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Our Man In Black
bot writes "A recent Slate article covers the onerous responsibilites of the Planetary Protection Officer. He is tasked with preventing contamination of earth by alien organisms, and 'forward contamination' (contamination of other planets with earth germs). There is also a published protocol (PDF link) for avoiding Martian bugs."
That would be the job to have, if only for the right to list "Planetary Protection Office" on your resume.
...
...it's too late! The ailiens are already here! See?! They left this mark on me! I must do their bidding...
The Cheese Stands Alone.
First I find out that being a spy isn't all about gadgets and women. Then I find out being an archaeologist isn't all about running from traps and nazis'. Now I find out that protecting the earth from alien life forms doesn't involve talking to alien dogs and bug guns.
WHY DO YOU LIE TO ME, HOLLYWOOD!!!
*sob*
What better way to pick up chicks than "It is my civil duty to protect you from alien lifeforms."
"protocol for avoiding Martian bugs"?!?
Didn't NASA just spend a couple hundred million bucks trying to *FIND* Martian Bugs? Crap, when a few ice crystals were found, JPL wet itself. Had we found an actual bug, who knows what kind of party would have been thrown?
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
"Rummel has two primary tasks: to ensure that outbound spacecraft aren't contaminated with biological material from Earth "
Humans are biological material. So much for the manned mission to Mars.
I don't think you quite get the jist of his job. Say a probe lands on Mars and brings back some rock samples to Earth. Unfortunately, the probe stepped in something nasty, and brought back Mars Anthrax as well.
In addition, some benign fungus got attached to the probe just before we packed it up and sent it to mars. Unfortunately, the fungus is not so benign to the Martian plant life and wiped out entire ecosystems there.
1. No, bathing probes in radiation is not enough to sterilize them, unfortunately. 2. NASA's planning on sending back samples from space and from the surface of Mars. Better have a protocol and procedure by then! Pay some now, pay much more later.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
This is #17 in The worst jobs in science list.
Imagine what he's got to do to get fired from such a position.
I would feel bad for this guy whenever he gets stopped by a cop......
Cop: Are you are aware you were doing 45 in a 40 - zone?
The NASA guy: ummm. no, but if you say so...
Cop: Where were you going ?
The NASA guy: home - I'm going home from work
Cop: So, where do you work?
The NASA guy: I'm the planetary protection officer - it's my job to protect the earth from interplanetary biologicals and contamination
Cop: OK buddy, we're going downtown....
OK, IANAE but here goes.
The chance of an alien microbe getting a toehold on Earth is pretty much zero. Most every niche is filled by a lifeform that has four billion years worth of ancestors that didn't die before they breed.
Too optimistic, not based on actual experience.
Examples: fragmities, cane toad, zebra mussel, weird and untreatable hospital infections. West Nile Virus.
Actually, being highly tuned to a particular ecological niche doesn't protect an organism from anything but incremental changes in local fauna or flora. In point of fact, alien organisms (in the sense of from different ecological systems), if they can survive often end up growing explosively.
Why? pertty much everything in a mature ecology is food for something else. Animals on the top of the food chain are food for microbes. Usually microbes aren't a limiting factor in an undisturbed ecosystem because these animals also usually have evolved a conservative reproductive strategy: modest litters at infrequent places. WHich is what makes top level predators easy to endanger.
However, if you take an critter from the middle of the deck, or worse yet the bottom, their strategy tends to be predation limited or resource (therefore competition limited) or both, not reproductively limited. They are also limited by specific competitive defenses evolved by cohabitors of their particular niche. Which is why you don't see only one kind of critter or one kind of plant occupying a niche exclusively (which by your logic should be the norm), but usually there are many varieties predators, grazers, trees whatever, although one may be predominant. For example in the woods near my house there is both hickory and sumac, although they have overlapping niches.
The problem with an alien organism is that if it is naturally resource limited rather than reproductively limited, and has resoruces to exploit in its new home, there will be no factor checking its growth until it consumes all of the available resources.
I happen to work in the public health field, although I am not an epidemiolgist. We often remark that the unprecedently huge population of the human race is a microbe's bangquet. Space microbes do not concern me unduly, and the steps being taken by NASA seem prudent and sufficient. However we DO face potential threat from "alien" microbes that are released by ecological disruption. There are cases of permanent benign infections in remote populations that form a kind of symbiotic biological defense against incursion. Hanta virus definitely fits this pattern, it is possible the Ebola may as well.
The destruction particularly of tropical habitat, with its greater biodiversity and fiercer competition, is a public health concern. These places in past were avoided by humans because they were "pestilential". People who explored these regions often came down with infections, usually malaria but very often some unnamed agent. In addition to the loss of biolgical resource, the things that are released by these incursions, combined with rapid global travel, should be a serious concern. Ebola is, in a sense, too aggressive to be a global danger, but a bug like the 1918 influenza in its characteristics would be very dangerous indeed. Expect over the next decade a number of new stories about novel tropical infections, hopefully none spreading too far beyond their origin.
So, in short, from an ecological perspective your optimism is not warranted. Yes, the most likely situation is that a new bug will die out. However, if it doesn't die out it will very likely be a major problem, although not necessarily to human health.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.