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New Virus Jumps From Monkeys To Lab Workers
sciencehabit writes "It started with a single monkey coming down with pneumonia at the California National Primate Research Center in Davis. Within weeks, 19 monkeys were dead and three humans were sick. Now, a new report confirms that the Davis outbreak was the first known case of an adenovirus jumping from monkeys to humans. The upside: the virus may one day be harnessed as a tool for gene therapy."
The California National Primate Research Center. Hmm, does that sound like it's owned by a private corporation or the US Government? I know, lets make a bunch of retarded, baseless accusations under the assumption that it is without first taking 5 seconds to look it up.
You damned dirty apes!
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Why would it "wipe out the bulk of the human race"? We encounter new viruses every year and our immune systems adapt. The workers in question didn't die either. How do you make the leap from a simple virus in an ape jumping to a few isolated humans to it wiping out the human race? Been watching too many movies? How would this be different than say, avian or swine flu? Somehow because it comes from an ape suddenly we're all doomed? Grow up.
From Wikipedia:
The California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC) is a United States federal government funded biomedical research facility, dedicated to improving human and animal health, and located on the University of California, Davis, campus.
Yeah, sounds just like a private lab far away from the scrutiny of the public eye. Hell, the freshmen might even have trouble getting into the lab for late-night makeout/pot smoking sessions! Doubt it, though.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Worse than that.
If clever well funded scientists under careful observation do this there is a none zero chance of danger. However they will publish their findings and the state of the art will advance.
If you make it illegal to do this kind of research then someone somewhere will tinker with it.* They are much more likely to make mistakes and skip safety protocols.
Nothing significant will be learnt from their findings (because they can't publish) but we will face all the danger of their mistakes.
*They may be elite scientist working for military/uber-pharmaceutical company or they may be a less than fully talented fringe scientist in some less well funded/observed company/country - neither of those options are reassuring.
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
Oh, I assumed that the posting was caused by the spasming bought on by the force with which your jerking knee it your chin.
Actually, most of them would easily defeat the immune system. But they evolved not to do so, since a dead host doesn't make a good vector...
Life tip - I completely agree with your retort, the parent doesn't understand well how the immune system works. But the ad hominem at the end is not necessary, mate, and will make any audience side against you.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
Nothing more than could go wrong with natural evolution over the the same course of time.
See, we have these things called DNA, that occurs naturally, and these things that happen to it called mutations, that occur naturally, and every time we wipe something out or solve a problem, we "force" the organism (indirectly) to move to a mutation that survives. In doing so, nature does the same things as we would do, except more efficiently, more quickly, more randomly and under far less control.
Wait 50 years. AIDS will be back, in a slightly different form. Bird flu will be back. Swine flu will be back (it is already, in various mutated forms that we can't treat). MRSA will be back (because MRSA is basically nothing more than an evolved bacteria).
30 years ago we hadn't even heard of MRSA or AIDS and today they are present most of the world. Guess what'll happen 30 years from now, especially if we eradicate either of those and leave lots more potential human hosts living for longer with freedom to copulate more than previously?
Nothing we do in genetics, or even huge tracts of biology, isn't happening too, now, around you, this second, under far, far less control. And guess what? If we don't tinker with it ourselves, we have no way to detect, understand, treat and cope with any of those natural changes that have a devastating effect on people (i.e. we'd be able to do fuck-all about AIDS, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, even just simple cancer). Cancer is a naturally-occurring mutation that makes a single cell out of billions in your body go ape-shit and not stop reproducing.
Despite all that, statistics show that people have NEVER lived as long as they do now (and cancer survival rates are phenomenal compared to even 10 years ago). All that's because of people tinkering.
Basically, your argument would make more sense reversed - why aren't we tinkering more? Tinkering helps, yet nature destroys and keeps coming back and back and back and attacking us with new things all the time that we take DECADES to understand.
It is when science goes in unexpected directions that progress is made.
So in a way "What could possibly go wrong" is the desired result.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
The "new" viruses you refer to are mutations of existing human viruses - they are more the same than they are different. When a virus jumps species the risk is that it is different enough to not be efficiently recognized by the immune system. Our immune systems are already "pre-primed" with antibodies to viruses we have already encountered, and that gives us a significant advantage in fighting off the "new" viruses you refer to, which are generally minor mutations.
Better known as 318230.
No, it involved a vaccination program with SIV-tainted products.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
The lab monkey as desease vector scenario bares far more resemblance to 28 Days Later than "The Last Man on Earth/Omega Man/I am Legend"
Unlikely. It will be weaponised for more desperate, enormous profits.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Well said. Nature's unchecked experimentation is far more horrifying and rewarding then anything man can come up with. While we can often come up with marvels and directions nature might not have gone, the scope and timeline of what we have done so far is a joke. It is hubris in the most apt sense of the word to think we can outproduce nature at this point.
Good-bye
The summary has the article on it's head. Did the poster or the editors actually read the article??? The virus did not jump from the monkeys to the humans, but the other way around. Sick lab worker was the source of the virus, which jumped on the monkeys. As this was a completely new pathogen for them, they had no immunity and most of the infected animals died. This is typical 'small pox blanket' story.
The book, The Hotzone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hot_Zone), tells a story about a strain of Ebola that became known as Ebola Reston that was discovered in a research facility in Reston, VA in 1989.
It was an airborne strain that spread from monkey to monkey much like the Flu and was extremely fatal to the monkeys. But while it could (and DID) infect a human, it had no ill effects. The scary thing is that there are other strains of Ebola that are fatal to humans (Ebola Zaire).
Anyway, it's a little bit frightening how close we came here to an easily transmitted airborne virus that is fatal to 50 to 90% of the people who get it within 3 weeks of contraction. Yes, I know it would not wipe out the bulk of the human race...probably. But there are reasons we have pandemic plans in place and while things like the Bird and Swine flu have been blown out of proportion in recent years, the truth is that nature could throw us a curve ball at any moment and everyone who dismissed the bird and swine flu (including me) would be in for a surprise.
I happen to like the word. It's much nicer than "viruses"
Except when the answer to that questions is "zombies."
This happened back in 1987 at NAMRL (Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory) where 3 handlers (plus one of the handlers' wives - the first human-human transmission) were infected with B-virus (cercopithecid herpesvirus 1, Herpesvirus simiae), two of which later died. From what I was told (from health care workers that cared for them at the time) it was quite a horrible way to die; herpes lesions covering almost their entire bodies.
http://www.brown.edu/Research/Primate/lpn26-3.html
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Somehow, I'm forced to suggest an alternative.
The fact that they're releasing Rise of The Planet of the Apes in a couple of weeks seems apropos here. :-P
Planet of the Apes is already here, look at all the monkeys and baboons in Congress.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
This is what happens when a marketing company takes viral marketing a bit too literal.