Slashdot Mirror
Paper On Super Flu Strain May Be Banned From Publication
Pierre Bezukhov writes with this excerpt from an article at Doctor Tipster: "A Dutch researcher has created a virus with the potential to kill half of the planet's population. Now, researchers and experts in bioterrorism debate whether it is a good idea to publish the virus creation 'recipe'. However, several voices argue that such research should have not happened in the first place. The virus is a strain of avian influenza H5N1 genetically modified to be extremely contagious ... created by researcher Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam, Netherlands. The work was first presented at a conference dedicated to influenza that took place in September in Malta."
Someone has probably already crafted a similar version in a distant private or military research lab anyway. Its better that it got out and fixes are prepared.
Read radical news here
...that is what will happen to the 99%
Dr. Fouchier could not be reached at his volcano-based research facility for comment.
The zombie apocalypse awaits.
That spells life imitating art!
I'm I about to finish up my dissertation so completely understand the desire to wipe out large swaths of the human race. All I can say is only half? Looks like someone isn't ready for tenure.
If it was done, the information's out there. If the work's already been presented at a conference, it's pretty much a guarantee the black-hats have it. And if they don't already, they know it can be done and they've got enough clues to know where to go looking. So the question isn't whether we give the black-hats the information or not, it's whether only the black-hats get the information or whether the white-hats get it too. I'd rather have the information circulated so doctors and public health systems know what to look for and how to treat it when it shows up.
"Whatever doesn't kill us, makes us stronger..."
Whatever kills us, makes us dead.
Unless it cripples us. People always forget about the cripples.
I can just imagine the practal jokes in that lab.
My god! the seal on the container has come undone - the virus has excaped!!
Ha - got you! that's just the box my lunch came in
Now I don't wanna go to work tomorrow (I work there). :)
Captain Trips!
Banning publication doesn't even remotely make sense. If he's got super killer virus, publication informs the public and other guys can use the information to develop a countermeasure. By keeping the knowledge secret you're just granting even more leverage to potential abusers of the knowledge.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
A few years back some researchers (Australian?) accidentally made an infector much much more dangerous. That's why the scientist need to share this data. It's so they can understand this process and use that knowledge to defeat diseases. It's like getting over a canyon a persistent but ignorant person can eventually succeed by throwing rocks at it till it fills up, but an engineer can design and build a bridge in a fraction of the time and resources.
With regards to the fears of terrorists, it's not a high probability, most of them wouldn't have the vaguest idea what to do with that information, the few that are left know enough to not be stupid enough to release a superplague on the planet. Your biggest worry should be the Military making a superplague, and being stupid enough to let someone dumb enough to use it actually get access to some of it.
If you stop research because you are afraid that terrorists might use it, you would have to stop all research of any kind.
That may be true, but I don't like the idea of "stronger" meaning "those that can survive super-influenza".
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
Looks like I'm moving to Madagascar.
Or does anyone out there think the likelihood of a extremely contagious flu virus going into the wild would escalate somewhat if the occupy protests escalated into a popular uprising that could overthrow the capitalistic system?
You want to occupy hey? This will keep you occupied !
Lynn Enquist, quoted in the article, reminds me of GLaDOS:
I find it really, really hard to think about telling people not to do science.
Who says the world hates scientists? That's news to me.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Exactly. The important info was that the strain can be made to be transmissible by air in mammals.
That was an open question, and some felt that it was unlikely. Now, it's known that it can be done.
If you know that it can be done, there are only a limited number of ways it could have been done. Now, you just have to figure out which. They even outline the basic idea in several places.
It looks like it was a pretty standard method of passing the virus repeatedly through ferrets to select for those variants best adapted.
There may be a few nuances, but now that it's been done just about any lab that works on that strain with ferrets for test animals can probably repeat the work even without further info.
"A genetic study showed that new virus strain presented five mutations, and all could be also observed in nature - but only separately, not all five combined."
With this sentence, they have practically gave it away already. All one has to do now is to scan the scientific literature for the appropriate five mutations that confer increased airborne transmissibility, perform site directed mutagenesis and voila.
They should follow the footsteps of Australian researches (who inserted IL4 gene into the mousepox creating a very lethal strain) and publish this anyway.
If a scientist can make this stuff in a lab now, in ten years an eager and intelligent sociopath can make this stuff in his basement.
We're not getting off this planet. We'll kill each other first.
Stephen King is probably rolling in his grave.
Shut up brain or I'll stab you with a Q-Tip. - Homer Simpson
Turn in that computer you're posting to slashdot with, lad. That's scientist product too.
At this very moment, there are thousands transmitting "I hate science" and "Math is hard" on their pocket communication devices. If clay tablets were good enough for the Egyptians, an advanced civilization of their day, what more do we need?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
mod parent up. I can guarantee that the virus could not have been created without a computer.
new sig
If I recall correctly, at least in humans, influenza hemagglutinin 5 tends to attach very well down deep in the lungs but not so well higher in the airway. Therefore H5 flus are particularly nasty if you get one, but they haven't historically been very contagious. I have to wonder if that's where the difference lies: something improving on H5's ability to attach higher in the airway, without compromising its existing affinity too much.
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
Its better that it got out and fixes are prepared.
Sure - AS LONG AS the "fixes" (e.g. antidote or vaccine) are engineered, produced and ready for distribution BEFORE such info gets out.
Moreover, if you're going to take the prerogative of developing a bioweapon with the capability of causing mass casualties, it's also your responsibility to secure funding for inoculating or treating everyone affected. Just recently there was an outcry here about the government spending $433M on smallpox treatment in the event of an outbreak. If this is as dangerous as they claim, the treatment cost would be orders of magnitude higher than that. The UN will inevitably come to Washington cap in hand, but we're broke. Who's going to pay for it?
When they publish the antidote or cure.
This scientist probably should be careful. There have been a lot of microbiologists/scientists that have been having accidents supposedly.
[Citation needed]
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
Someone has probably already crafted a similar version in a distant private or military research lab anyway. Its better that it got out and fixes are prepared.
Actually various independently crafted versions may be different enough that a "cure" for one is ineffective against another.
Don't see why they *need* to publish this work, but if it is done can they atleast wait until they have administered 200 million or so vaccinations?
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
"Whatever doesn't kill you, only delays the inevitable..."
I always find comments like this posted on the internet to have a certain delicious flavor of irony.
Check your premises.
Strangely enough, it's true.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
That said, it would be a quick way to get our population down to where it needs to be and shut up those fucking anti-vaccers for a very, very long time.
Unfortunately, the flu would probably mostly affect the part of the world that is actually able to sustain itself, since a lot of the population of the world that is unable to feed their children is more isolated.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Makes me think about this Stephen Hawking quote from wikiquote.org, "I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars."
I do not bother spending too much time pondering the various things that could happen; each of them seems rather unlikely and if the risk is very low or there is nothing one can do to reduce the risk anyways, might as well just get on with life and leave it to fate. So I am not too much into the doomsday mentality.
The problem is mathematically there is nothing average about the effect of a planetary catastrophy. If there is just a small chance that some single lunatic is in the position to do something crazy which has the potential to wipe out the world's population, then over the course of a very long timespan the probability that it happens becomes very high. And there is no recovery from such an event .So even though I would guess we are good to go for the next few decades, technology is only going to advance including our ability to cause destruction at even larger scales than currently.
As a bit of a technology nerd I think it would be quite fun to see how we could start by conquering our own solar system. It would be nice knowing we have improved our chances to survive as a species. Plus a global space colonization initiative would probably generate a bunch of jobs, not necessarily bad for the current economy.
Ah well who am I kidding, not going to happen in near future - but one can always dream :-)
Actually, that would be the NIH ( http://www.nih.gov/ ), who requested that this research be done, funded it, etc.;
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/11/scientists-brace-for-media-storm.html
And really, I'd rather they do research it and find some manner of defense against it than that some actual 'asshats' figure it out and use it as a weapon first, or nature finds its own way to such a 'killer virus', without a defense in place.
The only particularly troubling time is when these findings are made public, because among the "ZOMG WE'RE DOOMED" people like you there's always the chance that there's one complete nutcase who goes to such a research facility to try and disrupt the work - and inadvertently releases things into the wild with far worse consequences.
That's not to say it shouldn't be made public - just that the designation of risk is often misplaced.
Besides, the world doesn't hate scientists - if they did, the world should be largely Amish (actually, they don't even hate scientists, but their lifestyle would come close to one in which a society does hate scientists).
Until we're fitted with bio-mechanical replacements that give us near super-powers...
Ok, only partly kidding: I lost my hearing - spinal meningitis - but I do alright, now, with a cochlear implant. Could be worse...
So not only did a civilian institution create a MWD, it has *civilian* security guarding it...? Does this worry anyone else?
and egos the size of the moon. That's why narcissism is so dangerous.
Deleted
Well this news is very depressing, it shows that when the singularity comes (the ability to REALLY control matter at the atomic level)* the potential for abuse may overwhelm the benefits.
Perhaps, if the world could get its act together (highly unlikely, they can't even save the euro), a UN agency A.R.M. (I forget what it stands for, go ask Larry Niven) could be put into place to keep certain technologies under control. I guess it would be like MIB but focused on humans not Aliens.
*I think a bioengineered virus qualifies as one of mankind's first crude attempt at a self-replicating nano-assembler.
Obviously the responsible thing to do is to give the vendor time to fix the vulnerability. I propose the researcher submit his findings to God and wait 5-7 days for a response before full disclosure.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I know half of you are screaming at your monitors that "security through obscurity is no security at all", but security in biological information is not like that of computer code and hardware.
It all comes down the the breadth and transparency of the ecosystem, in my layman's opinion. It's entirely plausible with, for example, Adobe software running on Windows operating systems to say that if White Hat A found it then certainly Grey Hat B and Mustache Twirling Russian Mafioso Black Hat C will find it or have already found and exploited it. Those are specific, limited, and completely knowable ecosystems invented entirely by humans, however. Of course someone else will find it; the universe in which "it" lives isn't terribly large, when you really look at the situation.
Biology, on the other hand, is much bigger and much more mysterious; we're far stupider in biology than in any other science. We certainly didn't invent, do not control, and do not understand the ecosystems involved. You know far less from the sentence "I found five mutations that transform a particular H5N1 into a global killer." than you do from the sentence "I found a stack overflow hack in Acrobat which lets me read any pdf the target machine opens."
In short, security through obscurity actually gets you a very long way in biological research. Not to mention that creating a virus is a lot faster than creating the vaccine; perhaps a substance of which a single vial released in downtown Detroit could kill half the humans on Earth long before the antidote was invented and adequately synthesized isn't the place to object on principle some deliberate obscurity.
Seriously, look at the way flu vaccines are prepared. Maybe people should argue for the development of a faster way of inventing and growing vaccine (that is to say, faster than trial-and-error monkey testing followed by incubation in chicken eggs) before they request that blueprints for a killer flu become public information.
This news has been bouncing around the biology world for a few days now. To add some perspective, the "super flu" was created via the technique known as Serial Passage, developed by Louis Pasteur. Yup, that Louis Pasteur. All you really need is a sufficiently large colony of ferrets, a source stock of H5N1, and some time -- there is not going to be any secret Atomic-Bomb recipe in the paper, the virus does the hard work itself, via evolution.
Oh, and by the way... At one of the labs I used to work at, my fellow researchers once were chatting about what the various stereotypes for their colleagues were. I learned that the virologist stereotype among the other researchers was "a little bit crazy". Nightnight.
Triggering apoptosis in infected cells ftw
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But when you put it in the body of a great white shark, oooh, suddenly you've gone too far!
I saw this movie already when it was Called "12 Monkeys."
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
It was a bit more than the roads. Many of those "barbarians" that conquered Rome were themselves former Roman soldiers.
Alaric was just one of many of them.
This is why the world hates scientists.
Yep. Ever since those asshats discovered fire, it's been all down-hill. It's rare to see a man with your honesty, though! Not many people are willing to stand up and proudly proclaim, "I HATE SCIENTISTS, because ignorance is bliss!".
Until it reaches the level of deadliness of the bug in Steven King's The Stand then I'm not worried. :)
The governments of US, Japan and Germany were asking the scientists to develop atomic weapons...
The concept of publicizing security flaws makes some semblance of sense in the security world, but when it comes to viruses that could wipe out 50% of the world's population...because patches can be easily made and distributed rapidly over the internet.
When it comes to vaccines, that is NOT the case. It could take years, decades, or possibly never to create a vaccine..or the only vaccines might be too expensive or difficult to distribute on the scale that is necessary.
With a population of over 7 billion, not ALL rational people, not ALL happy people, I'm sure there are some individuals out there sick enough to want to destroy the human race. By reducing that barrier to entry to...perhaps...little more than the $20 it costs to purchase an online journal...it becomes an immediate death sentence for billions of people.
So shut the f* up about your ultra forward thinking concept of sharing info on how to kill us all, you sadist.
I wonder if this dude has been buying a lot of abandoned mineshaft property recently......
Monstar L
Until we're fitted with bio-mechanical replacements that give us near super-powers...
I'm choosing to believe that was a M.A.N.T.I.S. reference.
Or we'll release the virus!
"Whatever doesn't kill us, makes us stronger..."
Nonsense. There are things that won't kill you but will leave you weak like an infant, so that you suffer miserably until something else comes along and kills you.
Friedrich Nietzsche was a moron.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
No. It should never have been created. Biological weapons cannot be contained. Antidotes cannot be trusted. Conventional weapons have an area of effect. Nuclear and chemical weapons as well (although things like weather can spread it, I'd argue to a finite degree).
If you create biological weapons, should you release the recipe? Yeah, that's a freaking great idea, please email it to leaders of Al Qaeda, North Korea, Syria and Iran. Carbon copy the other UN members and general population. What a stupid question.
My voluntary tax dollars towards finding a means to kill most all humans on Earth = $0.00
It is a question of how you define "strong". A more accurate saying would be, "What kills people but spares those with certain characteristics, increases the ratio of people with those characteristics in the general population." H5N1 kills the young and healthy, and spares the weak and elderly, just like the Spanish Flu:
"Another unusual feature of this pandemic was that it mostly killed young adults, with 99% of pandemic influenza deaths occurring in people under 65, and more than half in young adults 20 to 40 years old. wiki).
Increased mortality in young and healthy people is attributed to a stronger cytokine response from the immune system wiki:
"It is believed that cytokine storms were responsible for many of the deaths during the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed a disproportionate number of young adults.[1] In this case, a healthy immune system may have been a liability rather than an asset. Preliminary research results from Hong Kong also indicated this as the probable reason for many deaths during the SARS epidemic in 2003.[8] Human deaths from the bird flu H5N1 usually involve cytokine storms as well."
As long as the virus does not increase the intelligence of apes.
Or a retrovirus that is highly contagious and reduces the intelligence of human victims to near that of apes by changing brain chemistry, but leaves them alive and "OK", driven by only animal survival insticts, and permanently infected?
Just pointing out the summary here is a bit incorrect. The summary indicates the virus is 50% lethal (I assume with no treatment) and likely can mutate to airborne contagion in humans. To kill 50% of the people on the planet:
a) We would need 100% infection
b) There would need to be no treatment of humans.
That's not to say an 50% lethal flu isn't worth worrying about but the summary is exaggerating the concern.
If true, that sounds like a good way to thin down the human population.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Let's start with the lawyers and politicians...
I prefer "6 Million Dollar Man." That track suit - and his girlfriend...
The flu in question is highly responsive to modern flu anti-virals as well as "MODERN MEDICAL TREATMENTS". What made this flu so devastating in the first place was its ability to cause a life threatening immune responses in young healthy adults, ultimately damaging the lungs so badly that victims drowned in their own body fluids. That's why this particular flu devastated healthy 20-somethings when it first spread as a global pandemic.
An outbreak today could easily be mitigated and seeing as the people most at risk would have viable medical treatments to prevent both spread and lethal complications this flu would be unable to produce the catastrophic effects it created in its first run through the human population.
The real threat would be an outbreak in a place like Africa, where a large infected population could become a huge bio-reactor evolving the virus into a real monster that was both lethal and untreatable. So our best bet for world pandemics in general are to place special focus on developing nations and make certain they have the resources needed to stop outbreaks of both old and new diseases.
Science is amoral. Discoveries have no inherent consequences.
What man makes of science is the problem.
In addition to giving a leg-up on traditional vaccines, publishing this research could also lead to development of a way to distribute contagious vaccines/cures. A cure that spreads itself would be a lot more effective than having to manually distribute one-off vaccines. It's not hard to imagine a virus that has the symptoms of a mild cold that helps us develop antibodies to fight off the much deadlier variant.
"We made cancer airborne and contagious - you're welcome - SCIENCE : all about coulda - not shoulda".
I think the point was irresponsible scientists, not a general hate of science in general. Especially that they are publishing this work without concern for the potential risk that some nutcase could take this research and wipe out half the planet. If they had paid for this, and kept it under wraps until an antidote/vaccine was prodded then fine, but to put the recipe for it in the public domain is irresponsible.
Unless it cripples us. People always forget about the cripples.
That's because we more or less wiped out Polio with a program of mass vaccinations.
Back then, if the anti-vaxxers were around in full force like they are now,
we'd probably still have significant numbers of crippled adults and children to this day.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Actually the scientists asked FDR to develop the atomic weapon. It was not the US government's idea. Granted, they only brought it up because they were afraid Germany would get there first, but still--it was the scientists' idea.
Three words: Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.
Not the same at all (did not have the potential to kill half the world), and indeed a long time ago in quite another state of common belief - the *fact* is that biological warfare / experimentation like the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment simply would not be done by most governments.
But, they might very well be done by unhinged nut jobs like Saddam Hussein, who did in fact use biological weapons against Kurds and others that he had issues with. Do you suppose that there is a chance that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might be similarly unhinged?
It's not far out of realistic speculation that folks "on a mission from god" - as most so-called "terrorists" are - would find this extremely attractive.
Certainly we can not keep this knowledge from dedicated whack-jobs forever. But why make it easier for them?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
M.A.N.T.I.S. had so much potential....
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Hitler would have loved to have a flu that could completely exterminate certain populations. And many of his followers would love to create a flu like this and distribute it to certain countries and populations.
You're right it's dangerous and most nationalists wont want to use bioweapons but there are certain situations where it could and would be used even by nationalist governments.
If this gets out the ferrets are doomed.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Our story begins, as these stories often do, with a young up-and-coming politician. He's a deeply religious man and a member of the conservative party. He is completely single-minded convictions and has no regard for the political process. Eventually, his party launches a special project in the name of 'national security'. At first, it is believed to be a search for biological weapons and it is pursued regardless of its cost. However, the true goal of the project is power, complete and total hegemonic domination. The project, however, ends violently... but the efforts of those involved are not in vain, for a new ability to wage war is born from the blood of one of their victims. Imagine a virus - the most terrifying virus you can, and then imagine that you and you alone have the cure. But if your ultimate goal is power, how best to use such a weapon? It is at this point in our story that along comes a spider. He is a man seemingly without a conscience; for whom the ends always justify the means and it is he who suggests that their target should not be an enemy of the country but rather the country itself. Three targets are chosen to maximize the effect of the attack: a school, a tube station, and a water-treatment plant. Several hundred die within the first few weeks. Until at last the true goal comes into view. Before the St. Mary's crisis, no one would have predicted the outcome of the elections. No one. But after the election, lo and behold, a miracle. Some believed that it was the work of God himself, but it was a pharmaceutical company controlled by certain party members made them all obscenely rich. But the true genius of the plan was the fear. A year later, several extremists are tried, found guilty, and executed while a memorial is built to canonize their victims. Fear became the ultimate tool of this government. And through it our politician was ultimately appointed to the newly created position of High Chancellor. The rest, as they say, is history.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Not likely. People would quickly see the risk of Polio as being greater than the risk of the Vaccine. Ironically, we are now issuing vaccines to children that prevent them from getting a relatively mild disease that becomes far more severe and crippling when they become adults and the vaccine wears off. Specifically the Chicken Pox vaccine.
It seems strange to argue about publish/no-publish as if those are the only 2 options.
What about distributing information confidentially to labs that can work on fighting the disease?
Sure, some would argue that that really amounts to "publish", given that nothing can be kept truly confidential.
But in such cases (as with many), it's really about the timing. You want to maximize the time the "white hats" have the info and minimize the time that "black hats" can get to it easily. You want to provide the info to as many reliable "white hats" as you'll want to risk, since the larger the pool, the larger the chance of leaks.
It really seems like an interesting optimization problem with multiple solutions, far beyond the original dilemma of publish/no-publish.
Anyone else think this is probably being overhyped on a slow news day?
Isn't the big problem with "killer viruses" that they actually kill their hosts? If you are dead its a lot harder to transmit a disease to someone else. Thus the spread of such a plague becomes self-limiting.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
"What kills people but spares those with certain characteristics, increases the ratio of people with those characteristics in the general population."
True, but how the hell do you fit that onto a bumper sticker?
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
No its ok we should allow all nations to have it. It's absurd to think that the US should be allowed to have it while other nations also in search of pandemic-capable lethal super flu viruses FOR PEACEFUL PURPOSES ONLY* would be denied access.
*we promise guys its only for peaceful purposes! plz plz lol kthx.
--Iran
i keep telling everyone. whats going to end the world is a freak scientific accident!!
Unless it cripples us. People always forget about the cripples.
that's ok I think we have a vaccine against getting the cripples now too right??
about as well as old flu vaccinations do to protect against new strains of flu in the new year: not too well.
That's more a result of the broken education system than of scientists making nukes and viruses.
Great Intellect...
"Another unusual feature of this pandemic was that it mostly killed young adults, with 99% of pandemic influenza deaths occurring in people under 65, and more than half in young adults 20 to 40 years old. wiki).
I think you're jumping to conclusions here. The Old People have other latent resistances such as
-2d6--"get off my lawn". An effective threat, likely to ward off any weaker viruses.
-3d4--"when I was your age". Confuses virus into trying to remember the 1918 pandemic, which it was not around for.
-1d12--alzheimers. Even if it infects the patient, (absent?)mind over matter is an effective strategy. You can't be sick unless you know you've got something.
-2d10--complaining. No virus wants to have to put up with a senile complainer.
-???
Now IANAV but IMHO if I WERE I would stay the HELL AWAY from anyone with these kind of skills. As a virus, I would see no point in killing off the (theoretically) living half of me.
Try this: Friedrich Nietzsche is a big dead idiot.
snookivir!
As long as the virus does not increase the intelligence of apes.
Or a retrovirus that is highly contagious and reduces the intelligence of human victims to near that of apes by changing brain chemistry, but leaves them alive and "OK", driven by only animal survival insticts, and permanently infected?
Have you seen what was going down at Walmart last Friday? That ship has sailed, my friend.
Sounds like we got us a case of Captain Trips - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stand#.22Captain_Trips.22
Now we need to be on the lookout for Randal Flagg
and get your Blue Oyster Cult playing in your headphones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMYSWiPm7E0
Whenever somebody says that, I ask "How about AIDS?"
It weakens you, so something else can kill you. Many things do.
Hollywood has already made this movie a hundred times...
The plot can just write it self.
Whatever doesn't kill us, can still really hurt...
At the beginning their is a TS Elliot quote. "This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper."
This pretty much sounds like that.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
An interesting short story about the potential of genetic viral design in the hands of a fundamentalist:
http://eidolon.net/?story=The%20Moral%20Virologist
.: Max Romantschuk
civilizations from other planets visiting us more often. They all eradicated themselves after reaching certain technological know how.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
"Whatever doesn't kill us, makes us stronger..."
Nonsense. There are things that won't kill you but will leave you weak like an infant, so that you suffer miserably until something else comes along and kills you.
Friedrich Nietzsche was a moron.
Sticks and stones can break your bone. But calling Nietzsche a moron only makes him stronger.
Men performing science are aware (god, I hope) that they live in a world with imperfect people. Even rich, brilliant, and evil people. They make choices to study one thing, or study another. Science may be amoral, but scientists are not.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
You seem to labour under the impression that he was sitting on his hands and then decided that he'd create a super dangerous killer virus to massage his ego. As I understand it, the reasoning behind engineering a super-virulent strain like this is that such a mutation could conceivably happen "in the wild", and that if, or when, it does, it would be a Good Thing if we knew how to deal with it.
You know? In my mind, a terrorist is someone who participates in the act of creating terror in whatever form. Terror, not merely a fear. That this research was even done is pretty terrifying. That this strain was actually created is even moreso.
To me, this fits the definition of terrorism. I expect the US government to act in accordance with its own justifications for its past behavior. A bio-weapon of mass destruction has been created. If it weren't for the fact that it was done by "non-brown people" I suspect something would already have been done by now.
Historically, it's been shown that often simply knowing that something is possible ends up being the greatest hurdle to actually accomplishing it.
So now, it is only a matter of time... the only question is will it be enough time for a treatment to have been discovered?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This is perhaps the one thing I enjoy about Australia's isolation - the whole northern hemisphere could blow up/get wiped out by a super-virus and we'd be alright just so long as we set up a naval blockade. We are the Madagascar of the Pacific!
I write professional videogame reviews! http://www.digitallydownloaded.net/
"Finally! A disease sent from God to punish people for being Un-American."
Err, the researcher is from the Netherlands. So I guess you mean punishing those who are un-Dutch? ;-)
Pardon my ignorance here, but why are they intentionally genetically modifying viruses to be so lethal? It is my (possibly misguided) understanding they're introducing things that wouldn't necessarily happen on their own as they're directing the virus to mutate in various ways. So the "research should be known so we can combat it if it happens naturally" seems a bit wonky as having the virus mutate naturally in this specific way seems unlikely.
I'm not completely opposed to releasing the research, but I must ask why they were intentionally doing this at all?
Now can somebody throw that nutcase and all of his research in a volcano or something :s
IANAV, but is this the paper they are talking about? At least it seems to be about the same subject: Multidrug Resistant 2009 A/H1N1 Influenza Clinical Isolate with a Neuraminidase I223R Mutation Retains Its Virulence and Transmissibility in Ferrets
Yeah, medicine is good business, but first you need to create a market for it.
Dangerous = Hide it, is the idiots solution. Because if anything, information will want to get out, and to assume that this information is unique, or that it cannot be replicated, or that it is the only time anyone will come up with it is idiotic.
On the other hand, recognizing any information that has more potential for harm, is a good thing. And there are intelligent ways to go about it. The military already classifies its information and enforces boundaries to some extent. This is just an example of it already being done in some form or another.
Deciding who deserves to know is where it is tricky, but just assuming all information should be free and out there is actually not very responsible. Rather, getting the right information to the right people is what being responsible really entails.
On the personal level, we should have some control over our own information, our identity, and what harms us. We should have that right, especially if the government already has that right (and uses it against us).
There are a couple of points related to this.
1 You're not particularly good at assessing risk. Do the maths on people killed by disease and people killed by terrorists
2 There is a history of the flu virus turning lethal. Spanish flu and earlier history of extremely deadly pandemics.
3 This study demonstrates breeding a better pathogen using natural means using traits that already exist.
4 Vaccines for flu type virus are very effective.
5 Exposure to a similar flu virus or vaccine confers some immunity.
6 Agents that boost the immune response to vaccines confer an even broader immunity
The point is that government should be preparing broad spectum bird flu vaccines and allowing people to put their hands up to get them as the risk of this type of virus arising naturally is high. This study demonstrates this are fact.
CSIRO, an Australian research organisation released research relating to mouse pox virus modifications that created a deadly virus precisely because it was hoped that it would lead to better treatments. They also surmised that governments around the world already knew about this but had kept it secret.
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001755.html
The work was first presented at a conference dedicated to influenza that took place in September in Malta
It looks like it is bit late to close the stable door now, anyway.
Actually, if the anti-vaxxers were around in full force then like they are now, they would probably have been lynched (or, at the very least, strapped down and vaccinated against their will).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
informative, perhaps
Erasmus was an independent and somewhat eccentric thinking machine that served under Omnius prior to and during the Butlerian Jihad. Erasmus took his name, and titular gender, from the ancient Earth scholar Desiderius Erasmus. His attempts to understand humanity typically came through experiments on enslaved humans of the Synchronized Worlds, which normally resulted in suffering, misery and death for the subjects. He would definitely be interested in this, although he did (will) make a more virulent virus at one point...
The nature of this research may be fairly well indicated by the other papers he is connected to, and there is nothing particularly cutting edge about them. This isn't a criticism- it is a statement that the nature of this research is a) readily accessible by those who wish to pursue it, and b) publishing the recent research might merely be a less important follow-on to the past published work.
To the commentator who brought up the Fermi paradox, this is exactly correct. If someone is sufficiently motivated, a disaster could have been wrought long ago; there is really nothing but undergraduate molecular and microbiology skills, moderate investments in equipment, and sheer sociopathy standing between them and 'success'. That this hasn't happened, despite its relative ease for the motivated group, leaves only a few rational conclusions possible: that this is harder than it looks (possible, but not probable), that the DHS is fantastically effective at detecting and stopping efforts in secrecy (laughable), or these "terrorists" we spend so much money and cultural capital on stopping simply don't exist (most likely).
Tamiflu has not been shown to work at all in the prevention or reduction of flu symptoms for the large majority of adults. Some groups with identifiable immunodeficiencies or the elderly find modest, but significant, relief. We cannot slow an epidemic at all with Tamiflu or antivirals for the large majority of healthy adults.
One I was thinking of the other day. Suppose hypothetically that you accidentally discovered a new free energy source by yourself. Unfortunately for you, you also discover that it can be turned into the most destructive force known to man, with the ability to destroy the world. Now what do you do with the information? Who to you tell, who do you trust? Do you trust your own government?
So with this type of threat, can we now spend the effort to develop a universal flu vaccine and eradicate the disease rather than continuously pump money into annual vaccines? This will immunize the populace against all variants, as well as this threat and many others derived from existing flu strains.
it really depends on how easily a determined terrorist could come to the same conclusions of the stufy. If the answer is "pretty possible"/"much doable" then sharing the info gives us the chance to have more people / resources in more countries working for a vaccine. If the answer is "not in his wildest wet dream" then yeah, restrict it.
Madagascar has closed it's ports.
In Guatemala. Thats way beyond "fail to treat".
And it was communicable. The wives and children of the subjects were also infected by the diseases.
And here I thought I was the only one clever enough to twist that saying into something sig-worthy. Well I guess the sig-worthy part is debatable.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
I envision installations deep underneath the earth where the energy was produced. The people that maintain the system are given a "one way" trip to down to the installation. They are cut off, except from the other people like themselves in other installations around the earth. They know how it works, and can discuss it over the encrypted channels they share. Their social life is just with the other maintainers of the system. I guess they would monitor each other; let those above know when a new acolyte needed to start training.
But the people above, some of whom are obviously crazy, will never learn how it works.
Now here is the problem. If you figure it out, then someone else can figure it out. So its only a matter of time before the wrong person figures it out. There is no choice: colonize space.
What you are leaving out of your highly biased one sided statement is that chicken pox never leaves the body, is responsible for god knows how many problems later in life and is the principle cause of shingles in those who have immune system complications later. Leaving out the scarring and other damage the virus does to children. The Herpes virus that composes chicken pox is one of the most highly evolved human viruses. It's very effective at infecting and staying with the host for the remainder of their lives and it's unknown what the long term implications are for infection. In addition this leaves out the child that doesn't get it as a child and ends up getting the far more severe adult version.
They didn't specifically modify the virus if I understand the article correctly. They simply passaged it many times through a ferret host. Selective pressure caused the mutations leading the to increased transmission ability. The virus's DNA was then sequenced to find the mutations. All of them were known mutations found in nature, but just not in the same viral genome until that point. That knowledge is important for scientists working on infectious disease.
They didn't set out to introduce specific mutations in an attempt to make a super virus. While the result is somewhat similar, the means to the end are important here.
An analogy would be a lab constructing a strain of S. aureus that is vancomycin and methicillin resistant, vs reporting the seqeuce of genes responsible for a natural isolate found to show that phenotype.
Learning more about disease is the only way to prevent/treat it. Burying our heads in the sand and pretending that everything will be OK just isn't going to cut it.
No delay. It just fails in antecipating it.
Rethinking email
We are strugling to gather enough renewable power for our needs here on Earth. What makes you think we can start a space colonization program? Our best chance of getting into space is to reduce emphasis on (manned) space exploration, and focus more on basic science.
We are living in a window where altough we are powerful enough to destroy a planet, we aren't powerful enough to colonize another one or space. That is bad, but investing in the wrong path won't get us out of here faster.
Rethinking email
"Whatever doesn't kill us, makes us stronger..."
Nonsense. There are things that won't kill you but will leave you weak like an infant, so that you suffer miserably until something else comes along and kills you.
Friedrich Nietzsche was a moron.
Sticks and stones can break your bone. But calling Nietzsche a moron only makes him stronger.
He's already dead, so I can't make him stronger.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
You clearly don't know what you are talking about. The chicken pox vaccine is a 'live' vaccine. So, whether you catch the disease naturally, or get vaccinated, you will have disease in your body. We absolutely know what happens later in life with the natural disease. Chicken pox is not new, nor a mystery. What we don't know is what happens later in life when you get the vaccine. Yes, shingles is caused by the chicken pox virus, but there is no data all to indicate that a chicken pox vaccine as a child will prevent shingles (an even milder disease). In fact, there is data indicating exactly the opposite, since the chicken pox vaccine has shown itself to NOT offer life long immunity.
So, your suggestion is that because a small percentage of kids might not be immune naturally when they read adulthood, we should force all children into the same dangerous position? Or are you under the impression that adults cannot be vaccinated?
The scarring that you whine about is less of a problem than acne. Since the vaccine multiplies the change of death or permanent injury by approximately 10x, it is highly unethical to use that as a rational.
Since the release of the Chicken Pox vaccine, there has been a concerted and highly effective campaign to convince the US population that Chicken Pox is a deadly and debilitating disease on the scale of Polio. It simply isn't. As a child, it is on par with the an average flu combined with an acne breakout. As an adult it is ~10x worse.
To keep things in perspective, a child that is allowed to play high school football is MORE likely to end up dead or with a life long than a child taken to a pox party. A child that is allowed to ride a school bus is only a little less likely to end up with a life long injury or death. A person that is given the chicken pox vaccine as a child is MORE likely to die of chicken pox than one who has not.
Elohim is a title, and translated means "The God", or "The True God". notice the definitive article.
Yahweh or Jehovah (YHWH) is not a title - it is a name, and refers to the name of Elohim.
In this, I find it interesting that I found this at comment number 665, which if I'm not mistaken makes mine comment number 666. =D
This sig no verb.
Maybe that's because you're getting all your news from AM radio! Just sayin'.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Mod Parent Up. This is the best SF paradigm for the story. King's epic was a dark fantasy soap opera about the aftermath. The White Plague is a Science Fiction account of the plague itself.
And Herbert's other novels are far too overlooked, anyway. I highly recommend any SF fan to explore his full bibliography. The White Plague is a good place to start.
I can see the fnords!
Friedrich Nietzsche was a moron.
The only morons are the ones who take metaphorical quotations literally.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Are you seriously implying that listening to AM radio, home of ultra-conservative and religious talk, would isolate me from anti-science sentiments? What color is the sky in your world? You should have said NPR, then your comment would almost have made some sense. Plus that's what I actually listen to.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Does it target fat people? Think about it, if terrorist want to use a genetically engineered virus, they would surely prefer a virus that targets people with the “fat” gene. After all, they are mostly in the USA and the UK. It is amazing that a gene like that does not exist in countries where people are starving to death like in some African countries. A virus that targets fat people is something that we should really be afraid of. A generic targeting virus is pointless for terrorists.
This christmas in your bedroom...
Privacy is terrorism.
Actually, having terrorists try to build a nuclear weapon is far safer for America than having them take whatever plutonium they can get their hands on, grind it into dust and spread it in the headwaters of the Mississippi or Colorado rivers. Goodbye USA. Plutonium is a strong poison. The problem with bioweapons is: How do you inoculate your own people safely?
It's a short story about the "Monte Carlo project" to randomly generate viruses. A pertinent quote:
1729 = 9^3 + 10^3 = 1^3 + 12^3
Oh, I know, I was agreeing with him. The irresponsible bastard who invented fire should have had his head crushed with a rock before he had a chance to really get it going. Especially when he started teaching others to do it, without concern for the potential risk that some nutcase could take this research and burn down the whole damn forest.
For failing to recognize that "can do something" doesn't necessarily mean "should do something"
No, not seriously.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.