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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."
This make anyone else think of Stephen King's The Stand ?
That said, I think the dangers of this are exaggerated. No doubt it would be a catastrophe if it were to escape the lab, but life is a lot more resilient than it is usually given credit for. 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.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
Writing from Boulder, the average house here is $483,000. Things are really different than when King lived here. Of course, when the population dies off, you can move in anywhere. My house is pretty nice, with a view of the mountains, a couple of NeXTs and SparcStations, and 3Mb braodband.
"The Stand" was the first thing that I thought of upon seeing the article, too.
Right now, the world could be dying off around me, and I wouldn't know it for weeks. Why? Because I live in the world of ONS-Torlan in UnrealTournament2004, on Linux, OS X and Win32. mmmmm, raptors.....
The tendency of the human race to both improve it's awareness of the world while at the same time endangering itself has been the cause of grief and happiness.
This though, seems to be of little benefit to anyone, unless it guarantees a cure for the common cold!
sorry but the USSR plan was nukes and a "virus cocktail". They would hit major cites with nukes and lay waste there, however the fields that made crops had to be saved (we ship most of the grain they live on to them). They planned to release biological weapons on the great plains, not just a little problem stuff but things like anthraz and small pox or malaria and eboloa. By mixing the virus it becomes harder to trace what antibody the hospital needs, and the next year they can vacinate some people against what was spread in the area to allow farming to resume, 2 winters later the dieases would have died.
I'm told you are what you eat, does that mean I can be you by tomorrow with some A1?
It's only a matter of time, perhaps 10 or 20 years, until a grad student or third world scientist will be able to easily engineer his own deadly plague virus.
Human nature is not going to change. We are petty and short sighted, driven by emotion. These things WILL be made, eventually. It is likely sooner or later something really bad will get loose.
I am afraid for the whole Human Race. How do we prepare for this or prevent this?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I've read that human evolution has stopped, because modern medicine has eliminated most of the diseases that cause death prior to being mature enough to reproduce.
If one of these superviruses was released, could it be viewed as a way of pushing along evolution, since only those strong enough and with the genetics to survive the virus would live to reproduce?
Good Idea: Studying naturally occuring flu viruses to learn how to prevent future pandemic outbreaks.
Bad Idea: Deliberately creating new versions of the flu, to learn how to prevent future outbreaks.
The frightening thought is that they aren't using the highest grade of quarantine level. I suppose though, when it does get out, they'll know how they made it, and theoretically, also how to fight it. At least until it mutates naturally.
Here's a great read on the 1918 Flu outbreak:
7 43 203984/qid=1077900610//ref=pd_ka_1/103-9029329-360 3017?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Flu : The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic by Gina Kolata.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
The book covers much of the 1918 outbreak. It also details recent effort by two teams to exhume 1918 flu victims from permafrost to study the 1918 flu virus. IIRC, the conclusion was that today's flu is genetically similar to the 1918 strain, but that it doesn't have the same epidemic effect today since 1918 survivors passed on the genetics to fight this strain. In other words, those humans that were genetically susceptible to the 1918 flu strain have all died off.
Nearly all books are published by corporations, too, so I guess we can't respect them, either.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
IANAS, but if I recall correctly, the problem with biological agents like virii are that it's very difficult to create a highly contagious, high-mortality virus. Virii need a living host to reproduce, mutate, and pass on their modified genes to the descendants. Airborne virii need to be extremely hardy to survive outside their ideal breeding conditions (read: human host). And a virus that is so virulent it kills its host almost immediately won't live for very many more generations -- it's an unsuccessful mutation.
That being said, it's still possible to balance all the factors so you have a fairly lethal virus, relatively contagious, that mutates quickly and successfully. It's just not as likely to end up as a Captain Tripps, or even an Ebola.
Toxins, on the other hand, are better for short-term, near-instantaneous death, and are more likely to be "controllable" through judicious application. Again, there are contraindications such as method of application, weather, &tc. that would warrant not using them.
The various death merchants will keep experimenting anyway, but it's nice to know that we're far more likely to be wiped out as a species by a giant asteroid than from a little critter built in a lab.
But Nature also seems to be good at counter-balancing its viruses so that they don't wipe out everything (thus ending up killing the virus as well - it needs something to spread to).
For example many of the most deadly viruses which you have practically no chance of surviving such as Ebola are not airborne. Syphilis used to be much more deadly but gradually evolved into a less potent form.
Also you forget that a lot of the diseases we survive (as in the population in general not individual people) because people gradually develop immunity to them especially due to proximity to animals. For example smallpox. For examples of what happens when people are suddenly exposed to diseases just look at aboriginal populations like the Australian Aborigines, the South American or North American Indians.
So a man-made virus:
(1) While a natural virus's main aim is to survive and hence not kill everything in sight, thus either is either difficult to spread (anything that doesn't involve airbourne or a simple touch) or is simply not instantly deadly, a man-made virus does not need to fill this condition and thus can be both deadly and easy to spread. In fact these are the sort of mutations they are working on in the experiments.
(2) The virus escapes suddenly into a population which has none or practically no immunity to it.
So a man-made virus could very well be something that nature has never produced and is not likely to produce - a virus as deadly as Ebola (99% death rate), as easy to spread as the cold (airbourne and touch) released suddenly into a population which has even less immunity to it than the American Indians to smallpox.