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US Preserves Smallpox For Defense
lee1 writes "The US is preserving the last remaining known strains of smallpox in case they are needed to develop bio-warfare 'countermeasures' and as a hedge against possible outbreaks in a population with no natural immunity. 451 specimens are stored in Atlanta at the Centers for Disease Control, and 120 strains at the Russian Vector laboratory in Siberia. Meanwhile, the government has contracted to pay almost $3 billion to procure 14 million smallpox vaccination doses."
... for science... ... you monster...
... on the "known" part. It seems like a fairly intelligent move to me. It is indeed a low probability scenario that someone will actually release smallpox as a biological weapon, but still the consequences of such an outlier would be devastating enough to warrant the adoption of such a policy.
right...
Don't see why this is news; it's not like the US is the only place with virus reserves. And, it'd be very difficult to develop a vaccine for a disease without samples to work with (unless we want to try and catch infected people and draw samples before they die, which would just increase the deaths).
Can't see how anyone besides the ultra-paranoid would see this as a problem, nukes pose a more significant and real threat than these stored samples...
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
the movie Outbreak.
Didn't everybody know this 10 years ago?
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Science it is, but leveraging a $3 billion budget for personal gain is all business.
(You're not in the business of government, are you?)
It's been rumored for a long time that the UK has stocks at the Porton Down labs. Just to help development of countermeasures, of course.
They're keeping the samples so they can use them to make vaccines if there is an outbreak.
Or have his head removed forcibly from his shoulders.
And when we find out that a modified smallpox vaccinates against AIDS, will you still have that opinion?
How is it evil to hang onto some so that you can make a vaccination should an outbreak occur? Especially when you know that there are other stockpiles of this organism, the summary even says that the Russians have some.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
And anyone who defends the existence of smallpox as a weapon should have his head examined.
I'd prefer they be drowned in a tub of CancerAIDS.
So the US and Russian Federation toast the stock they have. 5 years later the People's Republic of China or North Korea release a mutated weaponized smallpox that no one else has a vaccine for.
Thats assuming the US and Russians are the only ones with smallpox in a vial still.
What should we do with people with poor reading comprehension?
Hanging on to firearms and explosives that can kill millions is about as evil as evil gets.
To the bottom of the ociean they should all go. Every last one of them. And anyone who defends the existence of guns and bombs as weapons should have his head examined.
Or locked up. Forever.
--
BMO
Because leaving yourself defenseless means nobody will attack you.
over time, complacency will rot security, and over time, creative malintentioned individuals or organizations will exploit that. a smallpox outbreak would be like 10-100 9/11s or 10-100 fukushimas. destruction then seems preferable. you don't even need an actual smallpox virus to make a vaccine
but you are operating against human psychology: we aren't made to discard such power, even if the power is completely malicious
it may sound odd, but consider the lord of the rings, when humans had the chance to destroy the one ring, but chose to keep it instead. yes, its fiction, but all potent fiction is rooted in real human psychology, or such fiction wouldn't have any resonance or attraction to us in terms of storytelling ability. and with the lord of the rings we have valuable insight into how our own weaknesses and greed and lust for power hurt us in the long term
we won't destroy smallpox. and we will be hurt by that decision, many years from now
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...an outbreak that would start from where exactly? This logic seems a bit circular.
+1 Disagree
The problem is that if you throw all your samples into the autoclave you're now unable to develop a vaccine before an outbreak occurs. If an outbreak occurred people would be dying in the streets before you would even have enough samples incubated to start vaccine development and who knows how far it would spread before your vaccine is in full production. As is, with samples in secure locations you can develop a vaccine preemptively and start vaccinating people the minute you are aware of the outbreak. This isn't like MAD where we keep nukes to blow up the other guy if he uses his, keeping live samples of the virus actually allows us to defend against it's use. (Not to mention the small but real possibility of a natural outbreak).
You really believe that they are being held on to for vaccines and not weaponization?
One word.
Naive.
--
BMO
And when we find out that a modified smallpox vaccinates against AIDS, will you still have that opinion?
That's an argument against everything. i.e. it's useless.
Can you not just collect samples when an outbreak occurs...and if an outbreak occurs, would it not be a different strain anyways? Also...is it not possible to store information about the disease and use that later rather than keeping the actual disease? Keeping a disease that has been eradicated doesn't seem to have any non military benefit that I can see...
Not to mention, you don't need a smallpox sample to make smallpox vaccine.
What happens when some natural disaster hits Atlanta or Siberia and the stuff leaks? We spent a hundred years making smallpox extinct, let's finish the damn job.
It sure sounds to me like the virus is a species about to become extinct and it needs to be added to the endangered species list asap. Where are all the left wing environmental nuts when you need them?
Uh, from a terrorist digging up a victim of the outbreak, or some other nations bio-weapons lab synthesizing it, or from it developing again from cowpox? Just because these are the only *known* samples doesn't mean they are the only samples in existence.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It is to kill all the humans for when the aliens come back!
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
Oh really? Then we are A-OK!!
Perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
From the samples that we know the Russians are keeping? From samples that someone we don't know is keeping?
The problem is not those with declared stocks. The problem is that someone who isn't declaring it has some stored. Theyd be much more likely to do something untoward with it. And, if they do, then how would destroying small known stocks be anything but symbolism?
We're really early in the game of understanding the genetic basis of disease virulence. It's hard to say what may be useful in the way of organisms to be used in that kind of research.
Some emergent virus that uses some of smallpox's tricks may show up and we'd regret not having it available to study to better understand the new one.
Smallpox vaccine is not made from smallpox virus, it's made from cowpox virus.
if we were still vaccinated against small pox like nearly everyone else in the world.
They already have the weaponized strains and their vaccines, these are the wild strains they are talking about, only a really naive person would believe that they would talk publicly about the weaponized versions =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
>The problem is that if you throw all your samples into the autoclave you're now unable to develop a vaccine before an outbreak occurs
You're assuming that $FOE has the same strain as you do. Because if this was /really/ about eradicating smallpox and making vaccines, laboratories around the world would have all the same strains and share with each other.
No, the only reason to really keep these around is for offensive purposes.
>you can develop a vaccine preemptively and start vaccinating people the minute you are aware of the outbreak.
Think for a second. You can't preemptively create a vaccine because you don't know what strain $FOE has used until he's used it. And weaponized smallpox is not the same as smallpox from the 18'th century or Ghana or wherever.
--
BMO
The obvious answer would be the Russians, who have historically demonstrated a somewhat cavalier attitude towards biological warfare.
Smallpox vaccines are not made from smallpox virus. They are made from a virus called vaccinia. Stocks of smallpox are not needed to make vaccines.
Or assuming there are no non-lab specimens. I do not consider it out of the range of possibility that someone excavating, say, a WW1 battlefield, could find the preserved corpse of someone who was infected with smallpox (We got samples of the Spanish flu virus that way) and thus put the virus back in the wild.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I *have* RTFA, and I don't see where the sentence "Meanwhile, the government has contracted to pay almost $3 billion to procure 14 million smallpox vaccination doses." comes from. How much time do you need to produce the vaccine from the virus? Is it some kind of future pledge? Because otherwise maybe three big ones is a bit much for a hypothetical threat. Can an active virus be derived from the vaccine? If so you'd have to watch the vaccine as well as the virus.
We need to stockpile these viruses in order to stop the spread of the imminent Zombie Outbreak. Just don't hit the self-destruct button at the CDC until all Zombies have been eliminated!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Do you know for a fact that there exists no other sources of smallpox in the world? Do you know that no country/organization other than the US/Russia has smallpox samples? Do you know that there are no remote, indigenous population that still carries smallpox? Smallpox has been eradicated from the developed world and most of the under-developed world, but no one can be sure it is completely gone.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
No but stockpiles are needed to do research on smallpox genetics.
The bloody virus was sequenced many times and can be reconstructed if the need be.
Someone mod this up informative if true.
Wait, it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccinia
--
BMO
...an outbreak that would start from where exactly? This logic seems a bit circular.
Not circular if you assume it'll be accidentally released by the other guys.
Also the general public naively thinks only two known storage means only two storage sites exist... How exactly do you know the French don't have one? Or some dude working on it in NYC in 1960 died in '61, and they're just now getting around to defrosting and replacing his research freezer? I've often wondered what happens if some dude who died on a glacier 1000 years ago gets defrosted, and someone downstream drinks the water... On a regular basis cemeteries are dug up and moved, and before a certain era they are stuffed full of plague victims, thats just how it is... And how long can a single SP virus be preserved? Nobody really knows, although some smart people have some good guesses...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
"...an outbreak that would start from where exactly?"
Maybe from here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2404051.stm
or here:
http://www.livescience.com/2403-climate-threat-thawing-tundra-releases-infected-corpses.html
or even here:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2003-12-26-smallpox-in-envelope_x.htm
Can we assume that the declared US and Russian stocks are the last viable samples anywhere on the planet..?
No but I'm not naive in thinking someone else won't weaponize their samples. Remember the key word in the report is "known samples". I am not naive enough to think North Korea would announce they had samples and that they haven't already weaponized them.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
He said, sneeringly.
Last time this was used for "defense", I believe it was infused into blankets at the siege of Fort Pitt.
250 years go by, but the leopard does not change his spots so readily...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Human bodies rot a lot faster than that. How many plague corpses could possibly still be around? If you do not bother with the American burial method, preserve the body and seal it in a metal tube, humans rot as fast as any other mammal our size. You would probably be lucky to find teeth from a plague victim.
Heck, we could uncover it moving a graveyard anywhere in the world, or exhuming a body for some reason.
so 14 million.... that's enough to start a new country, you think? give it to everyone, save 14 million, everybody else dies.... population control complete! now we all get to start over as farmers. well, what's left of us. I'm probably going to be one of those that die. Nobody needs a DBA in that future.
...an outbreak that would start from where exactly? This logic seems a bit circular.
Where do you think it came from to begin with?
I understand the need for defending your country etc.
But really, how can anybody involved in this actually think they are not doing evil?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
So the US and Russian Federation toast the stock they have. 5 years later the People's Republic of China or North Korea release a mutated weaponized smallpox that no one else has a vaccine for.
Does having a tiny bit of old smallpox in a vial somewhere give you a significant advantage in making large quantities of vaccine for new mutated smallpox?
According to TFS the US is ordering 14 million smallpox vaccine doses and I don't think they're relying on the current smallpox vials to make them. It seems to me that we could kill off smallpox but still be ready to produce vaccines if a new strain broke out.
Frankly, I think the odds and resulting damage of some nation hiding weaponized smallpox all these years and intentionally releasing it are overshadowed by the odds and damage of the US accidentally releasing or losing the stored vials. Autoclave the thing and call it a day.
Mankind has yet to invent event one "antiviral" that stops an infection from progressing, in say the way that antibiotics can stop a bacterial infection in it's tracks. Meaning that vaccines/inoculation are the only way to stop them -- via prevention, not cure. SO until a cure exists for even ONE virus, the world's most dangerous viruses need to have vaccines for them available.
The point for keeping the viruses is that because mankind can't re-synthesize an active virus to test against, there needs to be a stock against which the vaccines can be tested. The point to having a particular number of vaccinations available is that in the event that an outbreak were discovered, a much lower threshold of containment can be accomplished by inoculations in a circular shape around the outbreak(s) so that responders and other possible people exposed can be protected.
Change the name of the virus to "Ebola" for which they can still basically only theorize the still don't know the original transmission vector. Or "hantavirus" in the US, [if it were spreadable other than by rodent / flea type infestation]. Assume 25 years has gone by and now that there's no ebola samples or hantavirus samples to test against, and then a vector hits a major population center at the time of the World Cup in soccer, or the Olympics, etc.
Change the topic back to smallpox... Do you still want them to destroy the few remaining smallpox VIRUS stocks they need to test new vaccines and drugs against?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Smallpox has taught us a great deal about diseases and how to cure them, including novel methods that have lead to cures for other diseases. The study of it has barely scratched the surface.
Destroying it and taking your closed-minded, narrow approach is like throwing out "OtherOS" on the PS3 because it can be used to facility game piracy. That's the only possible use for it, right?
Just checking.
The US is preserving /* the last remaining known */ strains of smallpox in case they are needed to develop bio-warfare 'countermeasures'
Same as Anthrax, it wasn't for weapons. Even though a U.S. scientist used it and caused mayhem, is just an unfortunate episode.
There's no way it's going to be used on weapons or for terrorism, or end in the wrong hands altogether. Nope, there isn't.
</sarcasm>
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
See my other post on this. And yes you are correct that smallpox virus is not required to MAKE the vaccines.
Try this thought on for size though. Do you really want to test a smallpox vaccine on anything other than the deadly cousin of the vaccine's organizm, aka the REAL smallpox virus?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Hanging on to a microorganism that can kill millions is about as evil as evil gets. To the autoclave they should all go. Every last one of them. And anyone who defends the existence of smallpox as a weapon should have his head examined.
The problem is that the disease still exists outside of labs. Some victims were far enough north that they were buried in permafrost regions. Note that this fact has been the inspiration for numerous movies and tv shows. Also note that those concerned about global warming are also concerned about smallpox.
"The search for variola viruses surviving even longer was pursued in 1991 near Novosibirsk, Russia (9). "Bioweapons experts" searched for the variola virus in 19th-century smallpox victims mummified in the permafrost above the Arctic Circle. In the event of unusual thawing and flooding, the concern was that these corpses might become exposed and release infectious virus into the environment. In the 19th century, this region of Russia (Sakha Republic) was "ravaged by smallpox strains of extraordinary lethality" (9). Isolating and comparing them with preserved modern strains might identify genes contributing to virulence. To date, no live variola viruses have been isolated from Sakha. But the threat now is that "a sophisticated terrorist team might go smallpox hunting on the permafrost" (9)"
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol11no05/04-0616.htm
There has even been discussions regarding investigations of crypts in Europe:
"In the absence of reliable survival data some experts have advised the routine vaccination of archaeologists who might handle well preserved corpses"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1008009/pdf/brjindmed00145-0079.pdf
These are being kept in the event that *a* Government may need to "create" a way of culling the population in the future.
This is why big pharma is allowed to continue to "treat" major killers such as cancer and HIV/AIDS rather than cure, to ensure deaths, even if a cure already exists.
This is why big tobacco is allowed to use deadly pesticides on their crops, to ensure deaths.
This is also why alcohol is allowed to be legal, to ensure deaths, while marijuana will likely never be fully legalized, due to its inability to cause death.
If you think I'm being paranoid here, it doesn't take a genius to realize that resource management is a real problem for every Government in the world, and we are rapidly outgrowing our natural resources. Ensuring deaths continue to happen, however twisted that sounds, IS a viable option that they are exercising every day.
You're a twit who doesn't understand biological warfare OR vaccines.
First off, small pox would be a horrid biological weapon for an industrialize nation to use. We have better weapons and they can be control a hell of a lot more effectively. Small pox would be unpredictable in where the put break would occur.
Also, Small Pox came about through natural means the first time and i can do it again.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I have smallpox in my pants.
No problem. No humans will be exposed to what is inside your pants.
--buzz-- Nope. The samples are the test base for the vaccine, AKA if the vaccine doesn't prevent the smallpox virus from going HOT AKA infecting the host, then it's not a viable vaccine. Ya gots to have the real thing to test against.
http://www.archetypeltd.co.nz/Smallpox.htm#edward_jenner
How can it possibly come back if it's been 'eradicated'?
There is no such thing as 'vaccination', and this $3 billion is an outrageous theft of the taxpayers' money.
Human bodies rot a lot faster than that. How many plague corpses could possibly still be around? If you do not bother with the American burial method, preserve the body and seal it in a metal tube, humans rot as fast as any other mammal our size. You would probably be lucky to find teeth from a plague victim.
Interestingly, they have recovered Yersina pestis DNA from buried 16th century plague victims. It would be at least theoretically possible to get smallpox DNA out of buried victims. Not easy, but within the technical reach of a moderately adept molecular biology lab. Of which there are many, many examples scattered about the planet.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20110516_8175.php
(I'm so advanced that I combined information from two sources to produce my summary.)
On a totally unrelated note, the government has also been breeding bees in remote locations in corn fields. This definitely is not related to their interest in smallpox.
If there were no other samples on the planet and it doesn't every break out again, is it right to exterminate a species?
They are the last known strains. That does not mean they don't exist in nature, or might not be uncovered in an archeological dig, or by a SCUBA diver or snorkeler finding some in a jar in a shipwrek, and an absolutely miniscule chance that there are viable viruses. Those are unlikely scenarios depicted in dramas on TV, but it isn't completely impossible that it could exist. Why not keep the one weapon we have against smallpox infection so cultures can be made to continue producing vaccines?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
This isn't news.
I was vaccinated against smallpox in the Marine Corps. We knew there that the government kept smallpox. Next, they're going to tell us that the government keeps anthrax on file too!
If it is possible, even remotely possible, for another country to use smallpox as a weapon then it would be unwise for any country which could protect against that weapon to fail to do so.
1) It is possible for another country to use smallpox as a weapon
2) The US can protect itself against this weapon by keeping samples of the virus alive and by stocking the antivirus drugs
3) It would be unwise for the US not to follow this course.
No malice or suspicion need be applied towards the US or any other country for this logic to hold. Nothing to see here.
It came from the news, and is a combination of your exact thoughts. The jist is Big Pharma Company X was awarded $500 million for one million vaccines, with options for an extra 12 million vaccines valued at $1.5 billion. I'm not sure, but last time I check this wouldn't even cover the New York City metropolitan area.
Here is the actual source which I found via this blog.
You can not reverse engineer smallpox from the vaccinia vaccine (smallpox vaccine). The virus is related to small pox, and in vaccination is a live virus, so care must still be taken. It's probable that vaccinia shares a common ancestor as cowpox, the original smallpox vaccine dating back to the 18th century, possibly as a pox like virus originally found in horses.
For my part, I'll try to stay away from outbreak areas if the worst should happen. Other than that, I'll not lose any sleep over it.
forgot the parentheses
(10-1009)/11 = - 90.81818181818181818182
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
With new gene synthesis technologies (such as the ones used by Craig Venter to create his "synthetic" bacteria), one could fairly easily resurrect smallpox from DNA chemically synthesized in the lab along with some engineered cell lines. This was demonstrated with poliovirus nearly a decade ago (Cello, Paul, and Wimmer 2002 Chemical Synthesis of Poliovirus cDNA: Generation of Infectious Virus in the Absence of Natural Template Science 297: 1016. doi:10.1126/science.1072266). So, even eliminating every remaining sample of smallpox on Earth would not guarantee that the virus could not one day be resurrected as a bio-weapon.
We are legion
Virulent pathogens have got rights, too!
From evolution if you buy into that sciency stuff. Yep, that's right Evolution created Small pox to begin with- bit God or the Devil in order to punish something.
Small pox rears it's head in different times of the historical record and I cannot find any timeline tracking it's movement from one part of the world to another to nothing because of the vaccine.
So something either causes something else to mutate, it can be carried by animals or insects and isn't actually non-existant, or something else that causes it to appear, disappear then reappear.
I distrust government probably more than most but even I find this to be a strech:
These are being kept in the event that *a* Government may need to "create" a way of culling the population in the future.
This is why big pharma is allowed to continue to "treat" major killers such as cancer and HIV/AIDS rather than cure, to ensure deaths, even if a cure already exists.
This is why big tobacco is allowed to use deadly pesticides on their crops, to ensure deaths.
This is also why alcohol is allowed to be legal, to ensure deaths, while marijuana will likely never be fully legalized, due to its inability to cause death.
If you think I'm being paranoid here, it doesn't take a genius to realize that resource management is a real problem for every Government in the world, and we are rapidly outgrowing our natural resources. Ensuring deaths continue to happen, however twisted that sounds, IS a viable option that they are exercising every day.
Time to offend someone
It might be a different strain, but it might also be easier to mutate a strain into it then to culture fresh sampled to be experimented on until a new vaccine is created assuming we don't forget how to make it for that specific problem.
One of the problems with collecting the virus when there is an epidemic is that your workers possess a serious risk of becoming infected too. So you need to set up some serious protections and pray for the best. It would go a lot quicker already having the strain in a workable culture that could be called up in a controlled environment as soon as the strain is identified. I think it just makes more sense to keep it.
Since the smallpox genome was decoded and published in 2006, it is impossible to rid the world of the threat of smallpox.
The Vaccinia virus used in smallpox vaccinations is 95% similar to smallpox (see http://www.nap.edu/html/variola_virus/ch1.html). This means that the base difference is 10,000 bases. This is only modestly more than the 7500 bases assembled to synthetically recreate polio, which was also accomplished in 2006. You can order custom gene sequences of 1000 base pairs today at a cost of $1.30 per base pair.
A gene assembly lab, a sample of Vaccinia and a hundred thousand dollars can recreate smallpox today.
There is no other option but continue smallpox research for defensive purposes.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
but that is held very securely and could never be released into the wild.
Keeping the samples around in case they are needed to produce vacines seems like a reasonal policy to me. But 3 billion dollars seems like an awful lot of money to spend preparing for an unlikely scenario, one of perhaps thousands of unlikely scenarios.
Yes you are a complete paranoid nut job and really should seek professional help.
It is simple as that. We need a new moderation level. "Seek help now"
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Might as well add automobiles to that list, as they tend to be the cause of more deaths.
Read "The demon in the freezer" - written with input from Ken Alibek - former Soviet bio-weapons honcho. Scary, non-fiction stuff - from TEN years ago. Just think what they have accomplished since. This is the reason for keeping it around. It's the new MAD....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon_in_the_Freezer
http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Freezer-True-Story/dp/0375508562
Got it in the bargain bin one day, about 6 or 7 years ago...
unlike SIV/ HIV or influenza which loves making species jumps, there are no natural smallpox reservoirs out there except us, other human beings. so it is genuinely dead in the wild
yes, there are related cousins to smallpox, like cowpox, but these diseases need to evolve into something like smallpox over an extended period of time, they won't simply spontaneously recreate smallpox in the wild
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
No, it actually isn't a useless argument in this case.
When there's some indication that the smallpox vaccine actually does increase resistance to HIV infection, the argument is a fairly interesting one to bring up.
Actually let us consider the Lord of the Rings and fiction in general. They also involve both the psychology of the reader and writer. I remember reading a short story by Terry Brooks in the Shanarra universe and remembering why I dislike it. For his stories with magic or technology, it matters not which, is only useful when used to oppose a great evil and then it's best never used again because, y'know, moderation is impossible in life. For all the books he's written that world has not improved much -- that might be an equally valuable lesson to observe.
The problem with paranoia either real, or written into fiction, is that quite often the methods of mass killing aren't that new or exotic. Death, like electricity, usually chooses the path of least resistance. And that doesn't usually involve an expensive version of a known virus when ordinary bullets will do. And if that's thinking too small then bombs, and then bigger bombs with chemical or nuclear payloads (more hardy then biological vectors and nominally controllable). Anyway the point is that the smallpox stockpile story comes up like a weed, and the paranoid theories follow. It's possible that we're going to all die via Stephen King's super-flu (pox?), but it's highly unlikely unless you can stop by the 7-11 and purchase a strain.
are waiting. When we're all gone, they'll have their world and we'll be forced to bury underground in a city we'll call... I dunno... something beginning with Z.
Some people preserve their used socks for that purpose ...
Since the smallpox genome was decoded and published in 2006, it is impossible to rid the world of the threat of smallpox.
Yes, but it was copyrighted, so we are safe for life + 70 years.
Smallpox was naturally derived from cowpox. Cowpox is found in animals such as cows, rats and cats. It could very well develop again. Why wouldn't it be a smart idea to keep a hold of small pox just in case? Viruses are highly mutative, we gain a lot of knowledge from holding onto smallpox. There's three scenarios here:
1. Smallpox is delivered as a weapon, either from hidden stockpiles or reverse engineered from cowpox : We use our stockpiles to make vaccine
2. Smallpox is found again in nature, as a natural derivative of cowpox : We use our stockpiles to make vaccine
3. Some other derivative of cowpox shows up due to naturally mutating viruses: We use our stockpiles to compare the two strains, find out why it mutated the way it did, and develop a vaccine.
1 and 3 are likely to happen, as a result of human nature, and good old fashioned nature respectively. In an ideal world, it's conceivable all humans choose to disband biological weapons or something. But it's not realistic to think cowpox won't continue to exist and evolve as viruses do.
Smallpox makes a poor biological weapon.
While smallpox is undeniably nasty, it is nowhere near lethal enough to make a decent weapon, and the vaccine is well understood and readily manufactured.
The counter-example of what happened to the Native Americans upon contact with European explorers is an unfortunate - and inevitable - side effect arising out of the fact that smallpox was unknown in the New World and so none of the Native American population had evolved defenses against it like Europeans had.
Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus for more detail.
But now that the human bloodlines are so well mixed, no culture should have that genetic susceptibility to smallpox, so the opportunity for devastating and lethal smallpox plagues should be pretty much gone.
Notwithstanding, smallpox was a nasty disease and an outbreak would be serious stuff, but not "weapons grade" serious stuff. A "weapons grade" biological agent needs to be very lethal and very contagious, but over a very short time frame. Ideally, you'd want the agent to go through its contagious stage and end in death in a couple of hours or so. If death takes longer than that, then the target can still fight when sick, and if the contagious phase is prolonged, you greatly increase the possibility of "blowback" where you infect your own troops or civilians.
The worst case is a highly lethal disease that is highly contagious but takes weeks to present - that's a "The Stand" scenario. And nobody wants that.
As it happens, the agents that were weaponized by the US were abandoned, in no small part because they were insufficiently (which is to say, not very) lethal. They also had very low rates of infection meaning that the logistical requirements for a successful strike were infeasible.
Never mind the scary and evil aspects of germ warfare; as a practical weapon, it just doesn't work. High explosives are far cheaper and work far better.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
USA is the number one terrorist country in the world.
1. Nuclear bombs to civil cities.
2. Korea
3. Agent Orange in Vietnam
4. Million deaths in Iraq
5. Afganistan and Pakistan.
6. Now they are preparing to release smallpox back for us
Great nation!
Yes you are a complete paranoid nut job and really should seek professional help. It is simple as that. We need a new moderation level. "Seek help now"
Perhaps "ignorance" should be added to the moderation levels too. Do your own research before attempting to belittle. The numbers speak for themselves, and so do the regulatory agencies that do NOT oversee certain businesses for "unknown" reasons.
critical thinking means believing whatever you think and ignoring all evidence to the contrary. you didn't happen to have family members involved in this did you? the type of denial you espouse is normally reserved for people trying to hide their own greed or shameful actions.
You actually wouldn't need to even start with Vaccinia virus. In 2008, scientists at the J Craig Venter Institute synthesized and assembled the genome of an entire bacterium from scratch (Gibson et al. 2008. Complete Chemical Synthesis, Assembly, and Cloning of a Mycoplasma genitalium Genome. Science 319: 1215 - 1220. doi:10.1126/science.1151721) . The bacterial genome they synthesized was 580,000 base pairs compared to the 186,000 base pair size of the smallpox genome. Of course, commercial gene synthesis companies would never sell anyone any sequence resembling a smallpox sequence, but given enough resources, a government or even some well funded group could conceivably resurrect smallpox without needing a sample of the virus.
It couldn't be because they haven't found a cure for cancer or HIV/AIDS but they have found some treatments that help treat a number of the symptoms, lessening their effect, could it?
They haven't found a cure for my migraines, but taking a couple of ibuprofen pills helps. OMG it's a government conspiracy!!1! They want my headaches to kill me since there is no cure!
You actually wouldn't need to even start with Vaccinia virus. In 2008, scientists at the J Craig Venter Institute synthesized and assembled the genome of an entire bacterium from scratch (Gibson et al. 2008. Complete Chemical Synthesis, Assembly, and Cloning of a Mycoplasma genitalium Genome. Science 319: 1215 - 1220. doi:10.1126/science.1151721) . The bacterial genome they synthesized was 580,000 base pairs compared to the 186,000 base pair size of the smallpox genome. Of course, commercial gene synthesis companies would never sell anyone any sequence resembling a smallpox sequence, but given enough resources, a government or even some well funded group could conceivably resurrect smallpox without needing a sample of the virus.
True. The Vaccinia path is the shortest though - not only because of the small number of base pairs that need to be cutout/spliced in but because pox virus replication also requires some specialized enzymes that Vaccinia provides for free. And one must ponder how short a sequence one would need to order before it is recognized as being a subcomponent of small pox.
Eventually gene synthesis is going to percolate down to the level of undergraduate bio lab courses, and won't stop there either.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
I work Black Core 9. We where just waiting for you to reply so we could track your location. We have a full em scan on you now and are monitoring all you communications. If you stop posting such foolishness now you may have a nice long quite life. Otherwise... Well people get sick all the time. Do you know how many people just drop dead from the flu.
Of course I am just kidding since no one would be silly enough to post this on Slashdot... Or wouldn't they?
We have the whole genome on file. Why exactly are you defending keeping stocks that rationally can serve only one purpose - possible weaponization? We don't need em for research, we don't need em for vaccination. They are kept by people closely associated by the military. The sick fuckers don't want to lose the possibility to use it as a weapon, however remote that seems at the current situation. That's Mengele-grade shit going on there.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
We know how to make the vaccine for more than a century. It was the first vaccine ever made, actually, with technology every third world doctor can reproduce by now. We do not need the virus stocks to test it. Keeping them is just holding open the door for possible weaponization.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
The CDC is closely associated to the US military?
It couldn't be because they haven't found a cure for cancer or HIV/AIDS but they have found some treatments that help treat a number of the symptoms, lessening their effect, could it?
They haven't found a cure for my migraines, but taking a couple of ibuprofen pills helps. OMG it's a government conspiracy!!1! They want my headaches to kill me since there is no cure!
What doesn't kill you physically kills you financially. Death comes in many forms, physical only being the last one you'll experience.
It is far too profitable to treat diseases than cure them. How many different drugs have come to market to try and "treat" migraines or various forms of cancer, at ever-increasing costs to the tune of trillions of dollars in profit, and what happens to those revenue streams once a cure is found? My sig speaks volumes here.
And much like any other plan to effect impact, you go for the masses, of which migraines would not cause enough of an impact due to the numbers. Cancer on the other hand, is a rather convenient blanket to shove all sorts of causes under, while keeping a cure under lock and key.
Don't worry. I'm not offended if you disagree. I'm sure when it was proposed the world was round and not flat, he was called batshit crazy too.
Problem is...he was right.
Government institutions are independent of each other and the CDC wouldn't be instrumentalized in a second for warfare purposes if some sick fuck would deem it necessary?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Well, since the DoD has it's own level 4 biohazard facility where it runs all of its...whatever it does...at Fort Detrick Maryland with the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), I doubt the CDC's civilians would just be turned into Doctor Mengeles instantly.
Katrina, and the Iraqi Occupation have shown that the US government doesn't do well at civilian-military cooperation on the fly.
As for calling it all "Mengele-grade shit going on there" - you should read up on what Mengele did - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mengele
This is why big tobacco is allowed to use deadly pesticides on their crops, to ensure deaths.
No, Big Tobacco's allowed to use deadly pesticides on their crops because this conversation took place at least once:
Government: Hey! You can't put that stuff on your crops! It's deadly! We don't want people ingesting that!
Tobacco Growers: You realize these crops are just going to end up in cigarettes, right?
Government: Ohhhh.... Carry on then!
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
$3^9 for 14^6 doses, do the math.
Somebody is making a killing even before the main event.
I have no idea if this kind of thing exists today or is under development. But I certainly wouldn't mind seeing airborne disease detectors in high-traffic areas, especially transportation hubs like airports. Having another unique disease to study/detect could have some value while developing tests, vaccines, cures, etc.
You don't kill smallpox
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
No, death is death. "the act of dying; the end of life; the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism."
Misusing words doesn't add anything to your argument, although it is popular these days. See: "Rape".
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
These are being kept in the event that *a* Government may need to "create" a way of culling the population in the future.
This is why big pharma is allowed to continue to "treat" major killers such as cancer and HIV/AIDS rather than cure, to ensure deaths, even if a cure already exists.
We cure cancer every day and do so reliably. The problem is that every single cancer is a unique disease that may need a unique cure. There are millions of cancers which need cured... and we do so for about half of them. All of those breast cancers you hear about? They're independent diseases which happen to look and work similar to each other.
You claim there are cures for HIV/AIDS. How many people were treated with this miracle before the government types put it under lock and key? (Zero) With nobody cured with the treatment, you can't claim there to be a cure!
There is one person on the planet who is described as having been cured of HIV/AIDS. He did it by recieving an immune system transplant from a compatible donor who happened to have a pronounced genetic resistance to the virus. Everyone who cares knows how this works, because the method was freely given to everybody on the planet, and why it won't work for most people. (Go study immunology if you want to figure out the second part.)
You obviously have abso-fucking-lutely no clue how complicated and difficult these problems are. Why do you think we have people who spend their entire lives studying these damned things in order to make the advances we have? Why don't we get rid of biologists and doctors and just refer to some random jackass on the street?
Since the smallpox genome was decoded and published in 2006, it is impossible to rid the world of the threat of smallpox.
The Vaccinia virus used in smallpox vaccinations is 95% similar to
smallpox (see http://www.nap.edu/html/variola_virus/ch1.html). This
means that the base difference is 10,000 bases. This is only modestly
more than the 7500 bases assembled to synthetically recreate polio, which was also accomplished in 2006. You can order custom gene sequences of 1000 base pairs today at a cost of $1.30 per base pair.
A gene assembly lab, a sample of Vaccinia and a hundred thousand dollars can recreate smallpox today.
There is no other option but continue smallpox research for defensive purposes.
Modded to "+5 Terrifiying"
So much for our government being above other countries that refuse to follow the Geneva Protocol and use biological warfare. I guess the U.S. government no longer wants to be considered the good guys.
No, death is death. "the act of dying; the end of life; the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism."
Misusing words doesn't add anything to your argument, although it is popular these days. See: "Rape".
The cause and subsequent perpetuation of death is the issue here. And yes, financial death often leads to actual death. See: "Suicide".
Falling under the illusion of ignorance that death is somehow always natural and could never be purposely caused by any Government is also popular these days, as I find myself in the minority with my opinions. That's OK though, you go ahead and desperately search for what will likely ultimately kill you and try and prove me wrong in the end. Ref. "Causes of cancer".
This is why big tobacco is allowed to use deadly pesticides on their crops, to ensure deaths.
No, Big Tobacco's allowed to use deadly pesticides on their crops because this conversation took place at least once:
Government: Hey! You can't put that stuff on your crops! It's deadly! We don't want people ingesting that!
Tobacco Growers: You realize these crops are just going to end up in cigarettes, right?
Government: Ohhhh.... Carry on then!
Nicotine is a drug. It is probably one of the most powerful and addictive drugs on the planet. The kind of power that corrupts people and manipulates regulatory policy.
Ever wonder why the FDA was never chosen to regulate the tobacco industry, and instead was lumped in with alcohol and...firearms?
I don't.
We cure cancer every day and do so reliably. The problem is that every single cancer is a unique disease that may need a unique cure. There are millions of cancers which need cured... and we do so for about half of them. All of those breast cancers you hear about? They're independent diseases which happen to look and work similar to each other.
I am aware of the fact that cancer forming cells exist and are created naturally in the body, as well as the process of apoptosis, or the natural eradication of such. It has been said that the average human technically contracts cancer several times in their lifetime, usually with their immune system being strong enough to combat it early in life. The question still remains. What has been the root cause of all of these cancers over the last 100 years? I find it ridiculous that people cannot fathom the concept that some of these cancers, like other genetically engineered diseases (Smallpox soup with a dash of Ebola anyone?) were possibly purposefully mutated and/or perpetuated by design.
We read not long ago that the tap water of over 30 US cities contained hexavalent chromium, a probable carcinogen. While we may argue that this got into the water stream naturally(which it can), the real question is what exactly will be the EPAs final "safe" levels, and who ultimately controls the EPA? Water is what sustains life, not money, or a nice car, or cheap gas. Textbook definition of a target-rich environment.
And do you cure cancer, or do you eradicate it by force? I know we have made many advances with cancer, but chemotherapy and surgery are still the primary forms of treatment, and are not true cures. Perpetuating remission treatments is very expensive and ensures revenue streams while ultimately still leaving deaths door slightly ajar.
You claim there are cures for HIV/AIDS. How many people were treated with this miracle before the government types put it under lock and key? (Zero) With nobody cured with the treatment, you can't claim there to be a cure!
This argument can easily go both ways. You cannot prove that there is not, while it is fairly easy for anyone to prove that greed and corruption have warped entire nations. Again, perpetuating treatments is far more profitable than finding or releasing a cure, which feeds both the revenue issue(greed) as well as the resource management issue(deaths). I sincerely appreciate the work that is done by the entire scientific and medical community, but it is still difficult to prove me wrong.
No, the numbers don't speak for themselves. You have to speak for them.
There are so many things wrong with your conspiracy theory. From "governments have a lot of trouble thinking far enough ahead to maintain smallpox reserves for many decades as part of a master plan to undercut their own power base" to "it's not actually easy to cure cancer; you can't just decide to do it" to "the world is not a Batman comic".
I like the Russian name better: "Vector laboratory"
Less orwellian IMO
Great post but I fear it was a wasted effort.
Logic and knowledge can not overcome crazy.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
For the original parent, no... but for any other witnesses, yes, maybe. Besides, sometimes I just can't ignore the crazy any more and have to respond.
I am aware of the fact that cancer forming cells exist and are created naturally in the body, as well as the process of apoptosis, or the natural eradication of such. It has been said that the average human technically contracts cancer several times in their lifetime, usually with their immune system being strong enough to combat it early in life. The question still remains. What has been the root cause of all of these cancers over the last 100 years? I find it ridiculous that people cannot fathom the concept that some of these cancers, like other genetically engineered diseases (Smallpox soup with a dash of Ebola anyone?) were possibly purposefully mutated and/or perpetuated by design.
Root cause? We get cancer in the same way that iron rusts. It is inevitable as a consequence of the chemistry of how we are alive. There is no need for an intelligent agent to intervene to give us any of those cancers. Yes it is possible (and easily fathomable), but there is no evidence for it and thus the null hypothesis (that there is no such agent) is what we logically have to go with.
We read not long ago that the tap water of over 30 US cities contained hexavalent chromium, a probable carcinogen. While we may argue that this got into the water stream naturally(which it can), the real question is what exactly will be the EPAs final "safe" levels, and who ultimately controls the EPA? Water is what sustains life, not money, or a nice car, or cheap gas. Textbook definition of a target-rich environment.
Nobody with any sense claims that something which happened naturally must be 'ok'. If your argument held any weight with reality, the EPA would never ever reduce 'safe levels' upon further research... and would likely increase the 'safe levels'. What will be the final 'safe level' is not something which can be known. All we can know is that an arbitrary level does or does not cause a level of injury we think is acceptable. At some level, the injury caused by hexavalent chromium (or other things) decreases to equal to the injury caused by water. (Even pure H2O causes cancer at a low rate, by the radiation it emits from the spontaneous decay of oxygen.)
And do you cure cancer, or do you eradicate it by force? I know we have made many advances with cancer, but chemotherapy and surgery are still the primary forms of treatment, and are not true cures. Perpetuating remission treatments is very expensive and ensures revenue streams while ultimately still leaving deaths door slightly ajar.
How is an eradication by force not a cure? (If I have cancer in my kidney and I discard my kidney, I no longer have cancer. I'm cured!) What do you mean by a 'true cure'? Death's door is always wide open, no matter what we may do. Are you approaching this from a religious perspective?
This argument can easily go both ways. You cannot prove that there is not, while it is fairly easy for anyone to prove that greed and corruption have warped entire nations. Again, perpetuating treatments is far more profitable than finding or releasing a cure, which feeds both the revenue issue(greed) as well as the resource management issue(deaths). I sincerely appreciate the work that is done by the entire scientific and medical community, but it is still difficult to prove me wrong.
Actually the argument can't easily go both ways. There is no way to prove something does not exist/happen/etc that we just haven't seen yet. (This is rather a basic logical result and why we don't study the giant invisible squid living in the sun...) However, if there was a cure, then there would be those who were cured... and those people would be very loud about it.
Even if the govt was operating as you claim... It wouldn't do so by encouraging death. Death is a horribly expensive process, as all the training/knowledge/etc contained in the person is lost. The
They're keeping the samples so they can use them to make vaccines if there is an outbreak.
This claim is only effective with people who haven't read any of the textbook histories of smallpox. Actually, smallpox vaccines have never been made from smallpox virus. They've been made from closely-related viruses that usually cause only a mild, temporary disease. The most common is the vaccinia (cowpox) virus.
Before the 18th century, there were occasional attempts to immunize people against smallpox by infecting them with a small sample of smallpox from a victim of the disease. But this was fairly dangerous, since the result was very often a full-blown case of smallpox. When it was discovered that cowpox did the job a lot better, people stopped trying to use the smallpox virus.
People also try to argue that we need smallpox samples for testing vaccines if smallpox reappears. But we actually don't;samples of the current virus are much better for testing. After all, we won't want to know whether a vaccine immunized against the historical disease; we'll want to know how effective it is against the current strain of the disease.
The arguments that we "need" the smallpox samples for such reason are basically PR from people who don't want to mention their actual motive. The samples give us nothing useful in fighting a new outbreak of a similar disease. Knowing whether the new disease is the same as the preserved samples is perhaps of interest to historians (and a few researchers), but it's not particularly useful in fighting the new disease. Our techniques of the past couple of centuries have been much more effective against smallpox than any of the earlier attempts at prevention or treatment. The newer techniques haven't actually used the smallpox virus itself; they've used related viruses (for the vaccines) and current patients (for testing).
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
True as I said I really found your post informative. I am a more did well in Physics and Chemistry but never really enjoyed biology. Could just be a personality thing. I don't like taking apart anything I can not put back together and make work. Of course on a good note the Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute is rumored to have a Vaccine for AIDS near ready to test. While I do think that big Pharma corps are greedy I don't think they are evil. If nothing else a researcher at one would love to get a Nobel for a cure for Cancer, AIDs, Diabetes, and or Strokes. (Yea I know it would be more of a good preventative or treatment for Stroke".
If you are a professorial biologist all I can say is good work so far.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Biology was not always my thing... but complexity always drew my interest and it was a natural progression to get there. A proper understanding of biology requires a decent grasp of chemistry and physics too. (though, many get away without it) ;-)
Strangely enough, there is a region of the USA referred to as the 'Stroke Belt'... so figuring out what is going wrong there and preventing it would actually be a really helpful thing... but you're right, it wouldn't be a 'cure'.
K a minor correction, same article... "Unlike most antibiotics, antiviral drugs do not destroy their target pathogen; instead they inhibit their development"
to which I add <a href="http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=6445&page=79"> quotes</a> about what the review of many scientists say on the subject:
Genomic sequencing and limited study of variola surface proteins derived from geographically dispersed specimens is an essential foundation for important future work. Such research could be carried out now, and could require a delay in the destruction of known stocks, but would not necessitate their indefinite retention....
1. The most compelling reason for long-term retention of live variola virus stocks is their essential role in the identification and development of antiviral agents for use in anticipation of a large outbreak of smallpox. It must be emphasized that if the search for antiviral agents with activity against live variola virus were to be continued, additional public resources would be needed.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...