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11 Pathogens Pose Big Security Risk For Research
sciencehabit writes "A United States federal panel of scientists and security experts has identified 11 microorganisms that it wants designated as Tier 1 select agents, a new category of biological agents that would be subject to higher security standards than other pathogens and toxins used in biomedical research. The category would include anthrax, Ebola, Variola major and Variola minor (the two viruses that cause small pox), the Marburg virus, the virus that causes foot and mouth disease, and bacterial strains that produce the botulinum neurotoxin. At the same time, the panel has recommended dropping 19 pathogens and six toxins from the broader list of 82 agents that are currently governed by the select agent program."
It'll be amusing to see what happens if these proponents manage to get Botox admitted to the select club along with Ebola and smallpox...
I don't see the zombie virus in there...
No, it is a viral infection. The virus responsible is called the picornavirus.
When the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped Patty Hearst in Berkeley and demanded the distribution of food to the poor, Reagan joked, "It's just too bad we can't have an epidemic of botulism."
Let's hope that governments and others don't do much with those nasties.
Reagan quote is from The Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California). March 14, 1974
To add some info to the parent, prions are responsible for BSE in cattle, Scrapie in sheep, chronic wasting disease in deer, CJD and Kuru in man, and couple of inherited, rather uncommon diseases in men, too - like fatal familar insomnia and weird stuff like that. Foot and Mouth is indeed viral, not prionic.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Because, in contrast to yourself, the list creators aren't complete morons.
and bacterial strains that produce the botulinum neurotoxin.
That bacteria can be found in most people's attics, inside canned food that's gone bad, and a whole lot of other places. Oh, and in cosmetic shops (botox anyone?). Good luck with that, Uncle Sam. It's like trying to regulate ricin; It's too easy to find and synthesize.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
You're thinking of mad cow disease which is from prions.
Get a web developer
While it is true that certain pathogens are virulent and can be airborne, ebola for example works so well because it has a long enough cycle to allow transmission.
Instantly lethal pathogens don't spread much, since they aren't mobile in a host. Visible signs early slow spreading.
You're at far more risk from food contamination in the food supply or sunstroke, actually.
That said, wise decision for the actual Facilites doing pathogen research (which include some I've worked in).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
No, it's foot and mouth disease... we're talking about politicians here.
I drank unpasteurised milk until I was 12, it's fine. Yeah, it needs to be fresh, but raw milk is no problem in itself,
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Tier 1:
See: http://www.phe.gov/Preparedness/legal/boards/fesap/Documents/fesap-recommendations-101102.pdf
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
That's right. crude milk is on a separate list.
According to TFS: "bacterial strains that produce the botulinum neurotoxin"
So you mother began pasteurizing her milk when you were 12?
Boiling her tits... ouch!
"Foot-and-mouth" disease is the term the official report uses -- and it seems to be the preferred term today. Try Googling: "foot-and-mouth disease" virus and "hoof-and-mouth disease" virus and compare the results.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Personally, I don't give a rat's arse about milk as such, but you can pry my raw milk cheese from my cold, dead hands.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Full Monty Virus. Why can't the DARPA crew waste billions on this Pathogen? It would be every extremists own personal nightmare.
When interviewing Politicians, the Foot in Mouth pathogen spreads like no other available. The American Tea Party has had some limited success using this one.
We may have seen nomenclature before, but would you know what picornavirus meant? So if they did include the nomenclature it'd have to be something like "picornavirus (the vrus that causes foot and mouth disease". So They're basically just saving a few letters.
p.s. I'm assuming that the other posters calling it picornavirus are right, I don't know myself, and I don't really care enough to click that handy Wikipedia link Linux Nutcase provided.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Weaponized Margarine.
You're confusing "Hoof & Mouth" disease with "Mad Cow" disease. "Mad Cow" is the one caused by non-viral, non-living, but 100% organic microscopic shards of brain-seeking protein.
If Foot and Mouth was prionic it would not be such a problem just stop feeding the animals brains and your sorted
is now building the replacement institute for what was on Plum Island (emphasize ISLAND). This building is within eyesight of the university rec center, basketball coleseum, and football stadium.
Yet again, pork barrel politics and money addicted higer learning institutes may soon have a body count.
You're implying that you think that prions are associated with "brains" (were you making a zombie joke too? It's not at all clear.) or central nervous system tissue.
The kuru/ scrapie/ CWD/ nvCJD/ BSE prion seems to be a characteristic of a protein that is strongly concentrated in CNS tissue. However as I understand the concept, there is precisely nothing to prevent the prion "effect" occuring in, for example, actin or myosin (the main contractile proteins of eucaryote cells).
I'd like to be proven wrong that a transmissible prion could be produced that affects muscle tissue, and is transmitted by muscle tissue. But now that I formulate the idea, it seems much more plausible that it'll be proved possible by someone making one. The weapons potential is interesting.
I can see the movie : "Dr Stainglove : or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Hamburger."
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
You're implying that you think that prions are associated with "brains" (were you making a zombie joke too? It's not at all clear.) or central nervous system tissue.
Both:-) the whole Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (aka Mad Cow disease) was kicked off by adding the rendered remains of sick and injured animals to cattle feed. In retrospect this was a bad idea.
The kuru/ scrapie/ CWD/ nvCJD/ BSE prion seems to be a characteristic of a protein that is strongly concentrated in CNS tissue. However as I understand the concept, there is precisely nothing to prevent the prion "effect" occuring in, for example, actin or myosin (the main contractile proteins of eucaryote cells).
I'd like to be proven wrong that a transmissible prion could be produced that affects muscle tissue, and is transmitted by muscle tissue. But now that I formulate the idea, it seems much more plausible that it'll be proved possible by someone making one. The weapons potential is interesting.
Its possible but unlikely for this to happen, the prion protein (PRNP) can exist in two stable configurations normal and 'misfolded'. During protein biosynthesis there is cellular machinery that ensures that a newly made protein folds correctly and normally once made PRNP will hold its shape. However is a normal PRNP encounters a misfolded PRNP the latter can act as a template converting the normal to misfolded. Whats worse is that the misfolded version forms stable aggregates within the cell and builds up causing CJD.
This leads to the linked questions how does this start up and why is it unlikely to happen with other proteins?
The exact answer to the first question is not know, but it is suffice to say that, nothing is perfect and very very very rarely a cell will produce a misfolded PRNP (the affected individual having a mutation predisposing it helps).
Question 2 is down to evolution, to a first approximation any protein that has a tendency to be unstable and convert to a form that kills the organism is going to be very strongly selected against. If there was an actin variant that had a tendency to flip out and lead the other actins molecules in a assault on the cell, that variant it is long dead and out-competed by organisms with more predictable proteins. (This not to say its impossible if the instability confered an advantage (like Sickle-cell anemia) or the effects are mild or the issue it was very rare it could survive.)
Now could you make a new one? I'll have to say no. You have to remember that your target repertoire is fixed you have about 20000 genes producing perhaps 100,000 proteins. Each of theses proteins has a only few stable configurations and have evolved to naturally fall into the correct shape. so now your looking for one that
As for its weapons potential even under the best circumstances its not going to be very fast CJD takes years to develop, a hypothetical actin prion would be really nasty and could kill quite quickly (say days to months) but I'd only expect to see something like that in moderatly hard SciFi.
We're not fundamentally in disagreement. But on a point by point basis:
In the late '70s and early '80s, when I "were nobbut a young loon", and before I'd solidified my personal choices about my morals, I was a sincere member of the animal rights movement. I'm still (not) in (dis-)agreement with (most of) the movement's moral position (NB : this does not mean that I'm in agreement with all other members ; I learned a lot in jail cells and thought hard about it. I was, in my youth, an ignorant youth ; now I'm much older, more experienced but only arguably wiser.) But back in the day, say "1983", we were saying prospectively that this (feeding bits of sheep to sheep ; bits of cow to cows) is a bad idea. At that time I couldn't put a solid scientific footing to my (our) disquiet, but deep concern was certainly being expressed.
It wasn't nice to be proved right.
Well, not very nice. Being proved correct is always nice, to a degree.
(EDIT : what was said over spliffs and coffee shop tables is NOT necessarily what was said to reporters by "spokespeople", or what the reporters reported. I shouldn't need to say that, but I'll say it nonetheless. Otherwise I'm silly-ly open to being quoted out of context.)
Being a member of "the lunatic fringe" does not mean that you're necessarily in the wrong.
I did use the term "weaponise" ; that means to use forethought and planning to design such a system. Evolutionary issues are real, but irrelevant ; I'm not talking about a system evolving naturally, but being developed by people with a solid understanding of protein design and the co-opting of cellular protein synthetic pathways.
You want people like that? Advertise where a drug company has shut a research lab.
Strong statement. With all due respect, I do not accept your assertion as an adequate "argument from authority".
As stated above, I'm not talking about a natural selection process. You're addressing a question you'd like to address, not the question I am considering.
What is the purpose of the weapon you're considering? Now that I'm prompted, I'd say that I'm considering a weapon which is designed to reduce human consumption of flesh by (say) 75%, over a decade, and then keep the consumption down for the foreseeable future (say, a millennium). Net directly-attributable deaths from the weapon "APARP" (safety engineering acronym : "As Low As Reasonably Practicable". Which begs questions of what is considered "reasonable". I'd consider anything better expressed in units less than a gigadeath (10^9 deaths) would probably be worth looking at more closely. Get the deaths (for a 1*Earth susceptible population) down into the mere megadeaths and you're talking about an "advertising campaign", not "microbiological warfare".
I THINK I'd like to see it stay there too.
But, if I can conceive of it, then the professional threat-managing people should certainly have th
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"