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Superflu Being Brewed in the Lab
Genial Generalist writes "Superflu is being brewed in the lab, an article by Michael Le Page, describes some of the ongoing efforts to genetically modify the different strains of flu, specifically CDC modification of bird flu for the purpose of developing new vaccines."
Interesting article with Superflu mathematical modeling information:
s _1 2_22_03.html
http://www.maa.org/editorial/mathgames/mathgame
The 1918 flu pandemic killed 30 or 40 million in a season.
Regular Joe flus kill a few million worldwide every year.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Avian flu, however, would likely kill the egg--Dead Eggs Produce No Antibodies, i.e. no vaccine. Luckily, it's more difficult for avian flu to make the species jump to humans in a virulent form, but the WHO, CDC, and other groups are scared to death some bird flu is going to figure this out soon and we'll be helpless in front of it. It's 1918 all over again.
Don't get to cranky about these folks looking at ways to culture flu virii in something other than chickens--they're looking for answers.
blarg.
Everything I've read puts 20 million as the low number. Given the lack of statistics from third world countries, I'd think 20 million is way low.
An excerpt from the book Flu by (Gina Kolata) about the pandemic puts the number between 20 - 100 million.
My grandfather came down with the 1918 flu with his entire Army unit just before they shipped out to France. 2/3 of the unit died. These were young men at the peak of physical condition, but living in very close quarters. Most died literally overnight. He was hospitalized for a month, and fortunately, missed the war. And by the way, it was called "Spanish Flu". Most of the /. crowd is too damn young to remember the major pandemics of the 20th century (Spanish Flu, Polio, TB). Viruses can and will kill a hell of a lot of people in a hurry. Any nice theory to the opposite is obviously developed by people who failed to sudy or remember history. So far we've been damn lucky in the last 30 years. While I'm sure our luck will run out some time, deliberately coming up with an agent that will ENSURE megadeaths is the height of arrogance and stupidity.
Needless to say, this knowledge would be incredibly valuable. And, yes, dangerous in the wrong hands -- but the genes which allow human infection in bird flu may not be, and in fact are probably not, the same genes which allow human infection in other viruses.
Dance like nobody's watching. Sing like you're in the shower. Fuck like you're being filmed.
Ok, I call bullshit. First of all, your supposed 'virus cocktail' would be composed of viruses, right? Anthrax = bacterium (bacillus anthracis sp.) Malaria = bacterium (plasmodium faciparum sp.) Ebola makes a very poor choice for a biological weapon, because after all the point of biological weapons isn't to kill, but to incapacitate and by so doing take another 4-5 soldiers out of the fight because they're needed to take care of the infected. You'd also need to find a way of keeping the Ebola from infecting your own people as well. Malaria makes a poor choice as well, mostly because you'd have to train the mosquitoes to attack the right soldiers as well! (malaria can't be spread from human to human contact) Of those you mentioned, only anthrax makes a good battlefield weapon, mostly because it can't infect human-to-human (you need to breathe in the spores, or come into contact with viable spores through an open wound, etc.) As far as 'antibodies' go, scientists are quite able to identify these diseases quickly with the use of a laboratory. A great book on this is "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/038 5334966/qid=1077901428/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-93670 52-8776105?v=glance&s=books"
written by a guy who actually RAN part of the former soviet's program to manufacture biological weapons.
"But I don't think the dangers are exaggerated."
I had my grandmother tell me her account of living through that epidemic. She lost two brothers then.
The symptoms werent pretty, and everyone was paranoid... even in the rural area she lived in, every family lost members.
I was totally creeped out by the details.
And people were much more community oriented back then... I can only imagine what would happen if such an epidemic occured today in individualistic North America...
> to create models of virii and their effects on
> cells.
Not even close! You can only simulate something on a computer that has a model in the first place. That's what this research is about in the first place. Computers do not create models. Computers are driven by models. Humans create those models that drive computers. Humans create those models by validating hypothetical, human-contrived, models against empirical observation (such as come from creating pathological viruses and seeing how deadly they are). Models only predict when they are validated empirically and are only improved by empirically comparison: reality is the only truth.
There are no sufficiently accurate cell or virus models in existence that could begin to realistic assess if a virus can or can not be pathogenic from first-principles (DNA mutations, etc.). Trusting models that exist today to human lives is nearly as dangerous as playing with a pathogenic virus as described in the article. That's how crude they are! It will be decades before sufficiently better models exist. It will only be through these types of experiments that such a model could ever exist.
Currently biologist have the raw data for genomics (DNA sequences) based on the DNA a handful of people out of 5 billion(!), but the actual biological implications of a model aren't simply defined by genomics. The next layer is proteomics (how proteins from some arbitrary source mRNA are created, folded and embued with biological activity), and then the next layer, the total black hole of the hour: enzyme and metabolic "circuits" in N-space. Most of the knowledge of proteomics and enzyme pathways is utterly primitive at best. Actually predicting phenomena theoretically from first principles (which is what you are suggesting can be done in lieu of empirical testing) is utterly impossible now and probably will remain so for many decades to come in the best case scenario.
To put this in perspective: imagine you are a 19th century scientist or engineer with fresh knowledge of Maxwell's and Newton, but no concept of Quantum Mechanics (1920s) or Linear Circuit Theory (1930s) or Semiconductor Physics (1940s) or Computer Design (1950s) or Integrated Circuits (1960s) or Microprocessors (1970s) or OO Software Design (1980s) or the Web (1990s).
Now imagine someone says tells: "Hey you (Mr. 19th Century), you can predict how this Athlon microprocessor can be used by two people on opposite sides of the world to communicate instantly over a network, just based on what you know now and extrapolating from first principles..." You might have an inkling that it might somehow be possible given telegraphy and telephones at the time, but whatever you came up with would never predict spam, porn, identify theft or other pathological/pathogenic outcomes.
Right now, molecular biology is at a similar point to where electronic/electric technology was in the late 19th century. Most stuff is done empirically. Biological procedure is a craft and art as much as a science and process. Theories and systematic procedures exist but they tend to be valid "one-off" only. Automation in biology is almost out of the 18th century rather than the 21st century.
There is an ethical question certainly, but it's not black-and-white, and computers can not be substituted for taking certain risks. The only question is one of risk-assessment and of ethics given those risks.