Superflu Being Brewed in the Lab

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Superflu Being Brewed in the Lab

Posted by michael on Friday February 27, 2004 @04:09AM from the 1-6-million-dead-and-pass-to-your-left dept.

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."

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Dangerous research? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-27 04:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

Some say that this sort of research is dangerous because of the risk of the virus escaping or being using in bioterrorism, and others that it's good science.

Refusing to perform research does not preclude others from doing the same for evil purposes.
1. Re:Dangerous research? by LearnToSpell · 2004-02-27 05:10 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  No, but "they" don't have as much money as "we" do. This stuff isn't something you just cook up in your garage. It's like the weaponized anthrax - there are only a couple of countries that have produced it. All those envelopes flying around the post office and Congress weren't from Iraq.
  
  Having said that, I agree with this poast.
  
  --
  Haida Manga
Re:Good morning, Captain by JasonMaggini · 2004-02-27 04:18 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'd stick to Boulder. Vegas didn't end up too well after Mother Abigail's gang got there...
Is it worth it? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-27 04:20 · Score: 4, Insightful

Are the benefits of such a vacine really worth the chance of the virus excaping and causing an epidemic?

I'm not saying it isn't, just a point to ponder.
1. Re:Is it worth it? by stevesliva · 2004-02-27 04:29 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It's potentially dangerous! Ban it!
  Forget that it's worthwhile research that may save millions of lives. We've already killed promising stem cell research in this country with Bush's stupid executive order. In the future we may be buying our Parkinson's treatments from South Korea...
  
  --
  Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
2. Re:Is it worth it? by Rostin · 2004-02-27 04:55 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  The argument about stem cell research wasn't that it was "potentially dangerous." Bush and many others consider it be immoral. There's a difference. Worthwhile research that could save millions of lives could be performed on (for example) the prison population, but I don't hear many people clamoring for that.
How about 100 million? 200 million? by kcurtis · 2004-02-27 04:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

The 1918 pandemic killed 30-40 million, about half of them otherwise healthy adults (as opposed to most flu's, which affect mostly the young and old).

Given that the world population has more than tripled since then, and given the increases in world travel, a death toll of over 100 million would not be unlikely for a similar flu. I wouldn't be surprised if it went higher (with a similar strain to the 1918 flu).

I heard on NPR a week or two ago, from an author who wrote about the 1918 pandemic, that in one instance a man boarded a trolley. Before the trolley got to the end of the line, the conductor and several passengers were dead.

As far as the benefit outweighing the dangers, I agree. But I don't think the dangers are exaggerated.
1. Re:How about 100 million? 200 million? by javatips · 2004-02-27 04:37 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I heard on NPR a week or two ago, from an author who wrote about the 1918 pandemic, that in one instance a man boarded a trolley. Before the trolley got to the end of the line, the conductor and several passengers were dead.
  
  How long was the journey in the trolley? I doubt it was long enought to cover the incubation period. So the people on the trolley were probably already sick and in an advance state of the infection.
  
  If a virus has a short incubation period and is very virulent (you die quickly) the less likely it will affect a large proportion of people.
  
  The more successfull virus are the one will long incubation period, take the virus that case AIDS for example.
2. Re:How about 100 million? 200 million? by Gr8Apes · 2004-02-27 05:09 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Umm, that would only hold true in the industrialized world, and then only portions of it. Other portions of the world would be slammed hard, especially those more overcrowded in the third world, where sanitation and overcrowding would cause a 1918 type plague to sweep through the population with extreme rapidity.
  
  --
  The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Nature's better at this than we are by stratjakt · 2004-02-27 04:24 · Score: 5, Insightful

Movies generate a lot of fear of science, from the nuclear boogeyman who manifested as Attack of the 100 foot [animal] in the 50s and 60s, to the recent batch of nano-germ-megaflu series of movies, like 12 Monkeys, Outbreak, the Andromeda Strain, the Stand, etc..

Fact is, noone brews up a killer virus like Mother Nature. There are thousands of strains of the flu, many fatal to a percentage of their victims.. HIV, Ebola, Smallpox, Anthrax, etc.. Lots of nasty shit out there. There's fecal coliforms on your toothbrush! Eww, I saw it on Mythbusters.

Anyways, humanity survives. We survived the plague, we'll survive AIDS, we'll survive whatever Professor Peabody and his mad, mad test tubes come up with.

After all, we don't know enough to cure the common cold, how could we know enough to create the perfect virus?

--
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
1. Re:Nature's better at this than we are by lowe0 · 2004-02-27 04:32 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Lemme put it this way: it took centuries for us to develop rockets to go to space, but we had bullets figured out real quick....
  
  Humanity is very good at coming up with clever methods of killing ourselves and everything around us. Actually doing something to improve the world is a distant second.
2. Re:Nature's better at this than we are by Darken_Everseek · 2004-02-27 04:33 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  That's the problem; we don't know how to create the perfect virus. If we did, we could avoid doing so. I have great faith in human stupidity; we'll stumble across something nasty, even if we do so unintentionally.
  
  If a script kiddie can create a virus that infects millions of computers, a team of trained biologists can certainly create a virus that can infect millions of humans.
3. Re:Nature's better at this than we are by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-27 05:03 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Just remember -- the rocket was originally just a new kind of bullet.
Re:old news ... by aacool · 2004-02-27 04:37 · Score: 3, Insightful

Please cite references - dont believe everything you read in pulp novels. Then again, don't assume that the USSR had exclusive rights on bio-warfare.
Re:Bosh by Nurseman · 2004-02-27 04:46 · Score: 4, Insightful

Creating "a virus that could kill tens of millions if it got out of the lab" is a catchy line in an article (or a cheesy plot for a movie), but there is absolutely no basis for it. I think any benefit that comes from this sort of research far outweighs the hypothetical dangers.
If you really want to be scared, read this TRUE account of a near outbreak of The Ebola Virus in Reston Virgina. This book is called The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. When you realize how easily viruses ar spread in hospitals, and labs you should be terrified. Superbugs/Superflus/SARS these are the real dangers to mankinds future.

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