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Designing DNA Specific Bio-Weapons
Hugh Pickens writes writes "The Atlantic reports that experts in genetics and microbiology are convinced we may be only a few years away from the development of advanced, genetic bio-weapons able to target a single human being based on their DNA. The authors paint a scenario of the development of a virus that causes only mild flu in the general population but when the virus crosses paths with cells containing a very specific DNA sequence, the sequence would act as a molecular key to unlock secondary functions that would trigger a fast-acting neuro-destructive disease that produces memory loss and, eventually, death. The requisite equipment including gene sequencers, micro-array scanners, and mass spectrometers now cost over $1 million but on eBay, it can be had for as little as $10,000. According to Ronald Kessler, the author of the 2009 book In the President's Secret Service, Navy stewards gather bedsheets, drinking glasses, and other objects the president has touched—they are later sanitized or destroyed—in an effort to keep would-be malefactors from obtaining his genetic material. However no amount of Secret Service vigilance can ever fully secure the president's DNA, because an entire genetic blueprint can now be produced from the information within just a single cell. How to protect the President? The authors propose open-sourcing the president's genetic information to a select group of security-cleared researchers who could follow in the footsteps of the computer sciences, where 'red-team exercises,' are extremely common practices so a similar testing environment could be developed for biological war games. 'Advances in biotechnology are radically changing the scientific landscape. We are entering a world where imagination is the only brake on biology,' write the authors. 'In light of this coming synbio revolution, a wider-ranging relationship between scientists and security organizations—one defined by open exchange, continual collaboration, and crowd-sourced defenses—may prove the only way to protect the president.'"
....die!!!!....blargh
this is a brilliant idea. Great work once again.
Also, that's not how open source works.
Just throwing that out there... Basic scenario; brilliant biochemist does exactly this to wreck revenge on Ireland and England for the conflict that took his family. Mild flu in males, deadly to females. Some of his best work outside Dune, btw...
IAIFARSIJDPOOTV - I Am In Fact A Reality Star; I Just Don't Play One On TV
This is just cruel. A bullet would be more humane than to cause an eventual death by progressively shutting down their body.
For every interest group when they figure out that they can target "unwanted" groups of people. And imagine what the Nazis of Germany could have done during WWII - a virus designed to kill off everyone that wasn't pure Arian.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
We haven't yet found a cure for cancer, or other horrible and debilitating diseases, but we've found time to research something like this?
I'm on bluesnews, right? This is an announcement for another Resident Evil game?
If I was a foreign power wanting to build a genetic weapon to specifically target the President, I would haver been collecting the DNA of all the top echelon politicians well before they came close to running their presidential campaigns. If I can think of this in 10 seconds of reading TFS (not even TFA) then I'm sure that the bad guys have already thought of it - unless you subscribe to the theory that the bad guys are always dumb.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Sure, or if you really wanted to kill the president you could just shoot him during a public appearance.
The main security used to protect politicians is that only crazy people try to kill them, and crazy people are bad at assassinations.
I doubt they're any better at biology.
It seems that they are already attacking our politicians with this method, since they never seem to be able to remember anything they said before they were elected.
What a horrible thing to do with advances in science. We should be working to cure the world's ills, not create new ones. And those who think that by doing such things in order to prevent them is a good idea, are sadly mistaken. You just know that the goal is destruction, not prevention, for those who create in order to protect.
Maybe, but only maybe the article is right and it would be possible to design a protein, which binds specifically to a DNA sequence motif of a single human being killing the host. Currently this is a lot of work even for a few (as in 18) bases and not solvable by standard means. The design of a protein binding specifically to any random DNA sequence ( think huuuuuugee Zinc-Finger Nucleases : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_finger_nuclease ) is in my opinion still nobel prize material.
If that was actually possible, people would use it to do good (Gene therapy etc). To knock out cancerous genes, while retaining the good ones. To bind specifically to Virus RNA or to just identifiy gene segments, which are connected somehow to genetical disorders (minus the killing of course in this case).
My point is: I don't think there is enough motivation in the scientific community to develop this just to kill a political target. There are definitely less costly ways, which leave less traces.
It was in a fringe episode wasn't it???? lol..... amazing to see how sci-fi is slowly moving to science reality
We've found cures for many cancers. "cancer" isn't a disease, it's a family of diseases, and killing is a whole lot easier when you're less selective. By the way, this isn't research, this is spouting notions. The two are only conflated in think tanks and idiots. but I repeat myself.
The very first thing that crossed my mind was a world devoid of independent thinkers and anyone with the mind to challenge coercive authority. A world where individualism is dead and conformity is god. If that is indeed the future, then I'm glad I'll be dying before it happens.
As bad as killing a head of state might be, I worry more about the problem of a buggy (pun intended) first release that goes like Frank Herbert's White Plague and kills lots of others.
Also, it seems a lot of effort to kill a President when the same amount of money might fund several "traditional" attempts
We're already very aware of how viruses constantly mutate. So, how long before this one mutates such that the "switch" is always in the "ON" position, and then proceeds to wipe out most of the human population?
BRILLIANT idea. brilliant. It's these sorts of mad scientists that truly scare me.
Add to that, there's no "kill switch" if you have a problem. Anyone caught making a virus weapon needs to die by fire. Along with the ones that funded and assisted them. The whole world needs to be completely clear about this, because it's a serious danger to every living soul.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
The summary is all about defending POTUS against this, but would either political party be very inconvenienced over losing their nominal figurehead? It would probably cause a temporary drop in worldwide market values but political agendas would be unchanged and it would probably provide an opportune moment to implicate an unwanted faction and clamp down further on individual freedoms.
Or at least it's highly specific as long as the virus replicates itself perfectly, even for nonessential DNA.
It's a good thing that viruses never mutate, isn't it?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Now that sounds like a good idea. Brilliant. Given the fact that we know exactly how DNA, the human body and related things work, this can only end well.
And don't think they won't do it just because I'm being a cynical old so-and-so.
Wow I can't believe there are government dollars being wasted on this. Since the preseident just transfered his skin cells to thousands of people on the campaign trail, it's good to see that the big brains in washington think it's important to take all bedsheets, glasses etc.
All this means is that the entire world will be constantly sick as the US, Soviets, Chinese, and Arab governments continually release viruses in order to kill off all the dissenters in their own respective countries. I think they'll be too busy oppressing their own populations with this technology they won't even think of using it against another country.
Reminds me of the FOXDIE virus from the original Metal Gear Solid game.
... to even *think* about something like that?
This is vile and vicious organized murder!
Only a complete psychopath could say such a thing and act like it's all "normal".
A state should not even allow to *think* that, without major public outcry and the hacks who thought it up, together with their bosses, never ever being able to get a job ever again!
I feel relieved that, knowing that moderate funds and a scientific background are now sufficient to create a disease that could kill billions, or target entire ethnicities for genocide, at least the president is safe.
DNA-tailored bio-weapons would give a whole new meaning to the word "genocide". Sure they'd make for a good assassination tool, but wouldn't the same DNA watermarking technques apply when dealing with groups of genetically related individuals? While current genetic theories rule out race-specific weapons of mass destruction that don't suffer from huge collateral damage, they could be used effectively to settle scores between Mafia-style crime families.
Damnit, this technology is the entire conceit behind my comic Genocide Man, but it's not supposed to exist until the year 2030 or so. The 21st century is consistently being more lethal than even I predicted.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
How about "Why to protect the President?"? There's something wrong with your system of government if you have a single point of failure and can't cope with a single person being taken out of action, for whatever reason.
What actually is the ROI? All the effort to get to one man, plus being a gamble on if such a virus were to actually reach the individual in question. So, the virus kills off the president? The veep takes over, the houses still sit and the country runs as before. To cause any real damage the whole chain would need to be crippled in some way, and which would mean other, more conventional attacks, or a less specific virus. Both of which would negate the need for the targeted virus.
Of course, as a non American, I do acknowledge there is a little more power (or perception of power) assigned to this one individual and obviously certain ideological influences would disappear with his or her passing, but really not enough to be worth the effort.
For a terrorist, there isn't any payback. The president died of complications caused in a freak reaction to the flu. Who's to say any different? And nation states already realise the futility (and MAD for leaders) in going after the top man. such a weapon would be more a useful economic warfare tool. Releasing the virus in the main offices, crippling productivity and lopping off the head (ceo) would cause greater damage.
As others have said, the biggest threat is a more generalised virus targeting ethnic groups with specific dna sequences. However, it would be a brave or stupid hate group that wouldn't fear (think of all the non-aryan Nazis, seeing as somewhere near specifically mentioned hitler) killing half their followers or a mutation biting back.
No, with got more to worry about from good old fashioned normal viruses than something like this.
Hmm, the circles keep getting smaller, like the previous SARS that only killed Chinese, the swine flu from a few years ago, that only killed Mexicans and the current wave of SARS that is only killing Qatari Arabs.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
and don't get pulled over for anything.
I wonder how big is the DNA content in a breathalyzer test?
... so what? Has american become so mindless that cutting off it's 'figurehead' will have an effect for more than an hour?
Seriously if our president dies, BFD, we've got the VP, the head of the senate, and then whoever else is next in line to take over custodianship of the presidency if the aforementioned are incapacitated or eliminated. That's our system at work. Honestly if more people thought like this maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal. If thousands of our servicemen are acceptable losses in a foreign nation, then why isn't a figurehead in our own backyard? It's not like it would suddenly change policies. It MIGHT have some effect on political visits with foreign dignitaries (since if you can't secure YOUR leader, how can they expect you to secure theirs?), but as far as direction and control of the US proper it would only have as much effect as could be politically leveraged for 'favorable' emergency bill passages, much like the WTC was for the DHS, TSA, and company.
Americans sure are obsessed with their president.
Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
There are far less dangerous ways of killing an individual. Since this "flu-like" virus can't even be guaranteed to reach its target, and there is always some risk of it changing and getting a lot more people, it's just safer and more practical to use drones, car mounted bombs, lasers, whatever to get an individual. If you want to be untraceable there are ways to handle that too. So the only thing that leaves this useful for is elimination of lots of people with particular genetic characteristics - i.e. genocide.
The Persians and Arabs have a long history of animosity. Israel, with her strong education and technology infrastructure, would be a formidable bio-weapon maker.
Iran has a pretty homogenous population; whereas the US is quite diverse - targeting any group of people wouldn't be as near as devastating as targeting Persians only.
So, in short Lundse is correct. You are not.
They create something that disables guns, eventually being able to create the device which can disable "DNA". thus creating the perfect assassination machine.
Its quite amazing how science fiction is becoming true.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
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Scenario A: A virus targeted at a laundry list of "terrorists" is released into the general population of the middle east. A few years after killing its intended targets the trigger mutates to be always on, killing indiscriminately.
Scenario B: Someone gets a hold of it and tries to use it as a tool for genocide, they target a more generic DNA base (eastern European, western European, Russian, Caucasian, Black, Asian, etc), it begins to kill whatever group it is targeted to but mutates somewhere along the way, killing anyone it infects.
Viruses don't remain static, they mutate. You can add all of the self destruct coding you want and they will still find a way to mutate. You cant predictably control billions of tiny cells subjected to an infinite level of variables (temperature, radiation (em, infrared, nuclear), salinity, etc). Why do you think life on earth is so diverse?
1) This could possibly happen if X, Y, and Z all fell into place, which is about as likely as everything my ass touches turning to gold.
2) The law of unintended consequences would almost ensure this is a very, very bad idea. It is, at the best, uncontrollable. At the worst it would end civilization. Not really the parameters most nations work in, even - DUN DUN DUUUUUN - IRAN (Booga, booga).
Navy stewards gather bedsheets, drinking glasses, and other objects the president has touched-they are later sanitized or destroyed-in an effort to keep would-be malefactors from obtaining his genetic material.
Was this policy introduced towards the end of the Clinton Administration..?
What could possibly go wrong?
"Navy stewards gather bedsheets, drinking glasses, and other objects the president has touched—they are later sanitized or destroyed—in an effort to keep would-be malefactors from obtaining his genetic material."
All it takes is one ML-1 Monica surveillance drone!
Ezekiel 23:20
to justify weaponization in the field of genetically engineered viruses. Even if the research to counter these potential threats is valid, it seems like a recurring issue these days.
I remember reading that doing Aparteid the South African government worked on something like this against the African population.
they tried this on macgyver and it did not work
You do know that Logan's Run is not a documentary right?
Then how come at the end it says, "Based on a true story"?
EXPLAIN that
And just how effective is this methodology when the candidate changes completely every 5 minutes?
If I was a foreign power wanting to specifically target the President.
If you were a foreign power, you wouldn't be posting on Slashdot.
Come to think of it, if you were a foreign power, wouldn't you'd be a little short for a foreign power?
Just like the weapon Ana Khouri uses to assassinate Taraschi in Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
Sci-fi has been talking about this exact type of thing for at least 20 years, so it's not a new idea.
Second, and far more important, only a complete F-N moron would even try to release such a thing.
The reason is very simple, it's called MUTATION. Yes, viruses mutate, even the engineered ones. That targeting mechanism is either going to cease to function, get bypassed, or widen it's range of targets, and there is no way to predict which it will do or when it will happen.
Here's another thing to think about. Without including a massive amount of targeting info in the virus, you won't be able to discern between related targets or just random individuals with similar dna. Because of that, you will be unintentionally targeting unwanted subjects. If that's not bad enough, if you really do put in enough info for the virus to target 1 individual in the human populace, that huge amount of info is going to be a drain on the resources of the virus. You know what many microbes like to do with massive useless genes like that? They throw them away. Yes, that's right, it might not even take one replication in release before they chuck all your precious targeting info. And then what happens? Do they no longer have their deadly payload, or do they use it on everyone?
So leave this stuff to sci-fi writers, because reality is that viruses make HORRIBLE targeted weapons, though they aren't bad for indiscriminant killing and terror, even if they are a lot slower than bombs, guns, knives, poisons, and all other weapons in existence.
This entire submission is just an elaborate ploy to tie up secret service's resources while they try to thought-police 1000s of nerds' sci-fi plot fantasies. With half the agency distracted, Hugh Pickens will then be able to successfully stuff the ballots in Ohio ensuring that the morally pure presidential candidate wins.
That Eisenberg is nothing but trouble. I hope Pinkman stops him in time.
As long as they can clone our leader from his nose, who cares if they can engineer this (see 1973's sleeper http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070707/ ). In case my country's secret services are listening, that was an attempt at a joke,
Read the "wool" series and the sequel "first shift - legacy" same basic idea except with nanomachines.
Both by hugh howey.
Peer to peer is the ONLY solution.
Hillary Clinton ordered foreign diplomat's credit card numbers, fingerprints, DNA and whatnot to be collected. Now dear Americans, shit yourself into your pants based on fear stories based on your own cloak-and-dagger shit.
Most of you still believe that all the cloak-and-dagger criminality by your clandestine services are just a great adventure and it is fun to see non-Americans being harmed. You think it is funny to stage coup d'etats, to steal other people's DNA like a gypsy steals gold watches, you think it is funny to kill without due process.
All that shit makes the nail bed for you Americans to have a nervous sleep. When they blow you up in Lybia, it is the retaliation for 1000 cloak-and-dagger crap actions perpetrated by the MIC and their friends in Langley.
Nastarowje and Cheers !
Most the white Americans who can lay claim to long bloodlines on this side of the Atlantic share genes from all of North America's representative races. That is to say few southern whites with roots that predate the Civil War can be sure that they don't have some African or Native American blood. This, because in days gone by, if somebody could pass for white they mostly chose to do so -- hiding their ancestry. In the early 1970s I heard the great anthropologist Margaret Meade deliver lecture on this topic. The argument as I recall was statistical, and pretty incontrovertible, involving the statistical clines of the various traits.
Famously, the Vanderbilt family is descended from Anthony Janszoon van Salee who was also proudly claimed as a progenitor by Jaquiline Bouvier Kennnedy on her mother's side. Other open examples of this sort are not hard to find.
Race itself is a problematic concept for many physical anthropologists. And is arguably a very inexact classification when done with simple phenotype. But it does prove useful for forensic analysis.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
"'Advances in biotechnology are radically changing the scientific landscape. We are entering a world where imagination is the only brake on biology"
No need for anyone to get their undies in a knot over this. These guys are not scientists, or at least they gave up active research a long, long time ago. The brake on biology is FUNDING, not imagination. Pharma's laid off 300,000. Biotech is in constant churn with downsizing, outsourcing, offshoring, layoffs, mergers, and buyouts. Government has laid off thousands at all levels. Academia is crumbling, and will not last much longer with the NIH's 6% funding rate. Imagination is not a brake, we all imagine what we could do if we had a pair of pennies to rub together.
Why target 1 annoying human being when we have flys and mosquitos to kill instead?
FoxDie can have potential side effects if the vector and target are clones of the same person.
It's time to occupy Wall Street cell by cell!
Gesundheit Mr. Blankfein!
The kind of warfare we traditionally think about when we think about war is rendered ineffective by the current and emerging technology. If you think DNA-Specific Bio Weapons are a problem that is just race-based medicine which has been discussed on here previously. Cybernetic Warfare is about the creation of a cyborg army to use against the enemy which also creates a cyborg army. In this scenario cyborgs don't have rights, robots don't have rights, humans don't have rights either, and the soldiers are part man part machine with super powers. And no it's not a myth, it's what the military is currently working on doing.
Yeah, Che. Because commies are never butchers. :eyeroll:
When the US Government engineered HIV to wipe out the negroid populations of Africa, so that America could take over the rich diamond, gold, and other ore deposits on that continent, an unintended mutation ultimately led to the virus generalizing itself to the entire spectrum of human species.
It's not possible to target a virus at a single person, because any such virus will mutate to ensure its own survival, and ultimately spread beyond its intended target to encompass a more general heuristic.
"Red team" biowarfare exercises, where we create biological weapons to figure out ways to "defend" against them, is the dumbest idea since sharing needles.
Our brilliant military scientists were doing red team exercises in Fort Detrick when they developed weaponized anthrax. Brilliant! Now we've demonstrated to every biology grad student in the world that it's possible to turn anthrax into a cheap, effective biological weapon, and how to do it.
Now any terrorist with a budget of $100,000 and basic bacteriological skills knows how to bring the U.S. postal system, and most of the U.S., to a halt. Then what do we do? Require photo ID to mail a letter? Autoclave the mail?
... Abbey was pissed they took her research
I seem to recall 1988 Probe with Parker Stevenson featured an episode about a Genetically matched cold virus used to kill its intended victims by matching their DNA to evade a immune response.
This is why the US considers Bio and Chemical weapons to be the same class as Nukes. Attack with Bio, the response is nuclear fusion. Release Sarin in Manhattan, same response.
We are rapidly approaching the point where an active massive response like this will be the only option for developed countries to defend themselves. Governments like Iran will have to become self-policing terrorism-wise or they (and their populations) will just cease to exist. Assured destruction is the ultimate deterrent.
one of those where the president needs to be protected at all cost while the rest of the world can go to hell? I sometimes stand awked, euh, gawked? in awe? baffled !! by this movie mentality , but i never see it reflected in what americans say on forums anywhere. Maybe i missed the right forums then?
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
So, the right solution is to make government more of a distributed function, rather than concentrated in one person.
All it would take is one of these to mutate in the wild into something not so particular, and wham, worldwide pandemic.
Let's see after this year's seasonal flu!
Dr. Noah (Woody Allan) in Casino Royale made a bomb that would kill off all men over 4' 10" tall.
Have gnu, will travel.
Get out of the test and an A.
...before we do that, can we use it just once to cleanse America of the sweaty brown skinned plague that is taking our jobs and destroying our economy? It wouldn't really count as a bioweapon in that case anyway, I'd like to think of it more as chemotherapy - for a nation!
Infowars.com and prisonplanet.com have been writing articles about this VERY thing for years folks. Took the stupid mainstream media outlets long enough to admit it!! Why do you think police departments are moving to take your DNA at every turn, why do you think the push for sending in your DNA for genetic testing, for Genetic genealogy etc.... Of course they are gathering up as much DNA as they can - then they can create DNA specific bio weapons to "kill you".
"I'm achmed the terrorist, I'll kill you!!!"
The Truth is a Virus!!!
As I suggested a dozen years ago: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/fears.htm ..."
"The race is on to make the human world a better (and more resilient) place before one of these overwhelms us:
* Autonomous military robots out of control
* Nanotechnology virus / gray slime
* Ethnically targeted virus
See also though the root cause misperception: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html ..."
"Biological weapons like genetically-engineered plagues are ironic because they are about using advanced life-altering biotechnology to fight over which old-fashioned humans get to occupy the planet. Why not just use advanced biotech to let people pick their skin color, or to create living arkologies and agricultural abundance for everyone everywhere?
Think of the unknowns surrounding DNA like a lock that kept us safe from ourselves. Removing those unknowns is like telling everyone how to open all the locks on the planet (including digital locks protecting nuclear weapons). That implies our culture needs to change if we are to survive. On my website I talk about some of that. Here is another good one: http://anwot.org/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
*rolleyes*
Since we now have Aschen technology, one can only assume that there exists a Stargate, capable of bringing back this DNA targetted bioweapon.
Should have followed Jack's note from the future!
> The authors propose open-sourcing the president's genetic information to a select group of security-cleared researchers
Um... I don't think whoever said that understands what "open source" actually means.
This is the same problem with Mark Shuttleworth's recent insistence that letting a some non-employees in on unreleased software projects somehow makes them more "open" or "transparent". The point is not whether the monks in your cathedral draw a paycheck. It's that you're still discriminating about who will and won't be participating in the project.
If it's not open to //anyone//, it's not open at all.
nice way to wipe off the psychopathic genetic marker and live the empathic ones alone (and in need of a new government).
Heinleins Sixth Column... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Column
I believe I recall a 90s episode of the X files that had this exact same premise... does anyone recall the episode name?
"We are entering a world where imagination is the only brake on biology,' write the authors."
I thought it was ethics that were the biggest brake on biology.
Now here is a cruel and unusual punishment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaphism