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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."
Wasn't there a movie about this very topic not too long ago?...hmm...I believe it was dubbed Mission Impossible 2.
Point being, haven't we learned any lessons from the movies?!
Create super virus - (and hopefully the corresponding vaccine).
Sell super virus to terrorists - (and act like it got stolen).
Keep vaccine to sell to public when 'Outbreak' occurs (another good movie).
I hope someone can understand the devastation that could arise should this truly happen!
But, if 'Outbreak' does occur or 'Mission Impossible 2' then I'm getting out of the city and heading to the hills!
From the article:
In 2001, for instance, Australian researchers created a mousepox virus far more virulent than any wild strains. This scenario is unlikely, but not impossible, says virologist Earl Brown of the University of Ottawa, Canada.
"You could create something that is right out of whack, but I'd be surprised."
Mousepox virus. Is it good or is it whack?
Looks like this researcher has been reading a little bit too much slashdot.
Casual Games/Downloads
First news item about Cap'n Trips I've seen in a while anyway.
I'd better start looking for real estate in either Boulder or Las Vegas. Not sure yet.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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
Quickly, someone call Hollywood! Only Tom Cruise can save us now.
We've been in a position for years where a massive failure at any number of nuclear or biological research facilities could effectively kill us all.
so they've added one more to the list.
It's the sort of thing you get used to.
lysergically yours
Sounds like a superhero name. "What's wrong with that guy? It's mono! It's a cold! It's....SUPERFLU!"
Please take a number to administer beatings.
...
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.
Yet another post by someone who didn't click-thru to the article
Magic Eight Ball: Outlook not so good., Hmmm, how about Excel and Word?
My kid's daycare has a pretty good batch going at all times...
Only Tom Cruise can save us?
We're all doomed!
Heads for the nearing sporting goods department and sets up home in a nearby supermarket
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
Isn't that a bit superfluous?
Oh snap, oooooh snap! Score one for the big I!
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
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?
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.
Mainly because he's one of the few that lives in Steven King's "The Stand".
The part of the Walking Dude should be played by Darl McBride =]
End of Line.
1. Create ubervirus
2. Create vaccine for said ubervirus
3. ????
4. Profit!
sorry about that...
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.
I'm from up north, but I'll give it a try:
"Ootbreark."
"Owwwwootbreeark."
Nope, sorry.
...
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
Sounds not unlike a certain 70s novel I read once. Maybe the survivors of said flu can battle out the final war of good vs. evil! Post apocalyptic society here I come! -Runz
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.
Interesting article with Superflu mathematical modeling information:
s _1 2_22_03.html
http://www.maa.org/editorial/mathgames/mathgame
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!!!!
So, would you go out with me if I was the last man alive???
Yes? Hmmmmmmm....
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.
It was to be dubbed Superflu-US, but then it was decided they didn't need it after all..
-dameron
The folks at Symantec will take care of it. Actually, I suppose getting a flu shot is conceptually the same as doing a "liveupdate" -- it just hurts more.
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.
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.
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.
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.
All science and research should be stopped for fear of the off chance that something out of a crappy checkout-line novel will occur.
Have Stephen King books taught us nothing?
Blaze a trail to the New World
Never a dude like this one!
He's got a plan
to stick it to the man!
Oh... Superfl u
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.
Now we're fucked.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Basically the 1918 pandemeic of Spanish Flu was the reason WWI ended. No one was able to fight.
When Superflu is brewed in the lab, he will fight crime while driving around in a cadilac convertible.
And he'll get all the chicks.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's only a matter of time before conspiracy theories pop up on this, or at least include this in their current theories. Or rather, pull the I-told-you-so card.
This sig no verb.
The price of housing in Boulder, Colorado is going up cause of this...
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Demon in the Freezer and The Bioweaponeers, both by Richard Preston. The bioweaponeers - which talks about bioweapons research in the former USSR - is particularly terrifying.
Malaria = bacterium (plasmodium faciparum sp.
IIRC that's a protozoan, not a bacterium.
But it's not a virus either, so your point stands.
The best biological weapons are the ones that act fast and have cures. You want your own troops to be immune while the disease incapacitates the enemy.
The best biological weapons are non-lethal. They make the enemy so sick they can't fight, while your healthy troops move in and sieze power, set up friendly governments, etc. After the New Boss(tm) is firmly in place, everyone gets well (except for a few infants, elderly and immunocompromised folk -- casualties of war) and there's no bad press. War without massive casualties, without destruction of property/infrastructure, but with the same result, i.e. friendly government installed.
Yeah, the conspiracy theorists' favorite diseases (HIV, Ebola, CJD) are lousy choices for germ warfare agents. They're too slow and too lethal, and they don't have cures.
Influenza is actually a very good choice for a biological warfare agent. It acts fast, it's rapidly and easily transmitted, there are vaccines available, and it's usually non-lethal.
> 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.
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