, thought, through.

Re:It's "viruses"

[Lars T.]

Argh! Octopi, not octopii.

Re:It's "viruses"

[BagOBones]

Your Link is not relevent because THAT dictionary does not contain the word in the context of the computer device. Context of a word is very important.

The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language
Dictionary.com

Re:It's "viruses"

[rwise2112]

I thought it was octopodes.

What are the plurals of 'octopus', 'hippopotamus', 'syllabus'?
Why octopuses instead of 'octopi' 'octopodes' or 'dem theayr things'?

Re:It's "viruses"

[CAIMLAS]

Depends on where in the country|world you are.

I know that out here in the Midwest US, it's pronounced, "r-oot-er". I'm apt to pronounce it "r-ow-ter" because I'm silly, I guess - though I try and pronounce it 'r-oot-er' so I don't get any confused looks. If I recall correctly, "r-ow-ter" is how it's pronounced on some parts of the East Coast. I don't know where else I'd pick it up (being as that's where I grew up).

It's like the difference between "route 66" and "route 66". Different dialects pronounce it differently. "garage" and "garage", etc.

Re:It's "viruses"

[geoffspear]

Melvil Dewey (or, as he spelled it, "Dui"), inventor of the Dewey Decimal system, tried this. Basically everyone agreed that he was a nutcase and should stick to library science.

It has about as much chance of being adopted as the metric system, of which he was also a big supporter, does in the US.

Re:It's "viruses"

[Migrant Programmer]

Homer: Hmm. I wonder why he's so eager to go to the garage?
Moe: The "garage"? Hey fellas, the "garage"! Well, ooh la di da, Mr. French Man.
Homer: Well what do _you_ call it?
Moe: A car hole!

Re:It's "viruses"

[at_18]

The Latin word does not appear to have had a plural

And dictionary.com is wrong. The Latin plural of virus is virus. There's a class of Latin words that just don't change when used in the plural sense (as long as they are used as the verb's subject), and you have to derive it from context.
Since this is unworkable in English, you get viruses.

Re:It's "viruses"

[silicon not in the v]

Regional pronunciation differences have been a hobby curiosity of mine. I finally found a web site from a linguistics survey done by Harvard. They got survey results from around the country and turned up some cool results of what words people use for stuff and how they say them.
Here is the link to the study.
It has great stuff like soda/pop/coke as the term for a soft drink, how do you pronounce crayon, coupon, mischevous, etc. Really cool stuff.

Re:It's "viruses"

[monadicIO]

So please stop. It's viruses. Hey, I had spelt it right. I guess "viruses" just mutated to "virii" somewhere along the way to the /. site. Anyway, I stand corrected. Thanks.

One of the advantages...

[Kjella]

There is a very very small difference between a cancerous cell and a normal cell. They're identical except the cancerous one keeps on dividing. Just how much did you want that cancer-eating virus ? Given how often virii mutate ?

...of creating an artifical virus is that we can also create artificial "checksums" to prevent it from mutating. Unlike natural viruses that must evolve, there doesn't have to be any "mutation path" leading to or from an artifical virus.

Quite simply, a self-integrity check on the gene level. Of course, there's always the issue of who checks the self-integrity check, but I suspect that with sufficient computing power we can create some form of "pairing", A checks B (data + checksum code), B checks A (data + checksum code), and if either fails it won't reproduce. That way, it'll only fail if both mutate to remove the checksum code simultaniously.

Kjella

Re:One of the advantages...

[Tiroth]

Most life does have some form of quality-control built in. If your cells go haywire they are supposed to self-destruct. Obviously, this is not always successful, despite millions of years of evolution.

Simple organisms like bacteria and viruses have poor or no checks during reproduction, so they mutate a lot faster.

Re:One of the advantages...

[UserGoogol]

Ehh... no.

Yes, cells mutate, and this is how they evolve. But genes don't "want" to mutate. (Well, genes don't really want anything, they're just complex molecules, but bear with me.)

Lets say you have a piece of DNA. A gene. Now, evolution says that genes which promote their existance will be more common than genes which do not. Obviously. This means that genes which promote their own existance will be more common.

Now, genes typically have many side effects. They might make a person a little taller, but at the same time it might increase the odds of cavities. It's a very chaotic system. Now, let's say you have two genes which are identical except for one difference: one prevents mutation of the gene, where the other one does not. Obviously, the one which prevents mutation will be more successful, because the other one will be changed to god-knows-what.

So evolution tends to favor genes which prevent mutation, although we still get enough for there to be new variation.

Completely Irresponsible

[Ryouga3]

Now that they've satisfied their scientific curiosity, they'd do well to destroy the virus, destroy the lab, and destroy any and all documents recording the techniques they used. We don't have enough control over microscopic materials to provide adequate protection or security for something like this. All it takes is for 1 virus out of millions in a culture to escape the lab, and we may find that we've architected our own destruction. Call me a luddite, but I seriously believe that there has been a lapse in ethics in the biological and medical sciences these days that hurts us all.

Not even close to "from scratch"

[b-baggins]

Don't submitters even review the articles they submit?

From the first paragraph: ...created an artificial virus based on a real one in just two weeks' time.

The time is kind of cool, but this isn't even close to from scratch. Come back and talk to me when you create a virus from some elemental atoms (carbon, hydrogen, etc.)

Not the first, and is identical to a natural virus

[Noren]

The first reproducing artificial virus was the Polio virus by Wimmer and colleagues.

Ventner's new virus is artificial in the sense that it was created from chemicals- but it is identical to a known natural virus.

Venter's team cobbled together the virus, called phi-X174, following its published genetic sequence.

Uh-oh

[clausiam]

I immediately thought of this Gary Larson strip (sorry I couldn't find a link with a decent version):
http://www.waynesthisandthat.com/fs.htm

/Claus

It's probably not a very effective virus

[iabervon]

Considering that this virus was synthesized from scratch, it's probably not something very effective. It's a long way from building a virus that works at all to building a virus that targets a particular organism or overcomes natural defenses.

Just because it's man-made doesn't make it more advanced than naturally-occurring viruses. It's been possible for a long time to build viruses from collected stocks, and these are generally much more frightening. What will be scary is when we have some clue as to how to design proteins, and could construct a virus with specific properties. Until then, we're not likely to create anything that doesn't arise in nature.

(Genetically modified foods are a slightly different issue; just because it might arise in nature doesn't mean we'd eat it if it did. Also, most of the organisms involved are much more resistant to mutation and genetic mixing than viruses and bacteria)

Not first but

[zymano]

this is the second man made virus.

This is a demonstration of technical skills.

I think this is positive unlike other messages here.

A virus that will cure cancer ? Technique used to create nano machines ?

Tumor-busting viruses

[poszi]

There is a very very small difference between a cancerous cell and a normal cell.

Cancerous cells different from normal cells. Most of them are killed by our immunological systems and only those more "clever" can form tumors.

The cancer attacking viruses may exploit different receptors on the cancer cells.

Article in Scientific American.

Re:Tumor-busting viruses

[Sgt York]

The problem is that a cancerous liver cell may differ from a normal liver cell by expressing a surface marker that is expressed in normal intestinal epithelial cells.

Our immune system tries to recognize cells that have volunteered the information that they have gone rogue. There are checking mechanisms in our cells that make sure they don't divide when they aren't supposed to. When the snitches get mutated away, you have a cancer prone cell. You can't just look for the absence of snitches, either. For one thing, viruses don't work that way, and for another, there are some cells that are supposed to divide like crazy, and therefore have the snitches turned off.

No synth virus needed as weaon

[SysKoll]

I don't really think that a synthetic virus would make a difference as a biological weapon.

One often-heard argument is that bacteriological weapons are the perfect terrorist weapon. Well, I don't know. As a terrorist, I want people to push their government into making hasty, irrational decisions, but I also want free circulation. If I have to stay put and if I cannot move around, I cannot coordinate (telecoms are unsecure), I cannot meet contacts, I cannot plan actions. In clandestine action, to be holed up is to be impotent. That's why, among intelligence agents, a very obvious "tail" following your every move is a powerful means for effectively paralyzing an enemy agent.

The SRAS epidemic showed that the first thing that happens when an outbreak is noticed is a strong restriction on travel. Not good for a terrorist organization. Sure, the operation would kill a few people, but terrs would lose so much due to tightened security that it would probably not be worth the trouble.

Which explain why no terrorist has ever come up with the idea of spraying some bodily bluid of an Ebola victim in the subway. While such a deed would provide entertaining news reports, it would also make free movement impossible.

-- SysKoll

Viruses, not virii

[koreth]

This will probably get modded down as flamebait, but someone has to say it: the plural of "virus" is "viruses." It is not "virii" because that isn't an actual English word.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[xinot]

No, not flamebait. Just ignorance on your part. You misunderstand how the english language grows and expands. It's not like the French or German or Italian which have their own institutions to determine the specifics of the words that are allowed. With English we expand the vocabulary as it is used. See email. Or many other words. You may not like virii, but if enough people use it, it is a word.

Deal with it.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[greygent]

No, not flamebait. Just ignorance on your part.

No, it is ignorance on the offender's part for not knowing proper English.

With English we expand the vocabulary as it is used.

That should be "mis-used".

See email.

The term "e-mail" and variants is different. It was a term created to describe an invention. It was not an ignorant mis-use of grammar, such as "your" for "you're", etc.

if enough people use it, it is a word.

True enough, but a word founded on ignorance and/or lack of education.

virii

Virii is not proper English. However, it is an accepted slang term in the computer underground.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[freeweed]

Excuseth me, but I have to go visit the Olde Shoppe now.

I'm all for literacy and correct grammar/spelling, but anyone who doesn't think English is a constantly evolving language obviously has never read a book more than 20 years olde.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[koreth]

And until enough people use it, it's still wrong. English changes, but it doesn't change just because a few people can't be bothered to crack open a dictionary. Otherwise "lose" and "loose" would be synonyms, because a hell of a lot more people mistake those than choose a bogus pluralization of "virus."

And since you're clearly an authority on the history of English, you're no doubt already aware that the trend over at least the last century has been toward stricter disciplines of spelling and grammar, not looser. Thanks to mass publication, we're no longer in the era of Andrew Jackson's "It's a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word!"

The rules change over time, it's true, but that doesn't mean there aren't any rules.

Deal with it.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[greygent]

Maybe you should read a comment before you reply to it. Here, let me reproduce the portion relevant to yours:

if enough people use it, it is a word.

True enough, but a word founded on ignorance and/or lack of education.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[jemfinch]

You may not like virii, but if enough people use it, it is a word.

No, if enough people use it, it just lowers the average intelligence of English speakers.

I don't give one rat's ass about your linguistic mumbo-jumbo. Some people are just retarded, and the ones who continually use the word "virii" because they think they're cool happen to be among them.

Jeremy

Re:Viruses, not virii

[Craig3010]

I would say kiss our assii

Re:Viruses, not virii

[Dirtside]

You must think that Shakespeare was a severe retard, then. After all, he spelled plenty of words differently. Shit, he flat-out invented several hundred words.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[Random832]

Just because a lot of people do it, does that make it "right"?

yes.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[Mr Smidge]

You may not like virii, but if enough people use it, it is a word.

This is in fact a very bad and ignorant attitude to take. Popularity breeds new words, and we often invent new words (email, etc.) when we need an entirely new term.

However, it isn't right (no, really, it isn't) to change words for marginal gain of convenience (I wonder whether the intellectuals of the past weren't too happy with the "olde" to "old" change either), and especially when it is delibarate misuse of regular grammar and an introduction of yet another irregular word into a language that already has plenty.

Likewise, "Quote" is NOT A NOUN, "a lot" is two words, and anybody who says "you" instead of "your" (it does happen) really is bending the rules. If a new word that only came about through laziness and propagated through popularity, without necessarily being correct (olde -> old, for example), then I think that only represents how a lack of grammatical knowledge in the average person can drown out the minority (and correct) version of the word.

Is there any reason why you would say virii over viruses? I personally think not.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[Dirtside]

If usage defines the language, then a quick Googlefight shows how well "virii" fares:

viruses
(5 800 000 results)

versus

virii
( 123 000 results)

The reason that "virii" is so scorned by those of us interested in grammatical correctness is because its usage is almost invariably due to ignorance of how the common rules of English are applied. When a hacker says "boxen" instead of "boxes" it's usually a playful overapplication of the "ox" -> "oxen" rule -- the hacker knows that what he's doing is "wrong," but does it anyway for the entertainment value (even if he's the only one who's entertained). As a matter of practice, people use the word "virii" because they think that it's the actual common plural of "virus".

I don't think I'd personally object to the use of "virii" to mean "computer viruses", but then we end up in a situation where we have a specific jargon word for "computer viruses" but no specific jargon word for the singular form, "computer virus". The asymmetry bothers me, and since the context usually is adequate to determine which kind of virus we're talking about, there's not really need for the word.

And writing off "virii" as "just another evolution of English, deal with it" is also a bad idea because it encourages people to misapply grammatical rules, which is not going to improve the level of our communications. Some things are worth fighting for, such as clarity of language. English could use a lot more of it, but muddying the waters by misapplying rules from other languages isn't going to help.

Of course, there's always the fact that I can use someone's usage of "virii" as an indicator that they're probably not worth listening to :)

Re:Viruses, not virii

[freeweed]

Then that would be the bulk of the english language, because almost none of what we use currently was "correct" english if you back more than a few centuries.

It's not like some scholars sat around one day and thought "hey, we should make a language. Let's set up the rules for it" (well, unless you're Tolkein :)

ALL languages are founded on ignorance and/or lack of education, except when the "educated" create brand new ones - and even these generally fall into common use and change over time.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[Necromancyr]

Considering the entire community of viral researchers utilizes VIRUSES and not virii it's not going to change anytime soon. Try to submit something to be published in the field of virology using virii. The only thing worse then the comments you would get from editors/reviewers would be the loss in reputation you garnered if it did get published.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[Valdrax]

You may not like virii, but if enough people use it, it is a word.

Fo' shizzle! Ain't dat tru!

Re:Viruses, not virii

[elohim]

But using virii is just plain wrong. If enough people use virii, it's not just a word, it's just ignorance.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[Cyno]

A word founded on ignorance?

Must be in the US..

Is Ebonics a dialect of English? I'd like to think so.

Pop Quiz: What causes the lack of intelligence in the US, genetics or money?

Remember your environment and most of the experiences throughout your life are directly dependant on money.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[Idarubicin]

Strictly speaking, the OED is not an official institution for managing the English language. When they say that they are the "accepted authority" that's not entrenched anywhere in law; it is a de facto state of affairs. They are an authority on the English language in the same way that the Encyclopedia Britannica is considered an authority on...everything else. Thorough, detailed, voluminous--but not the only source on the issue.

Compare and contrast with French, to which words may be officially admitted only by l'Academie Francaise. (This has been official policy for centuries.) Even with French, the language tends to be quite flexible. In Montreal, French is a very different language than in Paris. Officially, the word 'email' is verboten in French; the accepted term is courriel electronique...and yet, somehow, one still finds 'email' in France.

Still, I have to agree-the notion that the word 'virii' or 'viri' is a proper plural is absurd, and founded in laziness.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[ammie]

English isn't a language. It's a conglomeration of buzwords and derivatives. Anyone who's familiar with the south knows exactly what the word 'yun-to? is asking. But I dare you to find THAT in a dictionary.

Old languages reflect their old countries, and the ignorance isn't theirs, it's ours. We're still reducing love to a four letter word. How many times have you caught yourself saying "I can't say this the right way..." or "I dont know how to put it..."

In case you dont actually KNOW any german, french, or italian, we still can't figure out how to interpret the german line "to pull ones nose long" or the french phrase "l'evangile du Mal", but both have a meaning beyond just the translation. I call my loved ones "Anna Moya". It means "my water", seems a funny way of expressing endearment. My water? But, consider the source. It's arabic...water is a precious, rare, and life-sustaining thing. There is no higher praise.

Put yourself in his shoes for a moment, and take a look from the outside in.
And try not to be quite so assenine about it in the future...We have an uncultured and bullish appearance enough as it is.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[Yunzil]

You may not like virii, but if enough people use it, it is a word.

It might be a word, in the sense that it's a bunch of letters strung together, but it's still incorrect and makes you look bad.

Deal with it.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[stmfreak]

Actually, all languages grow and expand through usage. It's only when an agency is successful at controlling it and prohibiting new words and creative adaptations that a languages begins to die. People will say "virii" or "alot" or "email" if that helps them communicate. If you forbid it in one language, they'll say it in another.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[panaceaa]

you're clearly an authority on the history of English, ... looser.

Geez, show some respect. Just because he disagrees with you doesn't make him a loser.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[panaceaa]

Quote sure seems like a noun to me...

quote n. 1. A quotation (Informal). 2. A quotation mark. 3. Used by a speaker to indicate the beginning of a quotation. 4. A dictum; a saying.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[Jack9]

So if are you all for correct grammar spelling, why didn't you make the correction?

Using 'Virii' in place of 'Viruses' is incorrect spelling. I am not the spelling bee's drone, but I am interested in what you think.

I do not concede it's futile to stop a language from changing (not improving). See most ANY programming language. There is no moral reason I can divine that I should ignore the baseline syntax of a language when given the opportunity because it will be seen as acceptable within the community I am affiliating with. Perhaps is fulfills your psychological need to be different or recognized as such? Are you seeking approval and the ancilliary authority that might convey, being "in the know"?

Let me know when you recognize your hypocrisy, have a well thought out reason for your behavior, or have revised your stance.

Fucking around for your own personal entertainment is a good enough reason for most anything, of course.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[gotih]

taken from a post above: Pop Quiz: What causes the lack of intelligence in the US, genetics or money?

Remember your environment and most of the experiences throughout your life are directly dependant on money.

your language is owned by the universities who have people on staff to determine what the correct way to convey a message will be.

my language (i call it english) is generated by the masses of people. it changes locally every generation and free to those exposed to the culture that produced it. it doesn't have money or institutions to produce documentation (dictionaries) but that doesn't make it any less legitimate to me.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[MasonMcD]

Irregardless, I think he has a point.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[Mr Smidge]

In that case, it looks like another word that has been propagated through popular use. In this case I can see why though, as 'quotation' is significantly more to say/spell compared to the one-syllable 'quote'.

'Quote' was certainly not originally a noun.

Re:Viruses, not virii

[greygent]

zo we shud excep'd speling like dis? becuz al langwudge iz bast on ignurince?

eye dunt theenk zo

Re:Viruses, not virii

[Jack9]

jack9.....your absolutely amazing

from your secret admirer....OnS|aught

Interesting, but..

[brulman]

virii can be built out of RNA as well. Though in the instance of the article they did use DNA. But both types exist, don't know if anyone has synthesised an RNA virus yet though.

Re:Interesting, but..

[J0eKewl]

It is much easier to synthesize DNA than RNA. This is because a DNA molecule is much more stable than an RNA molecule. It is for this same reason that cells store long term information in DNA while RNA is normally used only for temperal storage.
Strands of RNA often only have a half life of a couple of minutes, depending upon the length, sequence, higher order structure, enviornmental factors and associated protiens. I think that this is part of the reason why HIV does not survive too long outside of the body, as it is a retorvirus with RNA.

I guess we'll see....

[Anonymous Coward]

how we feel about this 28 Days from now.

good (scary) sci-fi book on the topic

[dcavens]

I just finished reading a very good dystopian novel on this subject - Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (runner up for Booker and Giller, if I'm not mistaken.) It describes a world where genetic manipulation has moved a bit beyond current technology, and its somewhat nasty consequences. I suspect it could be another '1984' type classic.

I was still in a state of horror from the book, thinking that what it described couldn't really happen, until I read the news this morning.

Shudder.

just a kitten?

[muyuubyou]

The thing has to be Open Source.

I mean, a virus is friendlier than a kitten if the virus is Open Source and the kitten is closed source and therefore evil and willing to take over the world.
You should know that already as a slashdotter. You are new around here aren't you?


Imagine a beowulf cluster of closed source kittens. The horror!

Re:how long will it be before...

[Daniel_Staal]

Actually, I would suspect it would take a while. A long while.

The human body is incredibly good at resisting viri. It needs to be: natural viri are incredibly good at getting past the defenses. Mutating armor, adaptive camouflage, site-specific intrusion points, are all common in the virus world. Building a working virus that can actually infect a human is a lot harder than just getting it to replicate in ideal conditions. Natural viri have to work very hard, just to get us to sneeze once or twice. Specifically modifying brain connections to obtain a certain result would be (nearly?) impossible. (Especially since we don't understand how the brain works yet...)

I'll trust our natural defenses against any made-from-scratch virus. I'd even take even odds on a modified-from-natural virus. Now, bred-for-leathality I'll worry about...

Whatever it is, it should be named Agent Smith...

[Aikido Al]

That's my vote anyway.

Not Chilling

[zero time ghost]

Just how much did you want that cancer-eating virus ? Given how often virii mutate ?

I'm no more scared of how an artificial virus can mutate than I am of how a natural virus mutates. It's extremely unlikely that any mutation will make a virus more deadly. Most mutations just break the little machine.

Also, I doubt an artifical virus has a higher chance of becoming an Evil Plague Virus than any of the kazillion non-pathological virii that are floating around us every day. We're swimming in the little critters all the time, and our immune systems can handle almost every of those rare, evil mutations. Bring on the cancer eaters, I say.

Compare Viral Genome Data at NIH

[Mr.Sharpy]

You can compare compiled genome data on various viruses at the NIH Viral Genomes Resource

You can look at the genome lengths in basepairs and compare them.

Name?

[El_Smack]

If they name it "Smith", it will go a long to clearing up my confusion after watching Revolutions.

Well, I guess it's time to...

[(eternal_software)]

Repent!

looks like a penquin

[HomerJayS]

Would the Open Source equivilent to a kitten be a penquin?

"Discussion"?

[AdamHaun]

I don't think anybody should be making any new life forms or modifying any existing life forms, at least until we've had a serious societal discussion regarding its possible role and impact on terrorism and biowarfare.

But the problem is that we're not *going* to have a serious societal discussion because that phrase means nothing. Who's talking with whom? Who makes decisions? Who gets input?

When I hear "societal discussion", I get an image in my head of the entire country sitting at a great big table having a little chat about what to do. But in real life, that sort of thing doesn't happen. You have kooks who think that anything that looks like "playing God" is evil, you have people who think that every new invention must immediately be used to aid/fight terrorism, you have people who don't even understand the basic science behind what's going on(like Slashdot...oops, did I say that out loud?). And in the end, after all of these people have "had their say"(who are they talking to?), who decides what will be done? You want the government to say "Sorry, no more research on microorganisms"? Because that's about all it could do. What right does "society" have to control science? Most people will tell you that they don't even understand what "science" is! Who is qualified to do cost/benefit analysis of this sort of thing? Does anybody even *care* about cost/benefit analysis?

I understand(and sympathize with) your concerns, but no amount of talking is going to do anything about this situation. We can't halt our understanding of the world where it is just because a few people might cause problems with it. Hell, if we had taken that attitude to begin with, we'd be lucky to have fire by now!

Re:"Discussion"?

[jimsum]

An additional factor is that politicians never talk about hypothetical situations. That is their favorite excuse for not giving an opinion and thereby letting all voters think the politician agrees with them.

Unfortunately, politicians are not rewarded for worrying about the future or telling the truth. "Societal discussions" will always be put off until the last minute, if not forever.

It is a sad truth of our society that the average person doesn't want to inform themself about an issue; they'd rather believe the politician that gives a comforting answer and then blame the politician if things don't work out as promised.

Re:"Discussion"?

[Dirtside]

When I hear "societal discussion", I get an image in my head of the entire country sitting at a great big table having a little chat about what to do. But in real life, that sort of thing doesn't happen.

It does happen, you're just apparently incapable of visualizing how it really happens. :) What he's referring to is the society-wide process of discussion, information dissemination, more discussion, controlled experimentation, etc. In other words, the general social development of an ethical system regarding the topic. Instead of coming up with a new technology, throwing it out into society and saying "let the chips fall where they may," instead we're saying something like, "Hey, this new technology could be incredibly dangerous if mishandled -- maybe we should take it slowly and try to avoid the worst of the problems that could come out of it."

You want the government to say "Sorry, no more research on microorganisms"? Because that's about all it could do.

That's approximately what they should do -- more along the lines of what I said above: "Genetic engineering can be very, very dangerous with long-term, widespread repercussions. We should take this slowly and think about it a lot before we do anything drastic. Yes, that may slow down progress, but let's keep in mind how many really, really bad things might happen if we move forward too quickly." The trick is in figuring out how much discussion you really need before you're just treading water and blocking progress to no good end.

Nothing personal in this, but you're really acting like someone who's never considered that maybe other people have thought about all this before. :)

The big problem, of course, is that there are so many short-sighted people out there, that it's nearly impossible to convince everyone that we should take it a little slower. My wife's fond of pointing out that virtually every bad decision or ill-informed belief that people have stems from not thinking far enough ahead. It behooves us, as a society, to encourage long-term thinking as much as possible.

Re:"Discussion"?

[CoolToddHunter]

I think that "societal discussion" is real, but as you indicate, not everyone sitting at a big table talking rationally. Think more along the lines of Slashdot, letters to the editor, that sort of thing. People air their opinions, hear others, and most people come to a rough consensus. There will always be the trolls on the right and left, those who will always be vocal and not representative.

I think that most people accept the amount of gun control we have. Not all weapons are allowed, but most are. There is a limited amount of public debate on this issue, which is largely confined to those who would ban all weapons or those who want fewer restrictions.

Public debate or "societal discussion" is necessary for a society to come to a consensus. No two people will have exactly the same opinion, but most will be close (or tolerated). This comes from reasonable people willing to bend and be influenced by reasonable argument. After a period of time, the discussion will reach a societally acceptable conclusion.

Re:"Discussion"?

[AdamHaun]

Good points, but I was getting at something a little different.

It does happen, you're just apparently incapable of visualizing how it really happens. :) What he's referring to is the society-wide process of discussion, information dissemination, more discussion, controlled experimentation, etc. In other words, the general social development of an ethical system regarding the topic. Instead of coming up with a new technology, throwing it out into society and saying "let the chips fall where they may," instead we're saying something like, "Hey, this new technology could be incredibly dangerous if mishandled -- maybe we should take it slowly and try to avoid the worst of the problems that could come out of it."

But who is "we"? As I pointed out before, the overwhelming majority of "society" is not even informed about the realities of issues like these, much less qualified to make a decision. Furthermore, even among those who are experts in the field you have no guarantee of a consensus. I agree that biological research can have nasty consequences, but I don't think that any sort of non-obvious ethical guidelines are going to come out of waiting. Take, for instance, everyone's favorite example -- the atomic bomb. Aside from the obvious "hey, this can kill people" point, what new ethical principles would have come out of delaying atomic research?

Ethics basically boils down to one principle: hurt other people as little as possible. I'm at a loss to think how something like creating an artificial virus complicates that issue.

Good: Using virus research to help people
Bad: Using virus research to hurt people

So what is helping and what is hurting? Some issues, like abortion, you're never going to get agreement on.

Don't forget that people also have an irrational fear of certain things that tends to cloud their judgement(see nuclear vs. coal power, for example).

The trick is in figuring out how much discussion you really need before you're just treading water and blocking progress to no good end.

This is what kills your idea dead in the water. There are *always* going to be large risks associated with powerful technology. Technology gives people power, and power is a double-edged sword. No amount of ethical discussion will remove the fundamental danger that knowledge presents.

If you want to reduce risk, it is often better to worry about social problems rather than technological problems. Which will create less risk of terrorism? Taking away the terrorist's weapons, or removing their desire to become terrorists?

People can worry all day about the danger's of technology, but some things are too useful to give up on.

Nothing personal in this, but you're really acting like someone who's never considered that maybe other people have thought about all this before. :)

Of course people have thought about it before. But I've never seen any substance come out of it. When has waiting prevented some sort of ethical catastrophe? Who can even agree on what an ethical catastrophe is? We're waiting on human cloning, but I haven't heard anything about any actual dangers associated with it. Stem cell reasearch was possibly one of the most useful things to come out of biology in recent history, and it's been flushed down the toiler for silly political reasons.

It seems to me that the people who want to decide whether or not something is ethically questionable have the least sense of all.

Until we have one unified set of ethics for everyone in the world that covers every possible act, there will be no societal discussion of anything.

Re:"Discussion"?

[RobertB-DC]

Don't forget that people also have an irrational fear of certain things that tends to cloud their judgement (see nuclear vs. coal power, for example).

Even more apropos to the original discussion -- artificially created viruses and their possible evolution -- is the debate over Evolution vs. Creationism. Here in Texas, we have a state board that approves or disapproves textbooks for the entire state. No textbook publisher is willing to give up the Texas market, so what they do to appease the conservatives here is what goes out to the entire country.

I'm a dedicated Christian, and I see no conflict between my faith-based belief in a higher power and my scientific "belief" in evolution. "Creationists", to me, simply have too little faith -- they limit God's ability to what could be explained to illiterate shepherds 4000 years ago! "Moses, go tell the people that they decended from apes." Yeah, like that's going to keep them from going back to Egypt.

This topic came up on NPR's Diane Rehm show last week. One of her panelists pointed out that when teachers avoid teaching evolution (out of fear of parent complaints), students don't learn some of the basics of biology. As a result, they are not grounded in enough of the basics to offer an opinion based on anything but fear and conjecture.

Re:"Discussion"?

[Dirtside]

But who is "we"? As I pointed out before, the overwhelming majority of "society" is not even informed about the realities of issues like these, much less qualified to make a decision.

The type of discussion I refer to is among those A) who are well-informed about the subject, and B) with the authority to make decisions about the future of the subject. Ideally, we should be encouraging everyone to be in group A for as many topics as is feasible.

Furthermore, even among those who are experts in the field you have no guarantee of a consensus.

That's exactly *why* you encourage debate on the subject -- to try and reach a consensus :) If we already have a complete consensus, nobody's going to think we need debate.

I agree that biological research can have nasty consequences, but I don't think that any sort of non-obvious ethical guidelines are going to come out of waiting.

I don't know if you've ever taken an ethics course, or read any books specifically about professional ethics, but there are a lot of elements to ethical systems that are emphatically nonobvious.

Take, for instance, everyone's favorite example -- the atomic bomb. Aside from the obvious "hey, this can kill people" point, what new ethical principles would have come out of delaying atomic research?

Well, you're unfairly simplifying the issue by assuming that atomic bombs are the only thing that came out of atomic research. :) Nuclear medicine and nuclear power are two entire other fields that stem from it, and both fields are fraught with issues of how nuclear energy can affect people, both positively and negatively. E.g., what do we do with the waste that results from nuclear power plants? That's an issue that's still not decided, 49 years after the first nuclear power plant went online -- and the waste continues to mount while we figure out a solution. In this particular case, it turns out that we probably will come to a solution well before the waste starts being a severe problem -- but in retrospect, did we really spend enough time looking at that fact before we decided to start building nuclear power plants? It's not just ethical specifics that need working out -- it's practical decisions, as well.

Ethics basically boils down to one principle: hurt other people as little as possible. I'm at a loss to think how something like creating an artificial virus complicates that issue.

It's obvious that the goal (well, if you want to oversimplify) is to avoid hurting people -- but the questions I'm talking about are things like, "Given this new technology, and all the wondrous things it can do, in what ways can it be used safely, without hurting people? In what ways should we allow ourselves to use it, so as to avoid hurting people?" THAT'S what we're trying to figure out. How the technology will interact with the real world is not always obvious, despite your insistence that it is.

If you want to reduce risk, it is often better to worry about social problems rather than technological problems. Which will create less risk of terrorism? Taking away the terrorist's weapons, or removing their desire to become terrorists?

That's exactly what I'm talking about! The discussion at hand is one of societal responsibility, not technological or engineering challenges. If I, as a private individual, can genetically engineer a new kind of plant and start selling it without any outside testing to make sure it doesn't have hidden, long-term harmful effects, should I start doing so? What responsibility do I have to society to undertake that testing of my own accord, without being forced to by the government? Given that most corporate entities are inherently amoral, how much should the government interfere in their operations? These are the ki

Leave it to mankind...

[UncleBiggims]

Leave it to us to create life and then anxiously wait to watch it "reproduce". I bet Larry Flynt already has pictures.

What did they call it?

[crashnbur]

I hope they didn't name it "Smith".

(I'm ignoring the article to make a silly Matrix joke. Go about your business as usual.)

Re:The Geek shall inherit the earth

[heironymouscoward]

No, no, no, what he meant was the greeks shall inherit the earth. But it applies to all mediterrainian peoples in general.

This is vital research...

[BlabberMouth]

it is very possible that the potential cure for cancer will involve the use of viruses. Current research is allowing scientists to find out what proteins in our DNA are different in cancer cells and lead to a cancer cell's uncontrolled reproduction. Such proteins could be targeted by drugs, but also by viruses, which are able to change the DNA of cells they attack. It is unlikely that we will find naturally occurring viruses to attack all of the different types of cancer cells and artificial viruses will be vital to find the cure. Obviously, caution is warranted, but caution is warranted in all scientific research.

Virus != life

[vlad_petric]

A virus is pretty much just genetic material (DNA). I'll be really impressed when they manage to create a cell (bacterium) from scratch.

This is not a new virus

[Mablung]

Venter did not create a new virus. He created a copy of a well known virus (the first genome to be sequenced, I think). It's just that he did it from scratch, i.e., outside of a cell, using man-made (well, machine-made) pieces of DNA.

RTFA

[TrekkieGod]

From the article:

To date, the largest genome that was synthesized was the 7,500-base-pair polio virus. But that was only semi-functional and took three years to complete

So, the one you refer to more than a year ago, was NOT a fully functional virus.

viral catastrophe

[bob_jenkins]

I'm curious. When a really bad virus gets out of hand, does it kill 100% of the target population? Or only 99.99%? What are examples of species with large populations that have been 100% wiped out by disease?

Also, if there are usually some survivors, why? Is it because they weren't exposed to it, or because there's usually someone who is immune to it?

Re:viral catastrophe

[bob_jenkins]

As species go, humans don't have much genetic variability. The biggest differences seem to be in Ethiopia and Australia.

A google for "virus bird extinction" suggests that many endangered bird species may go extinct due to West Nile killing off enough for them not to have a viable breeding population left. Hawaii, which was isolated from diseases until very recently, is very hard hit because all the world's bird diseases are striking it at once.

Googling for "virus mammal extinction" I got:

But it was not until 1951 that the Australian government scored its first major victory with the introduction of a virus called myxomatosis, which cut back the rabbit population by as much as 95 percent in some regions and 25 percent in others.

So, all the examples I could see, some percentage of the population has survived, although it isn't clear why.

Was I the only one who thought...

[kabocox]

Was I the only one who read the head line and thought that some researchers made a new type of self adapting computer virsus?

Could help stop biowarfare as well

[mercuryresearch]

One of the arguments for not destroying the current stock of smallpox is that it might be needed at some future time for research.

With a proven and consistent ability to recreate a virus from its known DNA sequence, the actual viruses themselves could be safely destroyed without impacting the ability to resurrect them in the future. As well, it's probably considerably harder to recreate a virus this way than to steal existing stock.

So while this opens the door to manufacturing viruses for biowarfare, it also makes it possible to destroy current stocks that might be stolen and used for such purposes.

Rainbow Six future scenario?

[StandardCell]

For those of you who have read Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, you will know that Tom goes into detail not only about what certain individuals will do to bioengineer fatal viruses. Obviously this particular virus isn't much, but what about the radical elements in humanity? There are individuals willing to kill everything on earth in order to advance their political or religious ideology. If someone can engineer viruses this easily, what will happen when someone disgruntled and who doesn't care about himself, much less others, decide to design and manufacture a virus like this?

Thinking about it in slightly different terms, all societies attempt to limit the proliferation of highly destructive weapons among their populace because the arbitrary nature of people would guarantee their arbitrary misuse. Imagine a world where people could obtain nuclear weapons as easily as a box of ammunition. We'd already all be dead.

This is what makes this particular story quite fear-inducing. When we arrive at the point where we can easily contruct very deadly weapons, particularly with the subtlety of viruses, there should be very strict regulation and government supervision. I can only hope there will be a worldwide treaty to that effect. After all, would you want someone engineering a virulent strain of airborne type 4 Ebola because he or she has a beef with a government's ideology?

Re:Rainbow Six future scenario?

[k12linux]

If someone can engineer viruses this easily, what will happen when someone disgruntled and who doesn't care about himself, much less others, decide to design and manufacture a virus like this?

Fortunately we are nowhere near that point right now. The work needed to design a virus which actually can do something beyond reproduce is likely many magnatudes more difficult.

I'm not a scientist, but I suspect that the virus would have to generate it's own protiens to be able to infect cells. It probably would have to generate other protines to do other types of damage to the host. It likely would have to have a balance between incubation time and killing power (less the first infect person drop dead before infecting someone else.) And it would probably have to be very complex so that our immune system or a simple vacine wouldn't eradicate it immediately.

I have a feeling that this is about as close to making an evil super-virus as filling a pipe with black powder is to building a nuclear ICBM.

I'm less worried about terrorists making their own killer viruses than I am about an unintended virus which might get released. I'm the most concerned that it's structure could be so different from natural viruses that other organisms might have no immune defense at all. But in a list of things to worry about I have to admit I don't this one rank very high.

Re:Rainbow Six future scenario?

[Zirtix]

I'm less worried about terrorists making their own killer viruses than I am about an unintended virus which might get released...

Vide (if you haven't already).

Re:Rainbow Six future scenario?

[danila]

When we arrive at the point where we can easily contruct very deadly weapons, particularly with the subtlety of viruses, there should be very strict regulation and government supervision.

No, there should be very good education and instruction. People should be raised to be smart, caring, kind, inquisitve and compassionate. A normal healthy person would not create a virus to cause harm and a sick person should be treated. There will be no terrorism once we create a global society of abundance and freedom (to a large extent by using nanotech, AI and biotech). And other people would be happy to follow simple precautions.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki Were Best Option Available

[KnarfO]

I recommend you spend more time studying history. When Japan attacked us in 1941, they did so without any declaration of hostilities prior. We had not attacked them. Our soldiers and sailors in Pearl Harbor were not in a state of alert. It's one of the biggest cheap shots in the anals of civilization.

In 1945, Japan had been beaten. Their millitary forces were smashed, our air force was dropping incendiary bombs on anything that would burn on the main islands, and yet the warlords that ran the country refused to surrender, electing instead to fight a bloody war of attrition that meant the countless slaughter of their own innocent civillian population.

We saw this happen on Okinawa -- civilians told to fight to the death, or die at the hands of their own government. Civilians who where so scared by official millitary propoganda, they preferred to jump to their deaths from the cliffs overhanging the ocean, rather than surrender to an enemy they'd been told would do unspeakable things to them if they surrendered.

On the Japanese home islands, we were slaughtering civillians from the air already, but still no surrender. Our country was faced with the prospect of having to invade with a force of up to a million men, and casualty rates likely to be in the range of 250,00.

If you read history and understand it, you see how dropping the bomb was the best and most humane way of bringing that bloody war to as quick an end as possible.

obligatory joke

[cygnus]

i, for one, would like to *welcome* our virus-creating overlords...

/me looks around nervously, and dons a N100 mask.

Virus = floppy disk with a kernal patch installer

[G4from128k]

And why did it have to be a virus. Why not a cute little kitten or something?

They created an artificial virus because viruses are excellent for getting genetic code installed in other organisms. Instead of creating a complex organism from scratch, you create a virus that installs a patch on your favorite organism. People could then create and install patches that give plants the ability to directly use nitrogen from the air (avoiding costly, polluting fertilizers), fix genetic diseases in people), make glow-in-the dark cats, or craft new microbes that generate hydrogen from sunlight (the reason the Dept of Energy funded the research).

The End?

[Doc Squidly]

I guess this mean the end of the world. It wasn't that great anyways.

How to make a virus

[JamesP]

Particularly interesting is that it only took them two weeks to build

So it's just unzipping, ./configure then make???

And 2 weeks to make, that's like way slower than rebuilding the kernel...

Meh...

[JFMulder]

Everyone knows that with enough alcool and some kinky music you can get anything to reproduce. They should have tried that years ago. It would have saved them so much time and money.

Star Trek

[caldroun]

I know that these guys have seen it..but they didn't learn that YOU JUST CAN'T DO THAT without consequences.

The bizzare genome of Phi X 174

[MagnaMark]

The specific virus that Venter et al synthesized is called Bacteriophage phiX174. They probably chose it because it has such a short genome.

In fact, it's genome is so short that at first it confused researchers. It's genome is shorter than it should be. That is, there are fewer codons in the genome than there are amino acids in the virus's proteins. Normally, there would need to be a 1:1 codon:amino-acid ratio.

This lead researchers to the amazing discovery that phiX174 contains "genes within genes" and "overlapping genes". (Link to Genetic Map of phiX174) In several instances, one gene is entirely contained within another gene. In another, there are two genes (A and A*) that overlap with "reading frames" that are off by one.

This discovery challenges notions of what a gene is. With this knowledge, you can't say that a gene is simply a particular region of DNA.

These overlapping genes also call attention to the improbability of the evolution of phiX174. Commonly when a genetic mutation occurs, one base changes. This could affect one amino-acid in the protein for which the gene codes. In phiX174's case, a single base mutation could change 2 amino-acids in 2 proteins. This means that the evolution of these proteins is interdependent. That two functional proteins evolved in this manner is absolutely extraordinary.

Of course, now that it has evolved that way, it gives phiX174 an advantage of genetic economy. It takes less energy to maintain and reproduce a shorter genome. So phiX174 gets more bang for it's genetic buck by overlapping genes in this way.

Re:The bizzare genome of Phi X 174

[danila]

Genome configuration is invalid. Cross-linked genes detected. Scangene will be run now to repair the genome.

reverse transcriptase isn't general...

[rbird76]

I believe that most virus species use DNA rather than RNA to replicate - this is why AIDS was (is) difficult to deal with at first, because RNA viruses aren't as common, and so people weren't as familiar with their behavior. Reverse transcriptase isn't present in most viruses because they use DNA, rather than RNA, to carry information - once the DNA gets into the cell, the virus uses the cell to reproduce (DNA is copied to DNA, RNA read from the DNA is read to generate proteins) just as in the cell normally. Retroviruses use reverse transcriptase to copy RNA to DNA - the cell can then integrate the DNA into its own DNA and replicate the virus. Reverse transcriptase in HIV is a target for inhibitors because most species don't read from RNA to DNA, but only the reverse (DNA --> RNA ---> protein) - thus inhibiting RT wouldn't kill normal cells (or most viruses), only HIV (and other retroviruses).

I think that most viruses contain proteins to gain entry into the cell as part of the output from their DNA. If the virus is duplicated, the protein controlling entry into the cell must also be duplicated. I didn't RTA. but the authors may have left that protein out so that it couldn't reproduce in the wild - if it can't infect cells, it will replicate only slowly (as fast as its DNA is naturally taken up by cells) and thus not mutate very fast (so that it can't overcome its inability to enter cells). The ability of the assembled DNA to form a coherent package would in itself be significant.

Ummmm, I don't know if you realize this, but

[RCO]

anthrax is naturally occuring...

not trolling, or anything, just thought I'd point that out for those reading that may not realize it.

Not quite "From Scratch"

[110010001000]

This is a bit sensationalistic. What they did was construct an artificial genome and inject into an already existing cell (that presumably had its genetic material removed).

Impressive though.

so much for god

[aldousd666]

Well that settles it then. You don't have to be an omnipotent spirit to create a living being. Huh. What's next on the list?

I expect to see sometime in the near future: Post Foods successfully recreates pop-tarts in the lab.. Cautions that Frosted Flakes are still a few decades off

Not as worrisome as it seems

[localman]

I think people get mega worried about this because they think that we'll create some unstoppable supervirus. But that would mean that we humans were better designers than nature itself, which is not the case (witness our inability to improve on our own bodies in any meaningful way).

It is likely that any "supervirus" that could exist would have come into existence on it's own anyways. And some have; the bubonic plague, 1918 influenza, and to a lesser extent, aids. But the competition between viruses and hosts goes on and on in a cycle, with no final victor.

In fact, I would guess that any virus we could make would be a weakling compared to the viruses that evolve in the wild.

Cheers

Physicians call them Viruses

[shking]

I asked a friend who's an MD if we should use "virii" for the plural of "virus". Her response was "We've been calling them viruses for 60 years"

Re:Physicians call them Viruses

[ajensen]

I'm not sure how your friend's credibility stands in terms of social dynamics and culture, but the grandparent post was asking someone with extensive education in the medical field. If such a person says that "viruses" is the preferred spelling, then I'd be inclined to trust him or her. Distasteful names have no place in a discussion like this.

--a

Re:Physicians call them Viruses

[Leroy_Brown242]

First of all, I have no friends like this. I can't imagine wanting either.

Point being is that just because an "expert" says it's true, does not make it so.

Re:Physicians call them Viruses

[ajensen]

Slashdot doesn't necessarily reflect the truth (if there is such a thing), but it is to our experts that we look in situations like this. The Slashdot community has been debating the "viruses vs. virii" idea for a long time -- it's nice to see that someone finally asked a medical expert.

Now the problem is that sometimes technological terms differ from the other sciences. For example, "antennae" is correct when used to discuss the appendages that come out of the head of a creature; antennas, however, are metallic objects that are used to send/receive signals. So in the case of viruses and virii, it's certainly possible that virii may manifest itself in our language simply because it's used frequently. That's the nature of language in many cases.

--a

one more obligatory joke

[CleverNickName]

When the researchers presented their findings: We have made this virus. It is our first effort. We wish you would like it!

Ho-hum. Big deal...

[praedor]

This isn't amazing at all. It isn't even wondrous or frightening. It is merely the synthesis of enough DNA, duplicated in sequence from an extant bacteriophage, to paste together into a full phage genome. So what? Chemical DNA synthesis (as opposed to enzymatic/biological) is old news and an everyday occurrance. If you wish (and have the money) you could order "oligos" (short stretches of DNA sequence) of ANY sequence and paste them together into an ever lengthening string.

I have pasted together 6 complementary pairs of DNA oligos, each 120 bases in length and designed to have "complementary" ends. First anneal the DNA together (Heat the single strand DNAs to ~95 C in a nice buffer, paired with their complement, and then cool to just below the melting temperature of the base-paired oligos for about 30 seconds to a minute). Next, you mix together the annealed oligo pairs and incubate at room temp (or 16 C for slower reaction) with the addition of ligase (enzyme that glues DNAs together, end-to-end) for about 1 hour (or 4hrs to overnight at 16 C). If properly designed, you end up (as I did) with a long DNA sequence made up of end-to-end glued-together DNAs. In my case, the DNA sequence encoded the gene for HIV integrase, the enzyme that HIV uses to insert itself into and infected individual's DNA. Totally synthetic. Big whup.

What would have been interesting? If I had designed oligos to encode a new protein or enzyme of my own design, unique in the world, that actually functioned at doing something. All I did was produce a copy of a DNA sequence that exists already in nature. You do the same thing when you PCR DNA, fer gawd's sake. The difference is PCR is much easier and faster (yet it requires the chemical synthesis of "artificial" DNA oligos for use as primers). Now extending what I just said to the Ventner virus (phage), he didn't do anything woundrous, he did something difficult and that's it. It is difficult (more a pain in the ass) to synthesis long oligos, anneal them, ligate/glue them together, and in enough volume, to have something to work with. In my personal case, the amount of artificial gene (I changed the way the gene encodes the amino acids that make up integrase so the actual DNA sequence was ~40% different from natural HIV integrase sequence) was miniscule after the above-mentioned process. So I made lots of it by doing a...PCR on it. Simple. The PCR takes a VERY few complete, full-length sequences and copies it into a LOT of copies. At 7500 basepair, this would also be very doable with the "artificial" phage genome. You make what turns out to be very few complete genomes in a mix of mishmash and use PCR to generate lots of the complete genome. Stock molecular biology.

Do you want to know what would have been REALLY newsworthy? If the phage produced was truly artificial. That is, if it was not merely an exact copy of an already extant phage but a new, never before existing phage. Truly "life" generated artificially. As it is, they just did a lot of common molecular biology to generate a short, complete genome for a phage and, low and behold, since it is identical to the natural phage, it reproduces. Expecting otherwise would be like thinking that somehow synthetic vitamin C is different than natural vitamin C (it isn't). The chemical bonds are identical, the actual molecules in it are not different in any way, etc. Same for this phage example.

I could do something simpler. I could cut and paste a bunch of HIV DNA sequences (different strains if you wish) together into a full-length HIV DNA genome, suspend it in a buffer with DMSO and have you apply it to the skin on the inner side of either arm. There is a good chance that this will result in you contracting an HIV infection. MAGIC! If I wanted to spend the time and money to generate all the DNA oligos needed, I could anneal and paste them together and generate an HIV genome (10,000 basepairs of DNA) identical to whatever strain I chose and it would be infectious. Big deal.

Re:Interesting thoughts...

[bottlerocket]

The question that first pops into my mind when people say, "God must exist, how else was the world created?" is "Who created god?"

Coming soon...artifical girlfriends; geeks rejoice

[GNUCyberKat]

And coming within the next 50 years...designer girlfiends for those geeks who cannot get a real one. Just code in your preferences and a mental picture that you are the hottest thing on the planet and awaaaaaaaay you go. Geekdom will never be the same again.

The only solution then.

[Derek Pomery]

Ban cocktail napkins!

patents

[OglinTatas]

The biological danger inherant in genetic engineering has not changed with this new milestone. The capability to engineer more virulent strains of pathogens is not enhanced by the ability to synthesize viable DNA chemically.

I think a major ramification of pure chemical synthesis of a living organism is in the area of patents.
GE has patented some modified microbes, and Monsanto (IIRC) has patented some genetically modified food lines. There are no doubt others.
But there is some question about whether living organisms can be patented at all, since so far it is 100% "prior art," and the companies in question are merely inserting one preexisting gene into the genetic code of another preexisting organism.
Then there is the question of derivative works, since these organisms are normally able to go about reproducing naturally, and even fertilizing non-modified organisms.

With a living organism that has been completely manufactured, there is no question about the origin, authorship or ownership if such a creation, and petent issues are somewhat simplified (not that they aren't a rubber stamp now).

Interestingly, there would still be the problem of derivative works. While this creation is a virus, microbes such as bacteria have plasmid DNA and non-chromosomal nuclear DNA, both of which are quite easily shared between microbes of the same, and even different species. (Bacteria reproduce asexually, but they share DNA during other phases of their life cycle. This is one of the reasons antibiotic resistance is so dangerous.)

Read the fine print

[mulescent]

So, Ventner is something of a cowboy celebrity, and has done some really cool stuff. However, this particular accomplishment has been overstated by USAToday. Near the end of the article they mention that the virus in question was an exact duplicate of an already existant one. In other words, no genes were designed or combined in new ways. The technical feat centers on stitching together such a long strand of DNA in the appropriate orientation, and then getting a bacterium to express it. Many people reacted as if someone had designed an organism from scratch, which Ventner's team did not do, although this is their stated goal. If you want something ethically horrifying to debate, try this wonderful piece of work, in which a researcher actually created a 100% lethal mousepox virus and intends to publish how he did it.

This isn't that big a deal

[RealProgrammer]

Not to belittle this research, which is amazing, but it isn't creating life, nor is it playing God.

They took DNA from something and combined it to make something else. That's not creating life; that's breeding.

Lemme know when they take dirt and make a man, or when they take a man's rib and make a woman.

That will be playing God.
--

Epideme virus

[Zapdos]

I wonder how far off is the Epideme virus from Red Dwarf Season 7 episode 7.

I find it interesting

[dtfinch]

That this biological virus is only 1250 bytes (5000 basepairs) while most of the email viruses I see are in excess of 100k.

Re:I find it interesting

[grimani]

This is a faulty comparison.

Each base pair can encapsulate a huge amount of information by virtue of its chemical properties. In other words, the virus DNA is only half of the picture; you have to look at the information encoded in whatever else it interacts with.

Take it to the extreme, and the email virus equivalent of this would be to wrap it's entire code into a system API call...which our virus simply calls.

So again, not a fair comparison.

Re:I find it interesting

[ketamine-bp]

I, for one, support the original poster on that. this is because the biological virus uses the cell machinary (ribosomes, phospholipids, etc.) of the host just as the email viruses use the system API calls (Windows API calls, scripting host, etc.)

It is length of the distinct sequence that allows things to be executed that matters.

However, it should be noted that there are many computer viruses that have lengths comparable, or less than the synthesized virus... and that the original author seems to be pretending to be funny...

Hooray!

[gilgongo]

> If any country had to be in possession of these
> things, it should be the US. You don't want it
> to be the US? Well, let's look at the
> alternatives:

You have just perfectly illustrated why a large part of the world's population hates America. If you find it odd that people should go out of their way to fly aeroplanes into the World Trade Centre, then think about what you have said - and then you'll understand!

Hooray! I'm mod this guy up! I'm *really* glad he posted!

Smallpox

[jonhuang]

Is sequenced and is on its way to being sequenced. This will probably be placed in the public domain too... Crap.

30,000 versus 60,000 mouse genes

[peter303]

Brute force sequencing of mouse genome finds about 30,000 mouse genes- the same as humans. However, bottom up DNA manufacture from proteins finds about 60,000 coding genes (cDNA). Not as simple as thought.

Re:30,000 versus 60,000 mouse genes

[MagnaMark]

Things are undoubtedly stranger than the original simple models.

Take the examples of alternate splicing of exons, or RNA editing.

Or, my favorite is in the immune system. The immune system must generate lymphocytes that can recognize the something like 10e14 different pathogens that we encounter. There are obviously not enough genes in our genome to individually code for these. So, our immune system shuffles and recombines thousands of "gene segments" to achieve this. This might explain it better.

All of these lead to more gene products than genes, if you use a simple definition of a gene.

I've been infected!!

[RedA$$edMonkey]

I've been infected by an artificial virus! Losing Controlll ... say, does anyone want to buy a penis enlarger or help me transfer $50 million dollars from Nigeria?

Tailored Virus

[gujju]

This is exactly what I am talking about in my post (#7474597) earlier. Instead of changing an existing virus, create a custom virus and have it do the job. Being a CS major, I haven't a clue how they would do it, but, I'll leave that up to the Biochemists etc...They need a job too ;)

Re:Interesting thoughts...

[Planesdragon]

Good point.

However, the current popular theorum about the universe's creation (Big Bang) has a simliar problem--how did the "metaverse" in which the Big Bang happen arise? What happened before the Big Bang?

Why not Do it on the moon?

[kalieaire]

I think if anyone was really worried about catastrophic release of deadly viral infections on the world, they should just move the labs to the moon or something. That way in an airless environment where it is constantly bombarded by UV radiation from the Sun, Any viral infection that leaves the airlocks of the facility would be erradicated, anyone infected and leaving the facility despeartely can be interecepted. If anyone from the moon facility gets infected, just nuke it and kill everything that's there. Isn't that real efficient? The Moon is pock marked enough as it is, no one else is gonna notice another zit being popped. ---sounds like a case of DOOM(TM), but on Earth's moon instead of Phobos.

Two weeks to build, and then...

[TheVidiot]

28 Days Later...

Didn't Microsoft Already Do This?

[Perlguy]

It's called Windows.

A low-probability scenario

[lysium]

There is a limiting factor on this kind of threat. You see, society takes pains to give power only to those who earn it -- either through intelligence, dilligence, cleverness, and what have you. For a 'mad scientist' to have access to the advanced equipment necessary to build DNA, he or she would need to pretend normalcy pretty damn well. The Unibomber was a brilliant and capable madman, but he was building letter-bombs primitive enough to be constructed in a mountain cabin.

The President of the United States might have the authority to launch a nuclear strike -- and how likely is it for a madman to be a pretend politician long enough to get elected? Similiarly, a wealthy industrialist has the resources to buy an island fortress and a private army to ransom the world, James Bond style.....why has it not happened yet?

==============

umm... no

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this news?

The title says "first artificial...", but the blurb says "...previous attempts had taken". Can we please have a logic consistency check?

So then the gist of the article becomes Craig Venter having gobs of money and equipment to throw at doing *exactly* the same thing as reported before, gobs of connections to use in making a huge hullabaloo about it, and an even larger head than I previously thought. And this is the guy that used his *own* DNA in a large (>$1bn) investor-funded human genome sequencing effort.

And the previous virus to be synthesized? That was friggin *polio*! And the polio genome is about 50% longer than phi-X174. So these guys did something which is technically easier than before, with a less dangerous virus, and somehow I'm supposed to be impressed? Oh yeah, the original effort for polio was widely derided (in my lab at least) as being incredibly derivative anyway: they used existing DNA synthesis technologies to make fragments of the genome (probably bought it from a company), and then use an existing technique (PCR) to assemble it. And it's not like assembling stuff with PCR is that innovative either: people have been doing it for years when they had a DNA sequence and wanted to randomly reshuffle it. So they cut the sequence up with enzymes and then run PCR on that mix, and call it "PCR recombination".

Besides which, this whole thing about "artificial", "from scratch", etc... is utter bullsh*t. All they've done is use synthetic chemistry to make short (100 basepair or less) segments and then use biological enzymes to assemble those fragments into the full length genome. And that genome is copied base-for-base from an existing virus. So they've just spend a huge amount of money and manpower to get in a few weeks what I can buy from Sigma and have here tomorrow. I'm, like, incredibly underwhelmed. And don't give me that crap about "arbitrary control over the sequence", yadayadaya. We're a long way off from designing our own viruses, especially of the phi-X174 ilk with coding sequences on both strands of the DNA double helix (think segments of machine code that still work when you shift the whole string by like 4 bits). So all we'd be doing anyway is either making small changes in existing viruses, or taking larger segments of different viruses and piecing them together. It's *all* doable, with much less work, using other molecular techniques.

(deep breath)
I feel better now. Now to do some real work...

I used to do this for a living

[Choco-man]

Used to be a molecular biologist/geneticist. Made all sorts of critters in the lab. What you are seeing as news today has been done in private industry and government for literally decades, only went unpublished. I tell you this scares the hell out of me. So much that I no longer am in that line of work, and now make chocolate for a living. Everything that was done in my trait and technology lab was for commercial agricultural purposes, but the methods used are clearly open to dual use, and the safety protocols in place in private industry (or lack thereof) are similiarly frightening. All the private facilities I was a part of didn't have their own dedicated waste water handling facilities or air scrubbers. Think of that for a moment. All waste water goes to the same public treatment facilties as does the material that flows from your house. Air vents and handling systems vent to ambient external conditions from laboratories. Material is autoclaved, however, some material is placed in sinks as a holding area prior to autoclaving. Of course none of the materials we worked on were weaponized , but the effects of releasing some of these materials into open uncontrolled environments are simply unknown. And if private industry was doing this 20 years ago for commercial purposes, think what obelinsk, lab 12, dietrick, and biopreparat have done (i'd certainly hope their environmental systems were more evolved than private industry...)

Any coders want to write a live virus?

[jmanning]

I think the point that most people are missing here, is this:
This test was able to create a viable virus from scratch, simply copying the existing pieces. What they created was merely a synthetic copy of an existing virus. They did not create a new virus, or anything harmful.

But, what if those pieces were modified before they were reassembled?

This is dangerous/powerful because you could write your own virus from scratch just like writing a computer virus. Take virulence from one virus, infection from another, write your own specificity rules (this is the scariest - only attack people with a certain genetic profile), add some harmful effects, and you've got something dangerous.

For terrorism, this could be big. Write a virus that causes genocide. Kill everyone with a certain genetic trait.

But this can also be used for good. Write a virus that delivers chemotherapy to cancer cells. Or infects AIDS patients with an anti-aids virus. Or an anti-bacterial agent for infections. You could add a built in self-destruct so it couldn't over-replicate.

From an ethics standpoint, I would compare it to nuclear energy. You could generate electricity for millions, or wipe out entire cities. The technology isn't inherently evil, but it needs lots of research and a great deal of control.

That's where the analogy fails though. It's hard to build a lab capable of building nuclear bombs. It's relatively easy to build a lab capable of synthesizing viruses.

Scary. Yet promising.

Re:Any coders want to write a live virus?

[pkhuong]

Or build a computer! I'm sure we'll see MEMS-based logic one of these days; what's stopping us from using cells to make them?

DoE

[ajs]

Your concerns are well placed (yeah, you misread a bit, but I'm not the nit-picker others are). However, you missed the biggest worry of all.

Guess what the DoE's primary job is...

Power? Nope. Um... "energy something"? Nope.

The DoE's biggest job is maintaining the U.S. nuclear stockpile. They're the ones who contract with companies like G.E. to build nukes.

So, with that bit of info in your head, go back and look at this and ask yourself: "what OTHER purpose could building an oganism be put to that the DoE might have an interest in, and which would make it a justified expense?"

Yeah, I'm worried too.

None. It's a bacteriophage.

[wirelessbuzzers]

The virus doesn't attack people. It attacks bacteria. You can't just jump species from a bacterium to a human. And it's based on an existing virus, so it's not like it's entirely new either...

Mitochondrial Viruses

[shadow_slicer]

Are there any mitochondrial viruses?

The way I would see a mitochondrial virus would be a capsule in a capsule virus.

Viruses consist of a protein coat, and DNA/RNA inside, that they inject into cells. A mitochondrial virus might consist of a protein outer coating that injects a protein-coated DNA section, that could then infect the mitochondria.

I can't say I've ever heard of any, but since mitochondria are more genetically between species than even cells are, could a mitochondrial virus be engineered to destroy all life on earth? (or do I not need to worry about this...)

Re:Mitochondrial Viruses

[jdavidb]

Fascinating questions.

I don't really know what mitochondrial DNA does. Cellular DNA is used to build proteins; the nucleus is more or less a protein factory (more complicated than that; I think it's a little machine shop that builds proteins and then builds little machines out of them; can't remember much, though). I'm not sure if mitochondria ever manufacture proteins or not.

The viruses basically take over the construction machinery of the cell and provide a new "template" (their DNA) for the protein making process, which results in building new viruses. I don't know if a similar process exists to hijack in mitochondria or not.

Re:Mitochondrial Viruses

[pkhuong]

It's been a while since i covered this in bio, but here's what i remember. Mitochondria actually replicate by themselves in our cells. They would therefore have all the machinery needed to replicate mitochondria (and thus proteins, membranes, et, ie a basic living cell), or virus.

The nucleus is only the part where DNA is stored in eukaryotes, and transcripted in RNA; all the translation into a polypeptide is made in the cytosol (inside the cell, but outside any organelle), by ribosomes. Mitochondria, eukaryotes and prokaryotes (OK, so mitochondria might be prokaryotes :) have these ribosomes, and they all obey the same encoding, afaik (very surprising, yes).

I can see a few problems with mitochondrial virus. The zone between the two membranes of mitochondria is very acid (relatively); there ARE two more membranes to go through before getting inside it; there are just as many membranes to go through to disperse and infect, making infecting mitochondria in a single cell this pretty hard, let alone other cells. So, i guess it might work with a virus that isn't too virulent. If it infected an egg cell, it would get an incredible free ride, though :) Spread through whole organisms for generations, while only having to infect, go through the immune system, etc of a single cell.

Keep in mind, IANAB(b=biologist; i'm just a student, and bio isn't my major or anything).

But still a first...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The first reproducing artificial virus was the Polio virus by Wimmer and colleagues.

Ventner's new virus is artificial in the sense that it was created from chemicals- but it is identical to a known natural virus.

Unfortunately, Wimmer et. al.'s polio virus was a defective copy.

What Ventner's group did was construct a fully-functional instance of a known virus from only data and raw materials.

This is a first. It proves that the technology to construct a lifeform from the genetic code is in place. It also proves that (at least in this virus' case) there's no undiscovered mechanism necessary for its life.

Next Related Story

[use_compress]

First Instance of Reproducing Male Slashdot Reader

Favorite quote

[bobdotorg]

One researcher, who would speak only on the condition on anonymity, stated, "Well, even we were a bit surprised that Windows XP and Outlook are susceptible to this new virus. I mean, here we were drinking our morning coffee and we started to get all of these emails from bacteriophages about movie reviews and what not. It was unrelenting, and we didn't have a Petri dish version of Norton, so we just had to endure it until some intern Lysol'ed the whole operation."

need to see the data

[bikerguy99]

Let's wait for the paper to come out before we make any conclusions. Craig Venter's commertial interests and huge ego are well known - he has announced "completing" human, mouse and now dog genomes which is far from being complete. And find a diff mod to deal with molecular biology and genomics/genetics and such - reading idiotic statements marked as insightful makes slashdot look like FOX news.

Patent question

[El]

Can they now patent this virus, or does God's work count as prior art?

Oh the irony!

[FallLine]

Get educated, before its too late...

You were saying...?

ITS = the possessive form of the pronoun "it"

IT'S = the contraction of "it" and "is"

If you are going to split linguistic hairs here, then do yourself a favor and make sure that you are actually a competent user of the written language while you are chiding others.

Welcome to Slashdot

[Sir Brialliance]

Welcome to Slashdot, where you can insult lawyers on one story, and on another story give out Lawyer-style advice. :-)

i hope...

[thegnu]

...it infects our genitals. that's the best kind of virus.

first self-replicating virus

[eegad]

while(1) {
fork();
}

The beginning of the apocalypse

[popo]

..will most likely sound like this: "Oops..."

Re:Interesting thoughts...

[TheCrazyFinn]

Considering the popularity of Vin Diesel amongst the female set, you don't have a point.

Fascinating but spooky

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it virulent, i.e. dangerous? How easy would it be to create a new virus that could kill body cells? The times they are a' changin.

Fear may be inappropriate say "legitimate concern"

[sam_handelman]

Note: I do not favor censorship of scientific research in any sense, case or circumstance. The actions of.... it was the NSF, wasn't it?... anyway, the movement towards "self-censorship" in potentially dangerous biology research is counterproductive as well as spineless. A previous poster made an excellent analogy to closed source computer security - hiding your head in the sand will not protect you.

I'm doing computational biology right now, but I was a practicing biochemist in the past (I am the author of the root of this thread.)

If I wanted ebola, I could not get it. Well, *I* probably could if I had a legitimate reason to want some, but most people can't.

The possibility that, in 20 years time, you could mail order a kit that would enable you to make ebola (you'd need to do some cute cell biology to make the stuff actually infect your cell culture, it is true) "from scratch" is a legitimate cause for concern. Is this critically more dangerous than what you could do with late 1980s techniques? Maybe not. But, perhaps the societal or organizational structures (or dumb luck) which have prevented existing techniques from being widely used to make bioweapons might not apply to this new technology. Who can say? I'm concerned about the prospect, certainly. Does this mean I'm opposed to the research or favor censorship? NO NO NO NO. No some more. But, it is a possibility of which we should be aware.

C++... no, more like...

[HiggsBison]

Now we all have to learn "bianary" DNA language [just 4 letters, 2 combos, a helix, and a final 3D shape...it's actually simpler than most C++ programs]!

In genetic code there are a bunch of exceptions to every rule. There are rare 3rd and 4th combos, at least 3 forms of helix as well as metahelix forms.

Anyhow, I think it's more like Perl. :-)

Re:IRAQ soon cleaned from USA faggot troops

[gantrep]

I think the Iraqis would rather live under no rule of terror, neither Saddam's nor the US's, but rather under their own government.

Eastern hemisphere??

[Quizo69]

I'm not normally pedantic about this sort of thing, but common convention has it that it's either the Northern or Southern hemisphere.

The reasons for this are varied, but among them - weather patterns are aligned this way, we have a North and South pole (no East or West Pole I know of unless you are referring to Polish people) and the lines of longitude are all of equal length, while latitudes vary, giving rise to a top and bottom so to speak.

This Eastern/Western hemisphere crap (whilst technically correct in a strict physics sense, and only if you use the Greenwich Line as the middle) is one which has its origins firmly in the United States, which obviously felt that the propaganda value of having themselves in the "Westernest" hemisphere (thanks Simpsons) outweighed international convention on these sorts of things.

OK, that said, nothing detracts from your post itself which is correctly marked IMHO as Insightful. I just felt the need to clarify an error I see being used more each day.

Quizo69

Re:Hiroshima and Nagasaki Were Best Option Availab

[jrumney]

I recommend YOU spend more time studying history, from a non-American point of view. All countries slant their history lessons, the only way to get an unbiased education is to see both sides, and the point of view of neutral parties.

As to why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen, they were chosen because of their vastly different geography, so the nuclear bomb could be tested in real circumstances. The Americans had to act quickly, as they knew that Japanese surrender was inevitable, and they wanted to demonstrate their military superiority to the world. When cloud cover obscured the target in Kokura, rather than wait for more favorable weather they diverted to Nagasaki, which has similar hilly terrain, so would offer the same conditions for their test.

correction

[PsiPsiStar]

The above post should read;

The traits we're discussing help us, The traits we're discussing help us, not the life forms that will be altered.

IANAFAS, but ...

[Dlugar]

Doesn't "ana moya" mean "I am water"? "Moyati" would mean "my water". Just curious.

Dlugar

Re:IANAFAS, but ...

[ammie]

I dont think so...While *in* Saudi, I had a lot of contact with the local contractors. "Ana moya" was explained to me as "my water". (Forgive my spelling here, but everything I learned was verbal)
I believe the phrase "Ana ibatha moya" was "I want water" and "Anta ibatha moya" was a question..."Do you want water?"
I could be mis-informed on this, if you have more background than I...then, well, I suppose you win this one! I may stand corrected on this one...

yes-n-no

[mabhatter654]

The evolution of computer programming is heading into a DNA-like form. Computer programming is evolving into reusable modules and cross platform operation. It's only a matter of time, maybe even already for something like legacy Cobol, before the complexity of software systems is akin to studying DNA.

The state of DNA research like described in the article are bringing DNA complexity down into the relm of highest end computer sci...and the comp sci guys are more agressive and flexible than biologists in adapting to new changes. They actively seek them out. As this moves down the food chain, you'll see more software start to immitate life.

Re:Hiroshima and Nagasaki Were Best Option Availab

[KnarfO]

What a load of horse crap!

We didn't want to wait because people were dying every day the war dragged on. Who was your history teacher, Osama Bin Laden?

i snd you this file in order to have your advice

[B3ryllium]

Er, your sig gets cut off. "Will work for" what? :)

010011010110010100101100001000000100100100100000 01 11011101101001011011000110110000100000011101110110 11110111001001101011001000000110011001101111011100 10001000000010010000110010001100000010111101101000 01110010001011100010000001000011011000010110111001 10000101100100011010010110000101101110001011100010 00000100100101110100001001110111001100100000011000 01001000000110110101101001011100100110000101100011 01101100011001010010000001001001001001110110110100 10000001101110011011110111010000100000011000010010 00000110011001110101011011000110110001110100011010 01011011010110010100100000011001010110110101110000 01101100011011110111100101100101011001010010111000 10000001000100011000010111001001101110001000000110 00110110111101101100011011000110010101100111011001 01001000000110011101100101011101000111010001101001 01101110011001110010000001101001011011100010000001 11010001101000011001010010000001110111011000010111 100100101110