'Safe Ebola' Created for Research

Nephrite writes "By removing a gene from the virus Ebola, UW-Madison scientists have managed to stop the deadly pathogen from replicating. This first step may be a start down the path to a vaccine or drug screening. 'The scientists still want the virus to replicate in order to study it, so they developed monkey kidney cells which contained the protein needed. Because the cell was providing the protein, and not the virus itself, it could only replicate within those cells, and even if transferred into a human, would be harmless.'"

Comments

load of monkey kidney's

[techpawn]

This is outbreak waiting to happen! Find me patient zero!

Re:load of monkey kidney's

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not worry, George W. Bush has announced a plan to invade Wisconsin claiming that they are developing weapons of mass destruction and biological weapons against his kidney.

The university tried to open a line of communication with the president to reason with him but was met with difficulty when he retired to the war room to pout and 'play with his toys.'

No way to RTFA

[Laughing Pigeon]

Grisoft Antivirus has detected a dangerous virus and has blocked access to TFA.

Re:No way to RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

'Safe Ebola' created for research
Scientists have made the lethal virus Ebola harmless in the lab, potentially aiding research into a vaccine or cure.

Taking a single gene from the virus stops it replicating, US scientists wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

Ebola, currently handled in highly secure labs, kills up to 80% of those it infects.

However, one expert said the new method may not yet be a fail-safe way of dealing with the virus.

        We wanted to make biologically contained Ebola virus
Yoshihiro Kawaoka
University of Wisconsin at Madison

The need for a "biosecurity level 4" (BSL4) laboratory for any work involving Ebola means that very few research institutions are capable of doing this.

Researchers wear biosafety suits with their own air supply, and the air pressure in the room is less than the pressure outside, so any leak would mean air flowing inwards rather than outwards.

This makes anything more than small-scale study of the virus very difficult to arrange.

If Ebola could be kept in a viable form, yet with the risk of infection removed, then conventional labs might be able to study it.

The researchers, from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, say that they have found a "great system" to do this.

Key gene

They said that a single one of Ebola's eight genes, called VP30, is the key, as without it, the virus cannot replicate within host cells by itself.

EBOLA
Initial symptoms include high fever, severe headache, muscle, joint, or abdominal pain, severe weakness and exhaustion, sore throat, and nausea
As the infection progresses more serious symptoms include diarrhoea, vomiting blood, organ damage, and internal bleeding

However, the scientists still want the virus to replicate in order to study it, so they developed monkey kidney cells which contained the protein needed.

Because the cell was providing the protein, and not the virus itself, it could only replicate within those cells, and even if transferred into a human, would be harmless.

In an effort to prove this, they used the monkey cells for dozens of "cycles" of infection and replication, without once encountering a form of the virus capable of making another creature ill.

"We wanted to make biologically contained Ebola virus," said Yoshihiro Kawaoka.

"The altered virus does not grow in any normal cells. This system can be used for drug screening and for vaccine production."

Monkey tests

However, not everyone in Ebola research is convinced.

Professor Susan Fisher-Hoch, at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, was among those at the forefront of Ebola study in the early 1980s, at the UK's BSL4 lab at Porton Down.

She said that she would need to see more proof that the modified virus could do no harm.

"I wouldn't be comfortable using it until it had been thoroughly tested and did not cause disease in live monkeys, at a high dose.

"There is no way you can prove that it is non-toxic unless this has been done."

Re:No way to RTFA

[SomeGuyTyping]

wow - you missed the point of that comment

Re:No way to RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he was going for the non-existent "Metafunny" moderation....

Hmmm..

[BlueStrat]

Does anyone else hear that quote from that movie Jurassic Park "Life always finds a way" when they see this? I mean, what could possibly go wrong, huh? Other than a little hemorrhagic(sp?) fever?

Cheers!

Strat

Re:Hmmm..

[donscarletti]

That's what I thought to begin with, but then again, it's not as if kids will be snorting lines of this stuff for fun, it will be used in sealed laboritories with extreme care. If ebola must be studied in more flexible environments than BSL4 for it to be understood as the article claims, then a mutant virus that probably is harmless is probably a better choice to a natural virus that brings hemorrhagic fever to all it infects. Sure, don't give it to fresher biology classes, don't play with it without serious protection etc. but for the higher risk experements that absolutely must be done before this virus is understood, use this stuff instead of the authentic virus.

Re:Hmmm..

[Goaway]

Consider how reactionary and outright Luddite Slashdot is, this is pretty much the reaction I'd expect here.

Re:Hmmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

That word doesn't mean what you think it means. No one who uses computers, especially for fun, is a luddite.

Re:Hmmm..

[Goaway]

I have seen few places as technophobic as Slashdot. Or what did you think http://slashdot.org/tags/whatcouldpossiblygowrong means?

Re:Hmmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically, a virus isn't alive and therefore is not bound by the Goldblum Principle.

Re:Hmmm..

[Doomstalk]

Viruses are NOT alive. They're just bits of DNA\RNA in a protein envelope.

Re:Hmmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

Viruses are not alive when they are outside of a cell. Viruses are alive when they are inside a cell and have hijacked/incorporated the cell's machinery to duplicate.

Re:Hmmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

Being cautious about the often unforseen ramifications of technology is not the same as one who actively opposes technology. A luddite opposes technological change. No slashdotters, people who often have adopted technology in their work and personal lives usually ahead of the general population, are luddites. Ted Kazynski, the guy who renounced modern society and actively tried to destroy it, is a luddite.

Re:Hmmm..

[Goaway]

A luddite opposes technological change. Yes, change. Slashdotters are comfortable with what they already have. But they fear change, and they fear that which they are not already comfortable with.

Re:Hmmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

None of us were born with the technology we currently use, we all adopted it. Either way, I see you've backed away from your original claim of ludditism to your new argument of "fear of change" which I will note is not the same as ludditism.

Re:Hmmm..

[speederaser]

Humans are NOT alive. They're just bits of DNA/RNA in a protein envelope stuck to a bunch of other bits of DNA/RNA in protein envelopes. :)

Has Will Smith taught us nothing?

[log0n]

Trying to contain genetically-altered virii for medical cures will get your family blown up in a helicopter!

(I know.. technically it was Emma Thompson who engineered the cure)

Re:Has Will Smith taught us nothing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your school didn't teach you much either.
The plural of virus is viruses, "virii" is not a word.

oops

[penn00]

Because Ebola never crossed species before....

Re:oops

[TheMeuge]

I don't think Ebola has ever had a vital component of the transcription machinery removed before. It's not a very large virus, and I don't think it can find another gene to replace it. Furthermore, I don't think anyone is talking about releasing this virus into the wild, merely making it easier to work with in the lab, as well as safer.

Why wouldn't you support that?

Re:oops

[Kayyham]

While it's true that the virus is unlikely to be able to find/mutate a replacement gene within its own DNA, we're now inserting it into "monkey kidney cells which contain the protein needed". It's unclear from the article how they get the protein into the monkey kidney cells but my impression is that they added a gene to the monkey cells that produces the protein. It's not unheard of for DNA fragments to jump cross-species, and the piece that the virus needs is sitting right there in the host cells...

Re:oops

[Broken scope]

Well fuck, these trained scientists/doctors would never give monkeys the vaccine then see if it protects from the known strains of the the full virus.

I mean god damn, testing for effectiveness in animals before human trials and then widespread use, I mean why the hell would they ever do that?

Re:oops

[Broken scope]

I don't think it had a big issue with crossing species in the first place. In fact I'm pretty sure it killed humans and all the standard lab animals when they first found and captured it.

Re:oops

[khallow]

I don't know about the GP, but I would hesitate to support it simply because biology isn't modular. Meaning that you can't remove something like this and hope that everything else will function in an identical manner. First, biology doesn't have to be "modular" for something like this to work. It just has to be close enough. Second, extrapolating the effectiveness of an ebola vaccine from one tool used at an early stage in the development of a vaccine is absurd.

Re:oops

[Broken scope]

I'm advocating that they make a virus that will allow more research to be done to the modified virus, stuff found in that research can be applied to the real virus. Also, I'm pretty sure that if you can make a virus for a species very similar to ours, its probably getting you a hell of a lot closer to making one for our species.

Oh, and of course they still have the standard things they do to make sure something actually works.

You know what the best part of all of this is? When they use the real virus, they still use monkeys and other small cute fuzzy animals that we all love and want to stop the suffering of.

From TFA

[trongey]

...air pressure in the room is less than the pressure outside, so any leak would mean air flowing inwards rather than outwards. ...

OK, I'm not an expert in biosecurity, but wouldn't the reduced air pressure in the room be accomplished by pumping air out of the room?

Re:From TFA

[TheMeuge]

OK, I'm not an expert in biosecurity, but wouldn't the reduced air pressure in the room be accomplished by pumping air out of the room?

Through a controlled path that includes multiple
The idea is that when you take air out of the room, you control the path of the outflow, and thus you can filter the particulates, including viruses. Otherwise, when you open the door, they just tend to diffuse out.

Re:From TFA

[Laughing Pigeon]

...air pressure in the room is less than the pressure outside, so any leak would mean air flowing inwards rather than outwards. ...

OK, I'm not an expert in biosecurity, but wouldn't the reduced air pressure in the room be accomplished by pumping air out of the room?

Off course the experts have thought of that and put the exhaust of the pumps right next to the leaks so the air will get sucked in again immediately.

Re:From TFA

[TheMeuge]

* was meant to say "multiple <.22 micron HEPA filters"

Re:From TFA

[Thelasko]

OK, I'm not an expert in biosecurity, but wouldn't the reduced air pressure in the room be accomplished by pumping air out of the room?

I'm thinking the same thing. All I have been able to find are the specs for level 3 containment.
It says:

The Class III cabinet is operated under negative pressure. Supply air is HEPA-filtered and the cabinet exhaust air is filtered through two HEPA filters in series, or HEPA filtration followed by incineration, before discharge outside of the facility.

But apparently level 4 is just a large scale level 3. It doesn't put my mind at ease that the filter that keeps the Ebola Virus from escaping the CDC is the same kind that's on my vacuum cleaner.

Re:From TFA

[adisakp]

OK, I'm not an expert in biosecurity, but wouldn't the reduced air pressure in the room be accomplished by pumping air out of the room?

If the secure research facility is air-tight, pumping a little bit of air out would produce a vacuum / differential pressure (compared to the positive pressure suit systems) that would could be maintained without pumping out any more air.

Furthermore, the little bit of air that does get pumped out can be processed to eliminate or kill viruses -- it can be filtered, passed through a High-Output Ozone emitter or Ultraviolet array, pass through a chemical wash, or even burned (in the case of a novel I read about a theoretical BSL5 facility).

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

.22 micron is 220 nm and the size of ebola virons are generally in the 80 nm range.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola

Re:From TFA

[bcattwoo]

But apparently level 4 is just a large scale level 3. It doesn't put my mind at ease that the filter that keeps the Ebola Virus from escaping the CDC is the same kind that's on my vacuum cleaner. HEPA is a type of filter that removes least 99.97% of airborne particles 0.3 microns in diameter. Particles approximately 0.3 microns are typically the hardest to capture and the efficiency for larger and smaller particles is even greater than 99.97%. While these filters and your vacuum cleaner filter are classed the same way, they are likely world's apart in terms of capacity and durability.

Re:From TFA

[ceoyoyo]

I expect the level 4 labs opt for the incineration option.

So long as they're not playing with the Andromeda strain, we ought to be safe.

I actually walked past the hot lab building daily when I did my undergrad. I think it was level 3. I'm still here.

Re:From TFA

[networkBoy]

Dude! I want your Vacuum cleaner if it includes incineration (which IIRC is part of level 4 containment exhaust).
-nB

Re:From TFA

[Thelasko]

After further research I have discovered that HEPA filters in biomedical applications have ultraviolet lights that kill the bacteria and viruses.

Typically, medical-use HEPA filtration systems also incorporate high-energy ultra-violet light units to kill off the live bacteria and viruses trapped by the filter media. Some of the best-rated HEPA units have an efficiency rating of 99.995%, which assures a very high level of protection against airborne disease transmission.

So, it's a bit better than my vacuum cleaner.

Re:From TFA

[foreverdisillusioned]

You do realize that the HEPA standard was originally designed to catch dangerous radioactive dust, right? People didn't start marketing it for anti-allergy purposes until much later.

Re:From TFA

[Twisted64]

That seems expensive and prone to errors. Better, I say, to have the room as a section of a corridor, with walls that can be pushed up and down the corridor whilst still keeping a perfect seal. Then if you want less pressure, you just push the walls back :)

cancer and vaccines

[wizardforce]

The scientists still want the virus to replicate in order to study it, so they developed monkey kidney cells which contained the protein needed. Because the cell was providing the protein, and not the virus itself, it could only replicate within those cells, and even if transferred into a human, would be harmless.'"

apparently this is also an area of cancer research as well. cripple a virus so that it can only live in cancer cells and let it destroy the party. vaccines are created from deactivated viruses, breeding the viruses in an environment where their ability to infect human cells is no longer an advantage eventually leads to a weakened form of the virus, specifically crippling viruses OTOH may be far more useful in this regard. it's also a way to make sure the virus stays confined, if it needs a certain component only found in a lab setting [GMed cells with a particular enzyme for example] it would be that much harder to do any real damage even if it did escape.

Re:cancer and vaccines

[techpawn]

Man, I just keep thinking of MI:2 where they make a super virus because they where trying to make a super vaccine.

We keep washing 99.9999% of germs and bacteria off ourselves and we seem to be getting sicker and the germs seems to be getting tougher (MRSA). When I was a kid was played in dirt then came in and grabbed a sammich and went out to play more... Damn life was sweet... Most of us are fine! It's not until we get into the "bacterial hand lotion" kicks that I see my peers dropping like flies...

Re:cancer and vaccines

[wizardforce]

Most of us are fine! It's not until we get into the "bacterial hand lotion" kicks that I see my peers dropping like flies...

sigh.. the most common active compound in antibacterial soaps, lotions etc. is Triclosan. It is rather disturbing to see it used as widely as it is because of the risk of selecting for triclosan resistance. it's a never ending arms race, we make new antibiotics, they develop a way to inactivate or efficiently pump the drug out of their cells. the only thing that has a real chance at keeping up with the bacteria in their arms race are bacteriophages. they infect specific bacteria and kill them, evolving along with them for millions of years.

Re:cancer and vaccines

[N3WBI3]

Ummmm

"Man, I just keep thinking of MI:2 where they make a super virus because they where trying to make a super vaccine."

No they were making a super virus as a weapon they just developed the vaccine first..

"The plot (or more accurately, the excuse for the movie) revolves around a manmade biological weapon called "Chimera" that's been seized by rogue agent Sean Ambrose (a lightweight Dougray Scott). Now Ambrose and his band of generic thugs need to get their hands on the bug's antidote in order to execute their convoluted plan to extort $30 billion in stock shares from the pharmaceutical company that invented the drugs. (The one thing in the movie that's recognizable as a Robert Towne touch is the villain's demand for stock options instead of cash.) IM agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is given the assignment, should he choose not to fire his agent, to recruit beautiful jewel thief Nyah Nordhoff-Hall (Thandie Newton), and use Ambrose's romantic feelings for her to catch him at his game."

Re:cancer and vaccines

[benthurston27]

Unfortunately curing cancer in this way causes people to become zombies (see I am Legend)

Re:cancer and vaccines

[Anonymous Coward]

I watched this movie yesterday again. It is a nice movie, thou the version with Charlton Heston is a little bit better. So, when are they starting to inject this virus on people as a vaccine? I better get my supplies and put some steel shutters on my windows... Also I like that Shelby Mustang too. Can I get one after the Ebola mutants take control of the planet?

Re:cancer and vaccines

[Anonymous Coward]

cripple a virus so that it can only live in cancer cells and let it destroy the party. vaccines are created from deactivated viruses... Didn't anybody watch I Am Legend??? We are doomed, doomed I tell you!!!

I'll be at Wallmart buying myself some UV lights amd maybe a Ford Mustang for my Deer hunting needs.

Re:cancer and vaccines

[darthflo]

Unfortunately for them, they're actually using "antibacterial hand lotion". Were they to use bacterial hand lotion, their immune system would be trained with every application, resulting in superhumanly immune hands.

Re:cancer and vaccines

[budgenator]

And for the vast majority of human MRSA isn't any different from "regular" Staphylococcus aureus, which we all probably carry. Now if your imuno-compromised and the staph population reach pathological levels, that when MSRA is a problem, but I do think that constant exposure to some "germs" helps keep the immune system tuned so the bad stuff gets taken care a bit quicker.

Genetics....

[freedom_india]

How much do we know about virii to safely declare legally that this ebola virus would not leap from monkeys to humans.
Don't the scientists know that the original virus leapt from monkeys to humans just like HIV.
Hell we can't even classify virus as a living or non-living thing.

And now our irrational scientists like John Hammond think they can tinker...

Although on one hand i support them, ebola is tooo dangerous to escape from the funny farm. if it had been smallpox or something it would be understandable.

This is precisely why Bush hates funding genetic engineering as a whole...

Re:Genetics....

[TheMeuge]

I hope that this was a sarcastic post, given the amount of ignorance it contained.

We would like to study ebola, so that we can save your sorry ass if you get it. To do that, we've modified it to weaken it, so we don't kill ourselves studying it. We're not really going to put it in your food and air supply!

As far as why Bush hates funding genetic engineering as a whole you're correct. Your post illustrates PRECISELY why people hate funding it - they are ignorant, scared sheet, and content remaining such.

Re:Genetics....

[NIckGorton]

Although on one hand i support them, ebola is tooo dangerous to escape from the funny farm. if it had been smallpox or something it would be understandable. Smallpox is far more dangerous and has killed more than a thousand times as many people as Ebola. Ebola is actually relatively easy to contain, though quite deadly. Smallpox is deadly and far more easily spread. And most people under 40 in the developed world are not vaccinated against smallpox. So a smallpox release has a far greater potential danger.

How much do we know about virii to safely declare legally that this ebola virus would not leap from monkeys to humans. First, the standard English plural of virus is viruses. Second, I don't think the courts have anything to do with whether or not a crippled virus is safe any more than the Kansas school board determines whether Creationism is science.

Re:Genetics....

[freedom_india]

That WAS a funny post. Exactly how a conservative like McCain or Bush would argue...

Re:Genetics....

[darthflo]

The most direct way to extinct any given virus still is to immediately let it infect any lifeform it can. Immune lifeforms will live on while the (now hostless) virus won't.
Also, this would fix the overpopulation troubles. Unfortunately most humans don't quite want to risk their lives to kill a single boring virus.

Re:Genetics....

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the virus establishes itself within the population in a less fatal state, because selection will favor weaker viruses that give their hosts more time to transmit. Eventually, you can predict the pathogen will become more of a nuisance, but it is unlikely that it will simply become extinct. For instance, cytomegalovirus can be found in 50-80% of adults in America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytomegalovirus). I think you can say that it has more or less infected any lifeform it can (humans, anyway), but this has not killed it.

Re:Genetics....

[BotnetZombie]

I also thought that the plural was virii. And what do I get looking at online dictionaries? Proof that I'm wrong (http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/virus.html).
Virus, schmirus, I'll get you next time!

Re:Genetics....

[NIckGorton]

The reason is that in its original form, it was a noun that didn't have a plural form. It meant a substance that was toxic or dangerous in a general sense. So its like saying radiation is toxic. You wouldn't speak about 'radiations' but talk about radiation being toxic. So while 'radiations' is technically correct we as speakers of English don't use that plural.

The ancient speakers of Latin similarly didn't use a plural form of virus, so when people pluralize it using the rules of ancient Latin they come off like Bush speaking of the internets: they don't know WTF they are talking about but would like to sound as though they do. Sigh. At least its better than when he talks about nucular power.

suddenoutbreakofebola

[Anonymous Coward]

inevitable really.

stop other things from replicating

[Anonymous Coward]

Can this technology be used to stop bad patents from replicating?

Really?

[CF4L]

If it is truly "safe" as they say, would they be willing to quarantine themselves and inject themselves with it? If their answer is no, then they are full of it.

Re:Really?

[NIckGorton]

Nothing is truly safe... It is all a question of odds. The real question is which you'd rather do, swallow a beaker of this crippled Ebola or have a seatmate on a plane flight with EDRTB? Swallow a beaker of crippled Ebola or be on the Bay Bridge in a 6.0 earthquake centered in the bay area? Swallow a beaker of Ebola or go a month without wearing a seatbelt? If TFA accurately portrays the research done, I'd pick the former each time.

Repeat of a movie plotline?

[Iamthebubblelady]

I think this has been done a number of times in movies/games (MI2, Resident Evil, I am Legend etc...)and hasn't it turned out badly every time? I guess I should get my shotgun ready for some flesh eating zombie target practice! First person to 100 wins.

Re:Repeat of a movie plotline?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because, as we all know, movies are always scientifically sound.

The Sky is falling

[MosesJones]

Why is it on Slashdot that any thing that restricts any sort of digital rights is a massively bad thing and any research that breaks those elements (even if they are used for nefarious purposes) are good, physics and astronomy research is also always "good", meanwhile massive advances in bio-tech are always "think of the children" topics.

Sure Ebola is dangerous, but labs are working around the world with massively dangerous pathogens. Britain's numpties in the bio-farming area managed to release Foot and Mouth into the wild (genius) so of course there is a risk. The question is whether it is safe and what can be achieved by doing this, not simply thinking about the Horror flick that played a ridiculous story line out. Bio-shock story lines are just as realistic as techno-shock ones, i.e. about as realistic as a George Bush explanation on Iraqi WMD.

Bio-science is one of the most real frontiers in science today and its simply stunning what is being done. Sure there need to be controls, but educated people need to stop behaving like Fox News Anchors.

Re:The Sky is falling

[malkavian]

Bad, no.. Interesting.. Yes..
Worrisome, most certainly.
Out of all the techs we've yet produced as a race, all of them (with the possible exception of the nascent self-replicating nanotechnology field) have been firmly controlled by humanity.
Biotech on the other hand, we create something, and when it leaves (and sometimes before it leaves) the 'home', it gets all grown up, with the possibility of getting a serious attitude of it's own and some seriously big boots to come back kicking with.
With all our machines, you turn off the power, and they're useless. Starve them of fuel, and they stop.
With something living we don't have the 'off switch'. Even if we do at the time it's released, it only takes a few organisms to be 'faulty' and not respond to the 'off'.
So, no.. It's not bad. It's just something that we have to be far more careful of than we do the digital. If digital is broken, the worst that happens is that money is lost, and people get miserable (OK, possibly VERY miserable).
If Biotech gets 'Broken', lots of people can die. Rapidly.

Re:The Sky is falling

[GauteL]

"Why is it on Slashdot that any thing that restricts any sort of digital rights is a massively bad thing and any research that breaks those elements (even if they are used for nefarious purposes) are good, physics and astronomy research is also always "good", meanwhile massive advances in bio-tech are always "think of the children" topics."

That is a bit simplistic. The story summary is pretty neutral, and the "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag is a humorous tag used for many stories. Actually, reading the list of stories is bound to give you some giggles.

Re:The Sky is falling

[Comatose51]

It's simple: We feel what we don't understand or know. Slashdot is a tech nerd crowd. We don't feel technology but there're few doctors or medical researchers among us so hence the fear. Not saying it's justified but simply that we're all human after all. We're only smarter than the masses in one area, not all areas as we like to think.

Re:The Sky is falling

[Comatose51]

Wow, talk about bad typos. Feel = fear in the above post. Need more coffee.

Re:The Sky is falling

[PCM2]

Biotech on the other hand, we create something, and when it leaves (and sometimes before it leaves) the 'home', it gets all grown up, with the possibility of getting a serious attitude of it's own and some seriously big boots to come back kicking with.

You're right. If those evil scientists keep tinkering around with Ebola like this, it might end up turning into something really bad.

All sarcasm aside, creating less-pathogenic versions of deadly viruses is one of the best techniques available to provide hope for developing vaccines. It's already been done with the H5N1 "chicken flu" virus, for example, and scientists are now proceeding to find ways to turn this weakened virus into a vaccine. Other scientists have successfully spliced West Nile virus DNA into a weakened version of the dengue virus, and this vaccine seems to be effective in immunizing horses and monkeys against West Nile.

Both these diseases are highly dangerous, emerging pathogens against which medicine currently can offer very few defenses. What would be your alternative? Let everyone breathe in the germs, let the weak ones die, and let the strong pass on their immunity via natural selection? Seriously, how would you go about finding cures for these emerging diseases if scientists are forbidden to use "worrisome" science?

Bluntly put: You fear these techniques because of your own ignorance. You don't know anything about biohazard control procedures or the techniques of biotech that go into developing these vaccine candidates, but you have seen "28 Days Later," so you hear that scientists are conducting science and you instantly think "hemorrhagic zombies." This is a dumb attitude. If you're concerned about "what might happen," read the literature, find articles in popular science magazines, and educate yourself.

To give you a general idea ... you remember that whole "sequencing the genome" thing? It might surprise you to learn that scientists these days do a lot of "breaking the digital" before they ever get a shot at "breaking the biotech." And, no offense, but I think the scientists in charge of setting up major disease research laboratories have a far more intimate knowledge of the risks of the pathogens they confront than you do. What makes you assume that they'd be willing to just "let it slide"?

Before you panic

[TheMeuge]

Before everyone panics, just think for a second. Ebola is NOT AIRBORNE. It is transmitted by direct contact and bodily fluids. It's classified as BSL4 because it's so deadly once you actually get it, not due to its ease of transmission.

Currently, only a few groups have access to BSL4 laboratories, and this has been severely hampering Ebola research. If by taking out the VP30 gene they have reduced the pathogenicity of the virus enough to get the authorities to apply the more appropriate BSL3 tag to the mutant strain, they've succeeded in making an important stride towards expanding the field, while introducing a very minimal risk of an outbreak.

I don't think anyone is talking about drinking the recombinant virus, but merely making it BSL3 instead of BSL4... or even just reducing the risk of working with Ebola under BSL4 conditions.

Re:Before you panic

[airedalez]

Can you say 28 days later?

Re:Before you panic

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ebola is not airborne" ...yet

Re:Before you panic

[monoqlith]

You would be right, and +1 Informative, if only from TFA:

""We wanted to make biologically contained Ebola virus so that we can drink it," said Yoshihiro Kawaoka.

And if you're going to point out that I simply added the part in bold myself, then I can onlly say in my defense that it is probably what Yoshihiro Kawoaka is thinking anyway.

Re:Before you panic

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction: Ebola Zaire and Ebola Sudan are not airborne. Ebola Reston is airborne, but luckily the same mutation that allows it to be airborne also keeps it from being deadly to humans. That's what I call luck and would not like to do that crap-shoot over again, thanks.

Re:Before you panic

[BigGar']

Not that entirely correct.
The strain Ebola-Reston is airborne, fortunately, it appears, the air-borne mutation also makes it non-lethal to humans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_Reston/

Re:Before you panic

[bondjamesbond]

I didn't RTFA, but can someone remind me why we're even messing with this shit?

Re:Before you panic

[sorak]

Before everyone panics, just think for a second. Ebola is NOT AIRBORNE. It is transmitted by direct contact and bodily fluids.

So we're safe as long as we don't touch or have sex with any UW-Madison scientists, or their monkeys.

Re:Before you panic

[innerweb]

Just a guess, but for some people, a cure to this miserable disease, and for others, one heck of a biological weapon. It is so limited in transmission that one might feel safe using it in certain situations to cripple an enemy. It is so incredibly debilitating while one has it that it would render combatants or other individuals incapacitated and too weak once they recovered, though they probably would not recover.

Ebola is just another tool in this case.

InnerWeb

Re:Before you panic

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a big difference between "so that we can drink it" to "so that we will drink it"! While I'm sure the researchers are happy to know that they could (and thus a reduced risk), I don't think there's going to be any Ebola Mary Cocktails at the office party...

Re:Before you panic

[ceoyoyo]

Maybe. I don't think ebola is really such a great weapon though. It's pretty obvious when someone is sick, and isn't transmitted all that easily unless you get up close and personal with their bodily fluids, so it's fairly easy to control with quarantine. Plus it kills so fast and thoroughly that it's hard to get a real epidemic going. Ebola is pretty much a failure in humans and wouldn't be around except that it can live in other hosts without killing them.

Most ebola outbreaks only kill a few hundred people. I suspect a really good biological weapon would be a nasty flu strain or norwalk virus. You don't need to kill the other guys, just make them miserable enough to reduce their fighting ability. Bonus points because you're using a less lethal weapon of mass destruction!

Re:Before you panic

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what Dr. Ian Malcolm ( Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park ) would say about this.

Re:Before you panic

[budgenator]

because it's contagious and has an 80% fatality rate and every once in a while there is a breakout and a whole bunch of people die horrific deaths bleeding from everywhere imaginable orifice, and we'd like to stop that.

Re:Before you panic

[Upaut]

Actually Ebola, like all viruses, mutate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_Reston

You might of forgotten this one, it was in the news a long time ago, but it shows that the virus can become airborne. And this is why it is so important that this strain be developed: We need to make a vaccine for this asap.

And on another point: frankly I am a little pissed that once a virus is considered "beaten", we stop mass vaccinations for it, allowing it the chance of it to slowly spread back. If I didn't have cowpox as a kid, I would be demanding my smallpox vaccine... I just hope if that one is accidently released, I still have a small measure of protection.

Re:Before you panic

[Broken scope]

Actually, the whole bleeding from every orifice thing is all that common.

Re:Before you panic

[Somegeek]

Drink Ebola Cola! It's Horrifically Delicious! Viral marketing campaign coming soon...

Re:Before you panic

[Broken scope]

It depends, are we doing the virological equivalent of replacing missing genes with the genes of a creature that can change genders in a single gender environment.

Re:Before you panic

[Adams4President]

All I know about Ebola is what I read in The Hot Zone, but I thought the cause of transfer during the Reston, VA outbreak was unknown? The monkeys were all in separate cages.

Re:Before you panic

[Anonymous Coward]

"Must go faster, must go faster"?

Re:Before you panic

[Anonymous Coward]

Barry Marshall had a similar idea and look what he ended up with.

Re:Before you panic

[armareum]

Maybe your post suffered from a typo (is, rather than isn't): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola#Cultural_impact

Re:Before you panic

[Anonymous Coward]

Ebola is just another tool in this case.

If we can solve the problem of widespread distribution, it's also the only practical solution that we've got to the horrific specter of global warming.

Re:Before you panic

[Broken scope]

Oops i meant to put isn't. I also have one of those, it is best friends with my influenza plushie.

Re:Before you panic

[stonedcat]

Sorry, I'm too busy keeping grandpa tied up in the kitchen and feeding him what's left of grandma.
Fucker keeps trying to bite me and the neighbors haven't mowed their lawn in nearly a month.

What was the question again?

Re:Before you panic

[rJah]

I Am Legend, anyone?

Re:Before you panic

[innerweb]

They both make good bio-weapons, but for different targets and reasons. True, Ebola is fast acting. But, in some situations, that is ideal. It is also harder to spread, in many situations that would be ideal. The biggest use of Ebola though is not the actual virus, but the the mechanics of how it works. Only eight genes! That is relatively simple to work with. And, as a bonus, it requires only a few genes to be inserted in another virus/bacterium. So, as it is, unaltered, yeah, pretty boring, but then again, on it own, sulfur is not worth much either in a gun.

InnerWeb

Re:Before you panic

[ceoyoyo]

True. But that makes non-infectious ebola less useful as a weapon, not more.

Now it's military cousin, bleeding-from-everywhere-common-cold, now there's a weapon with some shock and awe potential.

Um....

[cbart387]

Has anyone ever read Demon in the Freezer (about smallpox) or The Hot Zone (about Ebola)? (both of which are very good books) All I know is that any biological agent like Ebola or smallpox scares the hell out of me. I think it was in The Hot Zone (could be another book, I was reading all I could find about Ebola for a while) where there WAS an Ebola outbreak in the US that WAS airborne. Monkeys were dying in a lab and the best explanation for this was that the strain (Reston) was airborne. Luckily this strain is only KNOWN to affect monkeys. You can read about it here

Maybe I'm just being paranoid but it seems extremely dangerous to be playing with Ebola.

Re:Um....

[cbart387]

Update:
Reading the wikipedia article it does mention that 'The Hot Zone' referenced the event. My memory remains intact for another day

Re:Um....

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I'm just being paranoid but it seems extremely dangerous to be playing with Ebola.
--
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
And interesting sig associated with that last line.

These are played with PRECISELY for planning purposes. The question is what will it take to stop it, slow it down, or best of all to have a vaccine against it? The problems come up when we know nothing about a bug. A good example was HIV. In 1981, I was working there, when we were already tracking it down. I worked for what was considered the top rated lab in the nation (that was within NIH, CDC, DOD, and all fed grants). Another portion of CDC was tracking down the infected as well as trying hard to figure out what we had. It was already thought that it was a virus, most likely a retrovirus. But the group was running out of money, so they tasked my boss to talk to reagan. He was (and I assume still is) a mormon bishop, and a hard core republican. But after going to washington DC. He said that he would have nothing to do again with the white house or this disease. Basically, what I heard is that reagan denied the funding because it was a homosexual disease. My boss had told him that it would cross over to the hetro population, but reagan, based on his wide intellect, decided that it would not. What it came down to, is that because it was new, and we had little knowledge, a president decided to deny funding for this. Had he done just several million dollars, he would have cut back the infection rate to half or more of what it is today. Worse, he went on preaching about herpes for the next two years before even acknowledging it. Knowledge helps prevents this kind of stuff.

BTW, My bosses name was mentioned in the big AIDs book (the band played on), but it did not have much of the early stuff correct. There was a lot more happening in the feds than was printed in the book.

Re:Um....

[Blimey85]

There is also a book called Virus Hunters of the CDC that shared some of the same info as The Hot Zone. One of those two does reference the outbreak in Reston Virginia.

Demon in the Freezer was great and scared the bejesus out of me. I read that one and one other on Smallpox having thought Ebola was the worst there was. Now I know that Smallpox is far far far worse than Ebola ever hopes to be.

Re:Um....

[Anonymous Coward]

If smallpox ever breaks out again, it will almost certainly be a derivit that humanity has never seen. The world will probably suffer to the same degree that Native Americans suffered when the Europeans first came; It will make the Avian Flu look positively minor. Worst, of all, it is difficult to make a vaccine for it.

Re:Um....

[ceoyoyo]

The strain is known to have infected several humans and not caused illness.

It's extremely dangerous NOT to be playing with ebola. If the virus mutates a little so that it's a bit less deadly, or kills more slowly, then it will be far more of a threat than it is now. That's why we research it now.

Re:Um....

[cbart387]

Well said. I'll have to find some balanced books on the topic to read up on it more.

Re:Um....

[FlagMan666]

It seems more dangerous to NOT play with ebola if we can do it safely.

I've got a bad feeling about this...

[talon_262]

As much as I'd like to find a treatment/vaccine for something as nasty as Ebola, I'm not so sure tinkering around with its genetic code like this is such a good idea. Like others, I can't help but think about the paraphrased quote from Jurassic Park, "Life will find a way"; if that ever happens and that modified Ebola mutates and gets out of isolation, we are in a world of shit.

Re:I've got a bad feeling about this...

[Anonymous Coward]

i can't help but think of what a complete and utter waste of time jurassic park was from the science point of view. if this is the best source you have to site please just keep it to yourself. sci-fi is no place to educate yourself.

Re:I've got a bad feeling about this...

[NIckGorton]

As much as I'd like to find a treatment/vaccine for something as nasty as Ebola, I'm not so sure tinkering around with its genetic code like this is such a good idea. Well, then pretty much most of biomedical research on infectious agents is shit outta luck. How do you think he get live attenuated vaccines? How do you think a lot of HIV research is done?

Like others, I can't help but think about the paraphrased quote from Jurassic Park, "Life will find a way"; if that ever happens and that modified Ebola mutates and gets out of isolation, we are in a world of shit. Like others I can't help but hope that research decision-makers and funders don't get their ideas about what research should be undertaken from bad science fiction.

(Note I said 'bad science fiction'. That does not imply that the fed shouldn't fund research into making a holodeck. That would be cool.)

Re:I've got a bad feeling about this...

[Jesus_666]

if that ever happens and that modified Ebola mutates and gets out of isolation, we are in a world of shit.

Well, regular in-the-wild ebola can also mutate into something more dangerous. I don't really see the chance for a dangerous mutation as substantially higher. Remember, these are labs that deal with extremely dangerous virus and are thus rather serious about nothing getting out.

What are the alternatives? Either working with regular, deadly Ebola (so if it escapes and infects someone, a lethal outbreak is ensured) or not working with Ebola at all (meaning that there's also no chance of developing an Ebola vaccine or more effective medication). I think gene-tinkerng is our best option in this case.

What about our kidneys?

[dasbush]

From the Article:

[T]hey developed monkey kidney cells which contained the protein needed. Developed enough such that our kidneys are immune?
Do any other parts of the human body make the protein needed for the virus' reproduction?

I hope this strain is adequately tested before it is labeled as safe.

Re:What about our kidneys?

[NIckGorton]

They developed a monkey kidney cell line so that they produced a protein that is foreign to primates, and otherwise wouldn't ever be found in a monkey or human cell. So unless you've been genetically engineered to make an Ebola virus protein in your kidneys, I think you'll be safe.

Re:What about our kidneys?

[dasbush]

Touché.

Re:What about our kidneys?

[budgenator]

Yeah but if somebody poked themselves in the eye with a grapefruit spoon while peeing on an electric fence during a full moon their kidneys might start making the protein!

treat the host pool

[ifknot]

As Strat noted in Hmmm..

"Life always finds a way"

Which is why imho vaccine efforts should be directed at the animal host pool in order to eradicate the filovirus, ie make it extinct.

The host is widely considered to be bats http://www.emedicine.com/MED/topic626.htm and if only a tiny portion of the grant money spent on dna twiddling was spent establishing this and looking at either eradicating the bats or vaccinating them then, perhaps, the whole filovirus family could be eradicated.

Before all the bat-lovers start crying foul I would like to point out that it is only ebola's high mortality rate that keeps it contained. If mother nature dose a bit of her own dna twiddling and hits the sweet spot for mortality versus infectivity then haemorrhagic fever will reach Hollywood proportions.

But, call me cynical, this would leave no recurring income for vaccine makers.

Re:treat the host pool

[value_added]

Before all the bat-lovers start crying foul ...

Too late.

IANABE, but bats have been known to eat flying insects on occasion. Seems to me that this kind of tinkering has been shown repeatedly to produce unintended consquences. In this case, I'd wager the end result would be something along the lines of less bats -> more mosquitos -> more mosquito problems -> more malaria. Or, from the malaria tinkerers perspective, more bats -> less malaria -> more ebola. Given that malaria is a greater problem, which approach would you use?

Re:treat the host pool

[ifknot]

You see this is when it starts to sound ridiculous as the notion of 'vaccinating bats' seems funny at best. After all, how do you get the bat to sit still?

But the point remains: "Nature will find a way" ie mutation will occur and it will occur in the host.

The goal should be filovirus eradication and vaccinating humans will not acheive that. Therefore, spending money (a lot of money) on only one part of the problem is a mistake.

But why is so much money being spent?

protect citizens and soldiers against bioterrorism http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2005/06/mil-050606-3e7dd8b0.htm

and for 'weaponization' http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=11348

Science & in particular the science industry, is not perfect. It is, however, much less perfect than ever. :(

Re:treat the host pool

[ceoyoyo]

Well, before you can vaccinate a bat you need a vaccine. In order to get a vaccine you need to study the virus extensively. The goal of this "dna twiddling" is to make the virus easier to study on a larger scale. It would seem this effort is right in line with what you're suggesting. Even more so because in order to realistically vaccinate bats you're going to need an ingestible or more likely inhalable vaccine, which is harder than an injectable one so it's going to need even more study.

Re:treat the host pool

[jmdc]

Call me crazy, but vaccinating bats seems a lot harder than vaccinating humans. We know more about human physiology, and we know how to vaccinate a human population. OTOH no one has ever vaccinated an entire wild population of an animal. Bats would seem to be a very difficult first attempt!

You also mentioned eradicating bats. The endangered species act makes that illegal in the United States. But putting aside the legal restrictions, eradicating all bats would most likely have consequences we don't foresee. At least initially, changes in the bat population will cause changes in the populations of bat's predators and prey. With no bats to eat them, we might suddenly have orders of magnitude more mosquitoes. Especially in Africa (where Ebola outbreaks actually occur), mosquitoes are a vector for diseases including Malaria, Yellow Fever, Dengue Fever and West Nile Virus.

Re:treat the host pool

[NIckGorton]

But, call me cynical, this would leave no recurring income for vaccine makers. Um, cynical wasn't exactly the word I was thinking of. Though since you can't seem to afford a clue, I'll give you one. Vaccine research is a money-loser unless you come up with an effective vaccine for western diseases - and even then its risky. At best vaccines generate $6 billion annually - that's about 1.5% of the annual pharmaceutical market worldwide. The problem is, an effective vaccine is used only a few times, and is highly cost effective. So there is not so much profit to be made. Moreover, you will get exactly zero profit with a vaccine that treats non-western diseases. People who would benefit from the Ebola vaccine couldn't pay enough to generate profits.

Before all the bat-lovers start crying foul I would like to point out that it is only ebola's high mortality rate that keeps it contained. IANABL, but the problem with that is that high mortality is only a small part of what keeps it contained. It is also kept contained because of a short incubation period (HIV escaped because you can have it an be infectious years before you get sick), method of transmission (body fluids largely), etc.

Re:treat the host pool

[PCM2]

Before all the bat-lovers start crying foul I would like to point out that it is only ebola's high mortality rate that keeps it contained.

Actually, that's not totally true. Ebola infection has spread in rural African villages mainly because of lack of education. Relatives of people who have died of Ebola make the mistake of directly handling the body during burial procedures, thus coming into contact with infected blood. I suppose that if Ebola had a lower mortality rate then it would become a sexually-transmitted disease (e.g. AIDS, which also requires direct contact with infected tissues) but I imagine relatively few people are sexually attracted to someone who is suffering from an extremely painful, high fever, with blood running from the nose, ears, and eyes. As it stands, Ebola is really not categorized as a high contagion risk.

Nerves of steel

[192939495969798999]

Talk about an iron constitution; there is no way I'd walk into a room and work for hours with a virus that violently kills almost everyone it infects, should "something go wrong".

Re:Nerves of steel

[ajs]

there is no way I'd walk into a room and work for hours with a virus that violently kills almost everyone it infects, should "something go wrong". What do you think happens should "something go wrong" when you're working with a vat of fry grease that can melt off skin at McDonalds? The risk there is much more serious, since training is much less strict and controls are not federally monitored.

What do you think happens should "something go wrong" when you're assembling a skyscraper? Pouring molten steel? Flying a plane? Heck, just driving a car can kill you in the most horrible ways.

If you want safe, you're pretty much hosed.

If you want to balance risk with precaution, work in an industry where the life and death of not just you, but lots of others are on the line. You'll quickly find that the level of precaution taken is burdensome, but quite reassuring.

PS: It doesn't kill everyone. To quote Wikipedia:

Mortality rates are extremely high, with the human case-fatality rate ranging from 50% - 89%, according to viral subtype.[3] The cause of death is usually due to hypovolemic shock or organ failure.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola (citation from http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol11no02/04-0533.htm)

Re:Nerves of steel

[fifedrum]

speaking of fry grease... I worked at a place where the sous chef dropped his watch into the fryer, then before he could think, reached in after it. Thankfully his hands were sloppy wet, and he didn't dip them in too far. Later that same day, the main chef deep fried the salad chef's panties in the same fryer. Nasty.

A few years later, my brother-in-law worked for a lab working on rhinovirus and caught a cold.

Re:Nerves of steel

[Mutatis Mutandis]

It's fair enough to say that any job involves risks, and it certainly sounds as if this Ebola replicon is reasonably safe. On the other hand I would require convincing evidence that the virus cannot mutate to replicate without VP30, which apparently is mainly a transcription activator. Because this virus maintains its genome as RNA without ever encoding it in DNA, it has a very high mutation rate. Or that it cannot pick up a suitable gene by hybridization; co-infection with another negative strand RNA virus might be enough.

In any case, I can image that people who work with Ebola viruses might find that they have to lunch alone. And I wonder what the neighbours would think of it.

Let alone the IT people, of course. I know from experience how difficult it can be to make an IT guy enter a HIV laboratory to set up the network connections... For a BSL3 with Ebola virus we probably would have to pay them Blackwater rates.

Re:Nerves of steel

[syousef]

If you want to balance risk with precaution, work in an industry where the life and death of not just you, but lots of others are on the line. You'll quickly find that the level of precaution taken is burdensome, but quite reassuring

Wow what bad logic. Do you not understand that a different level of safety can apply for the worker than to the consumer in an industry. For example a coal miner may be at large risk of the mine collapsing on his sorry behind, the power engineer could be sitting on a power plant that's about to go ka-boom, whereas the end user is sitting by that cozy electric radiator. More pertinant to this discussion a worker might be contaminated with a pathogen due to lax internal controls while the external perimeter is much harder to penetrate. Pilots are the exception not the rule - if they go down the customers go down.

Re:Nerves of steel

[ajs]

Wow what bad logic. Do you not understand that a different level of safety can apply for the worker than to the consumer in an industry. Your punctuation notwithstanding, no it wasn't bad logic, and of course I understand that. I was replying to a comment about employees, and was referring to employees only. The larger issues are interesting, but outside of the scope of the discussion I was having.

More pertinant to this discussion a worker might be contaminated with a pathogen due to lax internal controls while the external perimeter is much harder to penetrate. And that's quite true (your spelling notwithstanding), but as I pointed out, that's less of a concern when your every process and procedure is monitored at the corporate, state and federal levels. Lax controls simply aren't an option in the world of even level 3 containment. If you have lax controls, you don't go live, much less get the chance to fail an inspection.

Re:Nerves of steel

[syousef]

Your punctuation notwithstanding

Sometimes I write comments in a rush and their punctuation suffers. I really do wish you hadn't felt the need to bring it into the conversation. It wasn't really relevant. I guess my tone was pretty combative so I deserved that but I'd have preferred to stay on topic rather than have an irrelevant tit for tat.

Nonetheless the point I was making stands. Worker safety does not always follow if there are public safety elements to a job. Not every industry works like level 3 containment where checks, balances, inspections and certifications are so stringent. Even then things do slip through the cracks and accidents happen. Picking your job based on public safety implications and expecting worker safety to follow would be unwise.

Re:Nerves of steel

[ajs]

Your punctuation notwithstanding

Sometimes I write comments in a rush and their punctuation suffers. I really do wish you hadn't felt the need to bring it into the conversation. It was only in the conversation if the only thing you choose to respond to is ... oh wait.

Not every industry works like level 3 containment where checks, balances, inspections and certifications are so stringent. That is correct, and it happens to have been the core of my posts which you may or may not have read. I'm not trying to be antagonistic, but you're sort of doing the limit-like approach to what I was saying, and I'm no longer sure what you're trying to indicate that I got wrong....

Even then things do slip through the cracks and accidents happen. Picking your job based on public safety implications and expecting worker safety to follow would be unwise. I'm certain that I never suggested that worker safety was a strict function of public safety implications (see many fields of work that involve producing horrendously toxic waste).

I think you're trying to over-generalize my highest-level point into a set of assertions to which I would never agree.

After you panic...

[thrill12]

I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids., general Jack D. Ripper

Re:After you panic...

[jdschulteis]

Who modded this "Troll"? You will be denied a place in any of our deeper mine shafts!

Cool! Safe Ebola!

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do I sign up?

Ummm...

[Foerstner]

From Slashdot's favorite reference authority

Although airborne transmission between monkeys has been demonstrated by an accidental outbreak in a laboratory located in Virginia, USA, there is very limited evidence for human-to-human airborne transmission in any reported epidemics. Nurse Mayinga might represent the only possible case. The means by which she contracted the virus remains uncertain.

No citations, but it's about what I remember from reading The Hot Zone.

One has to wonder if the 'safe virus itself'

[N3WBI3]

Can be a vaccine... After all it would attach to the sites on a cell where a non modified virus of the same type would attach (presumably) thus robbing denying any other viruses that site...

Re:One has to wonder if the 'safe virus itself'

[ChronoReverse]

That's not how vaccines work...

Re:One has to wonder if the 'safe virus itself'

[N3WBI3]

Really? No kidding? Its my bad for not speaking clearly... A 'sort of' vaccine... as in providing an immunity of sorts..

Re:One has to wonder if the 'safe virus itself'

[ChronoReverse]

It won't even really work in the manner you've described it unless you propose injecting millions upon millions of such a "vaccine" (assuming it even does the whole attach and deny attachment thing).

28 Days Later

[lucifig]

Oye, we're boned. They just created RAGE.

Re:28 Days Later

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly what I thought...great movie(s) too and I can't wait for the next one.

I love stuff like this

[EB FE]

Ebola totally used to pwn humans. Now we're like *yoink*! Take that, virus; you're castrated! Revenge is sweet.

Re:I love stuff like this

[Jesus_666]

And then Ebola is like "No way!" and we're all like "Yeah, whatever". And the look on Ebola's face is, like, going to be so totally awesome...

FYI, there is already an ebola vaccine

[wildgeechi]

Its currently in human trials and has 100% efficacy. They don't even need the virus on hand to R&D the vaccine, and only conduct actual FDA trials at a BSL 4 site

Re:FYI, there is already an ebola vaccine

[Anonymous Coward]

[Citation needed]

Creationist Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like an idea that only a creationist could love. If God invented the Ebola virus, then removing a gene should create a permanently harmless version. If evolution created Ebola, then it's almost certain this "harmless" Ebola will re-evolve the capacity to infect and kill the Homo genus.

Oh great...

[Spudtrooper]

Now you know it's only a matter of time before somebody puts it into an energy drink.

Rockstar: Now with Ebola!

Well done sir

[Anonymous Coward]

I must apologize to you for I have already squandered my mod points this morning. Had I not, I would have complimented you with a +1 funny. Instead, I shall print your post and read it in daily remembrance, as it would be a tragedy if it were to be forgotten.

Easier solution

[Dachannien]

On the other hand, hyperventilation and mass Sterno consumption are known to counteract its ability to replicate.

Now they won't need to activate that laboratory self-destruct!

Where are the scientists priorities?!??!

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, but it's -2 degrees in Madison this morning along with a fresh coat of 8.8 inches of snow.

Can the scientists mutate the virus to spread on area roads and act like salt or some type of anti-slip brine spray?

Yeah right, and monkey kidney cells would come out of my butt! Rock on Wayne! Rock on Garth! Fish heads!

Aim for the head

[HangingChad]

The scientists still want the virus to replicate in order to study it, so they developed monkey kidney cells which contained the protein needed.

Hey, isn't that how the Rage virus got started? Pretty soon those monkeys will develop a taste for human brains, the military will see this as a promising new bio-weapon and, 28 days later, Milla Jovovich is naked on your shower floor washing away the zombie blood...again.

Do these people NEVER learn?

Re:Aim for the head

[EB FE]

Milla Jovovich is from a different movie.

Re:Aim for the head

[eheldreth]

Umm, Zombies and naked Milla Jovovich or no Zombies. Zombies and naked Milla Jovovich or no Zombies. Zombies and naked Milla Jovovich or no Zombies. I really just can't decide. Does it have to be one or the other?

Re:Aim for the head

[IndustrialComplex]

Not just that, he said naked in *your* shower.

Re:Aim for the head

[clusterlizard]

28 days later, Milla Jovovich is naked on your shower floor washing away the zombie blood...

i don't see the downside here.

Re:Aim for the head

[Meltir]

Do these people NEVER learn?

Sure we do !

[..]Milla Jovovich is naked on your shower floor[...]

duh! No way am i letting her outta there this time ! >:)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Only eight genes?

[RandoX]

If there are only eight genes, why is this specific one called VP30? Why not VP1-8? (Or VP0-7?)

Re:Only eight genes?

[myc]

it might refer to molecular weight of the protein encoded by the gene, i.e., 30 kilo Daltons. Just guessing, though.

Re:Only eight genes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably its molecular weight is 30 kilodaltons.

Life After People

[jameskojiro]

Cool, so I guess now we can see how long our buildings and things will last after people die off, wait, there will be noone around to watch.

Sounds good

[Dan667]

Maybe it will help my wife from saying she has ebola all the time when she gets the flu

Re:Sounds good

[ceoyoyo]

Tell her ebola outbreaks require the strictest quarantine. You love her, but you're going to have to lock her in a room by herself. Since the disease course is a week or two if she doesn't have ebola she should be fine (though unhappy) drinking the cases of bottled water and granola bars you leave her.

Re:Sounds good

[Dan667]

Tried that. Apparently, we are going to both die in some kind of tragic romantic way. Not sure how that works when you are bleeding from all orifices. May go back to the one of us needs to some how solder on ... meh, chicks.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Jurasic Park like problem awaiting to happen

[pablochacin]

Didn't these guys see (or better, read the book) Jurasic Park? This is a pandemia awaiting to hapen. As Dr. Malco said, "Nature always find its way". I'm booking for the first comercial flight to another planet, just in case.

t-virus

[Anonymous Coward]

how much more time tell we get the t-virus after all it also was to come from ebola research...

Slashdot News Network (SNN) 2010

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot News Network (SNN) 2010

*Flashes back to first scene from movie - I Am Legend*....

There we go again.. Perhaps we'll get to see hairless people like in the movie who are infected with "safely" mutated viruses in just a few years time? OMGOMG. Perhaps they're afraid of UV rays too! WOOTS!

Ebola is overrated

[Japie_H]

From an evolutionary viewpoint, Ebola is quite weak (at least in humans) It will kill you very soon and you'll start having severe symptoms after only a short period of time. Therefore it's very unlikely that ebola will ever become a 'danger' to humanity.

For a virus to be succesfull in humans it's very important not to kill your host. Ebola would be scary if it was as contagious as a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noro_virus for example.

This is how weaponized strains are made

[tietokone-olmi]

See, biological weapons in the trivial sense aren't very useful. It's no good if your troops catch the superflu or megagonorrhea too, you know?

Therefore in order for a strain to be adequately weaponized, it needs to be developed into something that 1) takes effect [i.e. incapacitates] very quickly after exposure, 2) doesn't linger [unless an area denial weapon is sought] and 3) doesn't spread too far outside those affected by the original deployment. This is why anthrax is close to an ideal biological weapon in its base form already: its spores carry a far greater risk of catching the actual bug than exposure to someone already affected, unless you're literally a cow that is.

So now we have an Ebola variant that doesn't spread. That's one out of three aspects done, and all under the guise of medical research. Were it Iran or North Korea or Pakistan doing this sort of research, they'd have US nukes up their bums in no time flat.

Don't be surprised that when the US invades Iran during the next prez's term, there will be reports of "enemy combatants" mysteriously discharging blood from every bodily orifice upon coming into weapons range from Coalition Troops. These will be hushed up and termed conspiracy theories, because by definition the US doesn't engage in biological warfare...

Re:This is how weaponized strains are made

[ceoyoyo]

Except that the modified virus doesn't spread WITHIN a host either. So nobody gets sick.

Re:This is how weaponized strains are made

[tietokone-olmi]

Yes, yes. The point is that the developers of this new strain have found a method to dial down the infectiousness of this virus. Where necessary they can also start with the original bug and dial its infectiousness down a little less. Where do you think the funding for this research comes from, anyway?

Remember how the US was said to only use white phosphorous munitions to "light the battlefield" too? Except then reports came out about bodies in these battlefields that had been stripped of all flesh, literally just clothed skeletons, consistent with WP exposure. But of course by definition the US doesn't use chemical weapons, so...

Re:This is how weaponized strains are made

[Broken scope]

This isn't a "dial" its an on/off switch.

Wouldn't white phosphorus also... you know... burn and MELT clothes?

Re:This is how weaponized strains are made

[Jesus_666]

You could inject every enemy soldier with 500ml of Ebola solution. Of course then you could also inject them with 500ml of Coca Cola, which would be far more cost effective and just as deadly. Or just inject them with a combat knife, which already is popular with the military.

But still, if you get every enemy soldier to line up for the biggest shot of their life you could easily wipe them all out with this strain.

Re:This is how weaponized strains are made

[ceoyoyo]

I think you misunderstand what they've done. They've turned off the infectiousness (or at least that's what they tried to do). They haven't dialed it down, and they can't "dial it down a little less."

In order to weaponize something you might want to make it MORE infections so it can't spread so far. Ebola doesn't have that problem, it's already TOO infectious. You might want to make it non-airborne, so it won't spread to your own troops. But you want to make it good and infectious once it's introduced into a host, by whatever means.

The goal of this research was to make a strain of ebola that isn't infections AT ALL. Zero. As in, you can drink it. Once it's in a host it does... nothing.

I don't know who funds their research (I expect it's probably the NIH, primarily). I doubt it's the military. Both the US and SU pretty much lost interest in ebola as a weapon since it's simply too virulent. It kills too fast to cause a proper outbreak.

Re:This is how weaponized strains are made

[ceoyoyo]

If they've achieved their goal, and the article is reasonably accurate, then the only way you could kill an enemy soldier with this strain would be to inject them with enough that they die from an overdose of the saline solution you use as a carrier. You'd be WAY better off with Cocoa Cola (I bet it doesn't take much of that at ALL when injected).

Re:This is how weaponized strains are made

[PCM2]

Yes, yes. The point is that the developers of this new strain have found a method to dial down the infectiousness of this virus.

No, they have not. Ebola was never really "infectious" in the sense that you mean. A typical outbreak is confined to a single village, at which point the virus runs out of potential hosts. It is not airborne (except, as some have pointed out, in harmless variants) and there is no other way to catch it than by direct contact with the bodily fluids of the infected. Ironically, this limited range of infection is what leads military types to classify Ebola as a potential biological weapon already, in its natural form.

Re:This is how weaponized strains are made

[Jesus_666]

I think one ebola virus can still foul up one cell. So 500ml of Ebola solution injected into the brain could lead to just enough brain cells dying to kill the victim. Well, of course any fast intracranial injection of 500ml of anything is bound to create problems, especially when administered in a combat situation.

For some reason I still don't think it's going to become the next superweapon.

Re:This is how weaponized strains are made

[ceoyoyo]

I thought about that. I guess it depends what the removed protein does. It must be post-entry to the cell, otherwise cells that made the protein would still be resistant. It must prevent the virus from hijacking the cell's machinery though, and if it's early enough in the process the cell could probably carry on as if nothing had happened.

Either way, agreed, not the next superweapon.

Tags

[ElizabethGreene]

Never have I seen an article more suited for the "what could possibly go wrong" tag...

Re:Tags

[AndersOSU]

It amazes me how there are so many people who, in one breath, will argue that we desperately need more funding to the basic sciences, and in the next will claim that any actual research should be halted because of the couldbe's.

Look, the people studying ebola are smart and they are safe. The people at the CDC and elsewhere have, I'm sure, explored the full spectrum of Michael Crichton related disasters. They may even have considered some other pulp fiction horrors, as well as actual real life threats.

Viral research is important, and yet, despite all the armchair virologists here on slashdot somehow we glossed over that this actually is making the virus safer to study, so that perhaps someday, Outbreak can be prevented.

Re:Tags

[ElizabethGreene]

I didn't say that they shouldn't do it, I said "what could possibly go wrong".

The choice between a virologist working on a "Hot" or "cold" ebola specimen is an easy one, and it is work that needs to be done. IMHO, the modified virus should be as tightly controlled as the real thing, and they most certainly will. -ellie

Re:Tags

[AndersOSU]

Sorry, didn't mean to rail against you, it's just that the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag has sort of been irritating me - and your comment seemed the right for me to air my feelings.

Someone else further down noted that for a tech site slashdot sure seems to have a lot of luddites.

Anyways, apologies again - nothing personal.

could it could be used for mass killing?

[id3as]

now consider someone pollutes our food with this 'harmless' virus in minuscule quantities, then modifies flu to produce this key protein giving that it is possible to infect large numbers of people with a lurking virus this way, it could be used as a tool to kill millions of people... am I wrong?

Opinion of a legend

[Anonymous Coward]

Well - before coming to conclusion, let's just ask the opinion of the legendary, brilliant scientist Robert Neville (Will Smith)...

Rainbox Six?

[Anonymous Coward]

All that's missing is calling the group "Horizon".

Outsourced proteins

[Anonymous Coward]

.....so nice to remove a component from the virus to render it relatively harmless.....

unless your OWN genetic heritage manufactures the missing protein (quite by accident, surely).

Something like this would be ideal for eliminating an entire subgroup of humanity. Whether intentional or not, it's the kind of thing that makes for eugenics nightmares. Sooner or later, SOMEONE will decide to misuse this capability, it's in the nature of humanity to do so. The genie's already out of the bottle, and with the human genome nearly sequenced, it's only a matter of time. Let's hope we adapt to the changes quickly enough.

No BSL4 Lab at UW Madison

[Hyperbolix]

There is no BSL4 Lab at UW Madison.

Googling "BSL4 wisconsin" will reveal many articles claiming that the university violated NIH guidelines to do this research, though it was authorized by the UW Institutional Biosafety Committee. Clearly, they have an interest in enabling research of this type at more institutions, given the great cost of operating a BSL4 facility. UW Madison lacks such a facility, yet has remained at the forefront of biotechnology research (having done pioneering work in the area of stem cells).

I have a friend in the civil engineering major who used to do HVAC work on campus. He told me "horror stories" about HVAC systems that vented air from a basement BSL3 lab into a third floor corridor because an uninformed contractor tapped into the wrong vent. Another time, he was evaluating the HVAC needs in a building and walked through an unmarked door, looked around, then exited, only to be told by a TA in the hall that he was not supposed to be in that room... that it was a BLS3 hot room.

The difference between a BSL2 and a BSL3 infectious agent could be a single mutation. One must ask... what is the probability of a mutation in this engineered virus causing it to return to its original form? Given the way virii replicate, it's certainly plausible that it could happen.

What is the "acceptable" risk? Perhaps it is time to reevaluate the biosafety levels? Now, with our greater understanding of genetics and mutation, we can classify things based upon current risk, and mutation risk?

I'm certain this will be a topic of much debate.

- John (hyperbolix)
I'm a CS student at UW Madison.

Google recruiters! My soul is available for purchase.

Thanks, but I'll panic now.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Ebola is NOT AIRBORNE. It is transmitted by direct contact and bodily fluids.

Unfortunately there is a variety of hemorrhagic fever that IS easily transmitted, probably airborne. It arrived in the east coast US with a shipment of primates and wiped them out in a lab. (Fortunately it was not transmissible to humans or we would have had quite the epidemic on our hands.)

Though ebola is not airborne (so far) it is very easily transmitted by contact - especially since it causes major fluid leakage.

If by taking out the VP30 gene they have reduced the pathogenicity of the virus enough to get the authorities to apply the more appropriate BSL3 tag to the mutant strain, they've succeeded in making an important stride towards expanding the field, while introducing a very minimal risk of an outbreak.

Taking out the VP30 gene is a moderate crock if they're going to culture it in cells that contain the transplanted gene. This is "safe" only until some gene crossover event restores the gene to a viral genome - after which the reconstituted virus not only is fully potent but has a slight advantage and takes over the culture.

Yes, giving the virus an extra hurdle to clear makes things safer, IF the handling restrictions aren't relaxed as a result. But just as "non-lethal" weapons (which are really just "less likely to be lethal or maiming") encourage more common usage by law enforcement and military rather than just switching, a "safe virus" is an invitation to lax handling.

A picture worth a thousand words

[dp_wiz]

Old news, btw.

redundancy

[Anonymous Coward]

functions critical for species survival as important as reproduction often have multiple redundancies, likely encoded into what scientists currently dub as "junk" DNA that they can't make sense of. These defects often can be fixed in several generations of replication. I wouldn't be surprised if after several "replications" in monkey kidney, we'll be hearing of a very dead team of epola researchers.

Re:Don't mess with Texas

[KingSH4M4N]

"How much do we know about virii to safely declare legally".. Might be better to ask a lawyer about the legality, but as far as what we know about viruses, lets just say you probably wouldn't be alive without the vaccinations millions of children receive before they can talk. As for the virus leaping from monkeys to humans, I think you are misunderstanding what is really happening here. It is not that the virus exists in monkeys. It is a human virus (monkeys may be able to carry it, but that's not really our concern in this case; it has already presented in the human population). Monkeys are merely the source of a cellular tool to proliferate a crippled form of the virus. There are no acual whole live monkeys, but monkey kidney cells that are grown in cell culture. These are specially modified cells which do not occur naturally. They might as well have been dingo cells, although that would present a few more technical challeges. Ebola isn't going anywhere. Even if it can be changed to work with it in a BL3 instead of a BL4, it's still being contained in a highly controlled and monitored environment. Actually, Bush hates funding for genetic engineering because he is a moron, doesn't know better, and can't spare any extra cash from his oil enterprises (AKA killing Iraqis). How about we just stop funding for education and healthcare all together? It's just unholy right? Tell you what, how about the next time you are diagnosed with cancer or HIV or Ebola, how about you just ask God to take care of you, since you think scientists who come up with the medical technologies are so irrational. Obviously you would have better chances of surviving right? (I'm being sarcastic) Yee Haw!

Only problem is

[Nodamnnicknamesavial]

.. the monkeys become really agitated and develop red-eye..

Damn you and your lousy grammar

[mi]

You might of ...

"You might have" or "You might've", darn it... Do you really need a Ukrainian to point this out?

The "of" can not belong there in any possible sentence...

Playing with fire

[gr8_phk]

There is a single gene in Ebola that makes it deadly. Should that gene be transfered to another virus (cold, flu, etc...) it will convey that lovely hemorrhaging symptom to people infected with that virus. This has already been proven in a lab (deliberately, not on people). Since these guys already have the ability to remove a single specific gene from the virus, it would be prudent to also remove this other one before allowing it to replicate inside animal host cells. OTOH, if that gene is needed for this particular virus to survive then they need to leave it in and do this work in a suitable environment - level 4 biohazard or whatever.

On another note, I've wondered how an Ebola virus minus the hemorrhagic gene would be as a vaccination. Since newer reports indicate chronic problems for survivors of the disease, the first thing to do is determine if it's that gene that causes those problems. If not, it's not really viable to have a viral vaccine running around giving everyone chronic headaches. Oh wait...

Drink it?

[Anonymous Coward]

"We wanted to make biologically contained Ebola virus so that we can drink it," said Yoshihiro Kawaoka.

Are they going to invent a new soft drink, Coca Bola?

FYI

[funkdancer]

Your moderations get dropped if you post non-AC in the same thread.

Manhattan Project

[EdIII]

I remember hearing stories about how the scientists in the Manhattan Project were taking bets on just how big the explosion was going to be. I would think those guys were pretty smart, and still had at least some uncertainty.

That is one ballsy scientist to put the words "safe" and "ebola" in the same sentence. Mad props to the boy if he is really that good at his game and pulled it off, but it would be one spectacular failure to witness if he is wrong.

On another note, those poor little monkeys....

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion