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Mutant Flu Researchers Declare a Time Out
New submitter scibri writes "Researchers working on highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza have said they will stop work on the virus for 60 days, to allow them to explain the importance of their work to politicians and the public. Quoting: 'Despite the positive public-health benefits these studies sought to provide, a perceived fear that the ferret-transmissible H5 HA viruses may escape from the laboratories has generated intense public debate in the media on the benefits and potential harm of this type of research. We would like to assure the public that these experiments have been conducted with appropriate regulatory oversight in secure containment facilities by highly trained and responsible personnel to minimize any risk of accidental release.'"
Reader Harperdog sends in a related article arguing that we shouldn't be having a debate about the censorship of research, but rather a debate over whether the research should have been allowed in the first place.
Are they researchers for the mutant flu or are they flu researchers that are mutants? Or did the mutant flu make them mutants?
And this is the way the new Dark Ages will begin. Not from where you'd expect, religious fundamentalists who are offended by the challenge reality presents to their mythology. But from easily-frightened handwringing "ethicists", who had they been around in the time of the caveman would have taken away Ugh's flint for fear he'd burn down the forest were he to succeed in starting a fire.
If these guys don't do the research, someone else will. Probably some government, and then they'll spread it once they have a secret cure for themselves.
I think you have confused the government with drug companies. Granted the difference is sometimes difficult to discern.
A drug company is a private corporation over which you have no control.
A government is a public corporation that you vote for, and is controlled by the drug companies. (& etc.)
...have someone studying it now rather than having them start when its already too late. It can take months or years to create a vaccine, then more time to manufacture/distribute it to the public. By this time a large proportion of the world's population could be infected.
We would like to assure the public that these experiments have been conducted with appropriate regulatory oversight in secure containment facilities by highly trained and responsible personnel to minimize any risk of accidental release.
Why does this remind me of all the stories where some contractor walked out of a "secure $organization facility" with highly sensitive data/source code/credit_card numbers etc...?
Should we be surprised when we read a story one day that says that some Chinese researcher walked out the door with a container of some highly contagious strain of Ferret Flu...
and that should give us time to find that Damn ferret.
Newsflash: SOMEONE is already doing it on a scale so massive that human beings can't even come close to competing with. That someone is called The Universe, or more specifically in this case the Planet Earth.
Flu virii are replicating and recombining on their own. They do it all day every day in billions of organisms around the planet. By doing a tiny tiny tiny version of the same thing in a controlled manner in a lab, we can learn a whole lot about that natural process that will provide wonderful insights to help combat the really bad stuff that the evolution of these virii WILL produce at some point.
In all likelihood all of the combinations that these scientists come up with already exist somewhere.
The seven experiments of concern are those that would:
1. demonstrate how to make a vaccine ineffective
2. confer resistance to antibiotics or antiviral agents
3. enhance a pathogen's virulence or make a non-virulent microbe virulent
4. increase transmissibility of a pathogen
5. alter the host range of a pathogen
6. enable a pathogen's ability to evade diagnostic or detection modalities
7. enable the weaponization of a biological agent or toxin
.
I see your point, especially related to #7. However, I'd prefer to know that we understand pathogens, antibiotic actions, and immunization before we really, really need that knowledge. Bubonic Plague wiped out about 1/3 of Europe's population because they didn't have antibiotics.
I see no reason for an experimental virus to be both highly contagious and deadly at the same time. Couldn't you learn the same thing from two viruses. One that was very contagious but not dangerous and another that was very deadly but not contagious?
Why put the warhead in the missile if you don't intend to kill people? if you want to test the missile, put a dummy warhead in it. If you want to test the warhead, then detonate without the delivery mechanism.
Viral researchers do this sort of thing all the time. They test contagious viruses with harmless strains to watch how they get into the body. Deadly strains are typically injected. They're not airborne.
Maybe I don't understand what they're doing but the whole thing smells like a germ warfare lab if they're combining the two and trying to make them more deadly. That's a weaponization program.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
lol If that's even remotely true, then I definitely want any pandemic-capable viruses worked on in level 4 labs.
You inspired me to look it up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level
"Biosafety level 3 ... blah blah blah. Key words, "treatments exist."
This level is applicable to clinical, diagnostic, teaching, research, or production facilities in which work is done with indigenous or exotic agents which may cause serious or potentially lethal disease after inhalation.[7] It includes various bacteria, parasites and viruses that can cause severe to fatal disease in humans but for which treatments exist, such as"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H5N1
60% fatal, vaccine being developed. In other words, no treatments exist, and it's highly deadly.
Yeah, let's go with BSL4, please.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
No, the researchers are themselves a highly evolved mutation of the influenza virus.
Which mean that they can't produce offspring unless they infect you?
Whatever you do, don't click the link!
:-P
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
...the really bad stuff that the evolution of these virii WILL produce at some point.
NOT. VIRII.
You sound like an idiot.
Indeed. The closest Latin word to virii would be viri, which is just the plural for vir, "a man". So I guess the GGP might be right -- "the evolution of these virii^Wmen" *has* produced some really bad stuff.
More pedantically though, assuming virii existed as the plural of some Latin word, the rules state that the singular would be virius -- still not virus, and not a word in any language that I'm aware of.
Going the other way from singular to plural and using basic Latin rules, many people might look at virus and assume you just change the -us to -i to make the plural, but that gives us viri again -- meaning "men" as the plural of "a man". Looking deeper, we find that the actual Latin word virus was uncountable , so it never even had a plural in Latin -- so applying Latin rules for deriving the plural is just silly.
Applying English rules for plural formation to the *countable* *English* word virus gives us the proper plural form viruses.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
It is a risk/reward analysis; to me the risk of killing billions of people is much heavier on my scale of importance than any reward from the research.
The risk of research: Billions of people could die if containment fails or if natural strains evolve and spread before an effective vaccine is developed.
Reward of research: Eliminate risk of Billions of people dying if natural strains evolve and spread or containment fails.
Risk of NO research: Billions of people could die if natural strains evolve and spread.
Reward of NO research: eliminate risk of Billions of people dying from containment failure.
Which is better? There is no action that creates zero risk of Billions of people dying.