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Designing DNA Specific Bio-Weapons

Posted by samzenpus on from the poison-just-for-you dept.

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.'"

130 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. Frank Herbert's The White Plague by Lundse · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
    1. Re:Frank Herbert's The White Plague by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Iran must be quite worried. Struxnet was nothing.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    2. Re:Frank Herbert's The White Plague by WillAdams · · Score: 1

      Yeah, that was exactly what I was thinking.

      There was also a mention in Marvel Comics, forget the title, starring Shang-Chi of the CIA developing race-specific genetic weapons.

      Somehow, we missed the science fiction story where:

      ``... the protagonists are would-be thieves or revolutionaries who seem to have all the superstitiousness of medieval peasants, but it turns out that it's merely behaviour to defend against such high-tech genetic snooping.'' ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3192557&cid=41689163 )

      --
      Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
    3. Re:Frank Herbert's The White Plague by thej1nx · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Are you an idiot? what you need to worry about now is Iran AND all the countries that do NOT like USA, pulling off this crap themselves. So let us make a couple of lists. How many countries hate Iran? Okay now... how many countries hate USA? Who should be more worried, do tell?

    4. Re:Frank Herbert's The White Plague by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Are you an idiot? Who has the resources to put something like this together? Does PayPal even allow sign-ups from Iran?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re:Frank Herbert's The White Plague by Grayhand · · Score: 1

      There was a Next Generation episode with a similar revenge theme only it was one person infected with a plague that would kill members of a specific family as a kind of assassin. It's driving me nuts because I know there was a scifi series that had this exact scenario where a person close to some one was infected with a targeted disease that was harmless to everyone but the target. It wasn't Fringe or Regensis but it was something along those lines. Something in the last ten years but I just can't remember enough details to remember what it was. Funny how often a subject gets explored in science fiction before it is in science.

    6. Re:Frank Herbert's The White Plague by Gilmoure · · Score: 1

      So much for gingers.

      --
      I drank what? -- Socrates
    7. Re:Frank Herbert's The White Plague by Lordrashmi · · Score: 1

      Possibly Dark Angel?

    8. Re:Frank Herbert's The White Plague by Truekaiser · · Score: 1

      Yea, that's the biggest fear I have with this. Some of what you would call human ethnicities are determined by minor genetic factors.

      It's not hard to imagine a kkk member with the knowledge making one that attacks people with the genetic code that is for dark skin and curly black hair.
      Or a neo nazi that makes one that targets the minor protein mutation that is found to originate in the area of the middle east that includes Israel.(I remember reading a article on this but I can't find it now)

      Or one of any number of 'hate groups' and their disliked ethnic groups.. Far more likely than targeting a single person.

    9. Re:Frank Herbert's The White Plague by JosKarith · · Score: 1

      Yeah, Dark Angel. One of the main plotlines of season 2.

      --
      'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
    10. Re:Frank Herbert's The White Plague by HiThere · · Score: 2

      I think that you're missing something. This thing is going to be CHEAP to pull together. The first one may be expensive, but the second is just going to be a few thousand dollars. (If I read correctly, the equipment would be around 400 thousand at today's prices, and the price of the equipment is dropping rapidly.)

      Targeting a particular small group might be difficult. The smaller the group targeted, the harder it would be to build. E.g., it's much easier to target "humans with blood type O" than John Jacobs Jingleheimer Schmidt. (And even then you kill more than one person.) So if your replacement candidate is pretty much like the guy being replaced, he could well be within the circle of error.

      P.S.: 90% of all genetic variation of humanity is located in Africa. Those who left still form a tight cluster. You REALLY can't judge genetic similarity from appearances, unless you're talking about very close relations.

      All that said, one would expect amateurs building their first microbes to make lots of mistakes. One of them might target any human with hemoglobin. And wipe out humanity through "malicious inadvertence". (If it were intentional, they could do it today with current knowledge...and, admittedly, a bit more cash than it will require in a few more years.)

      All that said, it's humorous to contemplate cycles in human customs. Polenesian royalty used to also guard all their bodily extrusions lest it be used to cast a curse upon them.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    11. Re:Frank Herbert's The White Plague by Dyolf+Knip · · Score: 1

      There was a short story with the same thing, though the name and author escape me. 20 minutes in the future, when police recover the DNA of the criminal from a crime scene, if they couldn't be found by normal means, they'd build a virus targeting that person and release it into the wild (left unspoken was how often they had false positives). It wouldn't kill them, but it would do something highly distinct (like turn their skin blue) and force them to seek medical attention, at which point they were easy to capture. The plot revolved around a kingpin being the first able to evade contracting 'his' virus and the resulting panic and PR fiasco. Turns out he had just quarantined himself in a hermetically sealed chamber.

      What confused me when I read it was why the authorities, when they found out what he'd done, didn't just laugh and say "Ok, so he's locked himself into a room from which he can never leave and cannot even have visitors. Sounds like a prison cell to me. And best of all, he's paying for it out of his own pocket. If there's ever a leak in his chamber or if a disgruntled minion 'accidentally' comes into contact with him, we'll get him then. Until then, he can cool his heels in a tighter cage than any we have available. Case closed".

      --
      Dyolf Knip
  2. I hate it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is just cruel. A bullet would be more humane than to cause an eventual death by progressively shutting down their body.

    1. Re:I hate it by Custard+Horse · · Score: 5, Funny

      A bullet would be more humane than to cause an eventual death by progressively shutting down their body.

      You've just described old age. You do know that Logan's Run is not a documentary right?

    2. Re:I hate it by Antipater · · Score: 1

      That's how lethal injections work.

      --
      Everything is better with chainsaws.
    3. Re:I hate it by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 2

      That is one of the reasons that civilized countries do not have the death penalty.

      --
      Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
    4. Re:I hate it by X0563511 · · Score: 1

      The first drug is supposed to put you out, so you are not aware of the rest of it.

      This is done because the drug that stops your heart is painful (your blood vessels supposedly feel like fire)

      You can disagree with the idea of a death penalty, it's not my place to argue against you there. However, lethal injection is at least a damn good attempt at making it humane.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    5. Re:I hate it by KiloByte · · Score: 1, Insightful

      To the contrary, putting some crook in confinement for sixty years instead of letting him go quickly is quite cruel, and forcing all honest citizens to pay for that crook is theft. I'm proud that my country, Poland, did not ratify this part of the EU Charter, and sad that despite overwhelming public support, we do not actually use it.

      You might say there's a risk of court errors. There's an easy solution: a criminal would be eligible for capital punishment only if there are no doubts he actually intentionally took part in the crime. This should not apply to any doubts as for legal qualification, such as jurisdiction issues, mental health, mental retardation, who dealt the death blow, etc. If two junkies cut someone with knives, kicked the victim and jumped on his head, it should not matter whose knife slashed the throat -- a notorious legal loophole that lets both crooks get off with a minor charge like battery. In this scheme, both would be eligible, even if for whatever reason they end up with a far lesser sentence, or, with our jokes for a court, even scot free.

      This scheme risks us having to pay for the crook's shelter, food, TV and health if there's any shred of doubt -- like, if the conviction relied on DNA evidence that's usually good enough for a criminal case but leaves _some_ room of error -- but that's the price of reducing the risk of killing an innocent person. Not that I consider sitting in jail for the rest of the life to be better than death.

      Another thing is, thirty years on the death row is both cruel and costly. If there's death penalty, it must be dealt swiftly. Under the scheme I just mentioned, there's at least no doubt as for guilt, and issues like "should someone with IQ of 75 be allowed to murder free?" are something in a dire need of reform.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    6. Re:I hate it by SomePgmr · · Score: 1

      I'd agree with you, as I have no problem with the death sentence on the surface of it. I do, however, have zero tolerance for fuck-ups when the stakes are that high.

      As it turned out, a few people with death sentences in my state were falsely convicted and later cleared. I'm still not sure it's better that they were imprisoned for many decades instead... but that's not for me to say.

    7. Re:I hate it by BevanFindlay · · Score: 1

      This raises a point about laws in general that seems to get missed quite a bit from modern debate: the effect on the populace as a whole should weigh heavier than the effect on one specific individual. We are so obsessed with an individual's rights, that we forget about the impact those rights have on everyone else - IMHO, we should be more concerned about an individual's responsibilities than their rights. Is the loss of the occasional single innocent person really that big a deal when you consider we're talking about people who would probably take several lives if we don't stop them?

      Intriguingly, my writing of this comment was interrupted by a fire drill: it's kind of insane to see how selfishly people act in a situation like that, showing more concern for their own inconvenience than for the fact that someone could be burning to death... I'm not too bothered if they themselves want to die in a fire (though I swear that should count as proof of insanity), but I am bothered that they don't think about the poor fire fighters who might have to come in after them.

    8. Re:I hate it by GargamelSpaceman · · Score: 1

      If a long jail sentence is as bad or worse than death ( and I would say it is ) then wrongly inflicting captial punishment is no worse or maybe more humane than wrongly incarcerating someone for a long time. I don't buy the idea that incarceration is better than capital punishment because a bad decision can be reversed. If there's any significant risk that the incarceration is unjust then it should not happen. The mistakes that are fixed, could very well dwarf the mistakes that aren't fixed in number.

      We don't want a situation where the authorities would incarcerate the robber for 50 years, but they are only 10% sure the suspect did it so they get sentenced to 5 years ( maybe they get them to plea to a lesser crime carrying that sentence, or the jury doesn't mind convicting them on that lesser crime given the substantial 10% chance they in fact committed the worse crime carrying the 50 year sentence ).

      It would be better to let some guilt go unpunished so as to live under the rubrick of either they're sure you did it and you get the penalty or they aren't sure and you go free.

      --
      ...
    9. Re:I hate it by virg_mattes · · Score: 1

      Is the loss of the occasional single innocent person really that big a deal when you consider we're talking about people who would probably take several lives if we don't stop them?

      The fact that you'd even ask this indicates that you've already jumped the rails. The answer is simply yes, that executing an innocent person should be considered far more abhorrent than not executing ten guilty people. Your argument is also entirely screwed up in that eliminating the death penalty does not in any way equate to setting people on death row free. They'd still be in prison so the worry that they'd kill more is certainly significantly reduced. Still, if being innocent of a crime isn't sufficient to prevent your being executed for it, then there's no "justice" in your justice system. And of course, for just about every crime that could result in the death penalty, executing an innocent person means that the guilty person, the one who committed the crime and the one whose future actions worry you so much, goes free. If you consider that reasonable, then maybe you shouldn't be commenting on anyone else's insanity.

      Virg

  3. What a great thing. by Z00L00K · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:What a great thing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      ... a virus designed to kill off everyone that wasn't pure Arian.

      The correct spelling is Aryan, you Uentermensch.

    2. Re:What a great thing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I don't think Hitler would have supported that given his personnal genetic background.

    3. Re:What a great thing. by Tanuki64 · · Score: 1

      Really? Too bad, if I had black skin and lived in the USA, I would worry even today.

    4. Re:What a great thing. by Hentes · · Score: 2

      I don't think we have to be afraid of race-based targeting. Ethnic groups aren't homogenous enough for that to be possible. Would the Nazis have invented a Jew-killing virus, Hitler would've been the first of its victims.

    5. Re:What a great thing. by Charliemopps · · Score: 1

      The problem that people like this often overlook is the fact that the majority of the Nazies, including Hitler, were not pure "Arian" Targetting any particular race would likely kill off large portions of your own people.

    6. Re:What a great thing. by Remus+Shepherd · · Score: 2

      In my comic Genocide Man:

      The Palestines and Jews designed viruses to wipe out each other.
      Someone in Asia created a plague to kill everyone with red hair.
      China was largely devastated when their population fell victim to a targeted airborne rabies.
      The global police force used a targeted viral outbreak to crush and occupy Korea.
      Oslo, Seattle, Mexico City, and Hong Kong were sites of accidental viral releases that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

      ...and I think I'm underestimating the actual technology. In my comic's timeline we're not supposed to have targeted plagues until 2030 or so.

      Biowarfare is no freakin' joke. It's bad enough when superpowers have them, but when maniacs have the knowledge to design viruses in their own basement this world is going to have serious problems. (How are people going to get that knowledge? In my comic I blamed the Open Source movement...and with projects like AMOS, they may prove me right.)

      --
      Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
    7. Re:What a great thing. by dkleinsc · · Score: 1

      And imagine what the Nazis of Germany could have done during WWII - a virus designed to kill off everyone that wasn't pure Aryan.

      Most likely, we'd all be dead, because not even the Germans, and certainly not Hitler, would have qualified as pure Aryans. This problem is actually the plot of an early Babylon 5 episode, in which an alien race had created a living weapon that only took orders from "pure" members of their own race, and the weapon killed everyone living on the planet because nobody actually qualified as "pure".

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    8. Re:What a great thing. by mikael_j · · Score: 1

      I've actually been thinking about this every now and then the last few years. That in a not-too-distant future someone will be able to whip up a virus that can kill only those its creators want to kill.

      Like you what I thought wasn't targeting individuals so much as ethnic groups, some white supremacist in the US targeting genetic traits mostly found in black Africans (and their recent descendants), European right-wing extremists going after Arabs, certain groups in the Arab world going after ethnic groups which are predominately non-Muslim and so on.

      If I was one of these crazies I'd also take other factors into account, for example, certain cultures are predominately patriarchal so you could perhaps limit your weapon to men, thus not completely depopulating a region. Or how about some crazy cultists targeting women in general?

      It's really quite scary to think of.

      --
      Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
    9. Re:What a great thing. by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      a virus designed to kill off everyone that wasn't pure Arian.

      Ironically, Nazis persecuted Jehovah's Witnesses, these Arians of the modern era, with the same vehemence they persecuted Jews. So if you ever take a visit to Nazi Germany in your time machine and want to survive it, make sure that your "I'm an Aryan" statements have the right vowels in them!

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    10. Re:What a great thing. by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      The correct spelling is Untermensch, you Üntermensch :P

      FTFY. Ja, I'm an Überspeller!

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    11. Re:What a great thing. by timeOday · · Score: 1

      Ethnic groups are not. If you were writing dystopian sci-fi, you could imagine racism re-aligning along purely objective, genetically-testable criteria.

    12. Re:What a great thing. by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      Aber nicht in Deutsch. Arisch!

      Where the "y" came from is a mystery.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    13. Re:What a great thing. by paiute · · Score: 1

      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.

      Imagine Churchill's face when Hitler drops dead after the vial is uncorked.

      --
      If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
    14. Re:What a great thing. by X0563511 · · Score: 1

      Can we start with you?

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    15. Re:What a great thing. by Kjella · · Score: 1

      You're assuming whoever is planning genocide with a bio-weapon cares about a little collateral damage. I imagine with fuzzy matching you can get a pretty good match, if you have X or more genetic markers typically found in that population.then activate.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    16. Re:What a great thing. by Belial6 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I'm pretty sure Hitler would have been against that.

    17. Re:What a great thing. by argStyopa · · Score: 1

      Of course you probably know this, but the problem is that these sort of eugenic fantasies rarely actually play out as 'black and white' (ahem) as their proponents suppose.

      Tending to be relatively ignorant of the subtleties of genetics, they rarely realize that what we see as obvious differences in skin color are actually rather difficult to tease out of the DNA...and rarely are they expressed as simply as "aha! here's the gene that makes you a "black" person".

      Of course, like poison gas you'd have a very difficult time targeting it usefully, because you're always going to get people who may look like one ethnicity, but have buried in their DNA the evidence of a 'miscengary' by-blow deep in their family history.

      I'd suspect that the White Plague-style "kill all women" would be relatively easy.
      More difficult would be a single-person-specific disease.
      Hardest still - or at least, seemingly hardest to target would be going after a discrete ethnic group because, well, ethnic groups AREN'T discrete (except in racist fantasies).

      --
      -Styopa
    18. Re:What a great thing. by painandgreed · · Score: 2

      Aber nicht in Deutsch. Arisch!

      Where the "y" came from is a mystery.

      Blavasky and 19th century occultism along with the swastika. Realize that the Aryans were the latest a "root race" descended from the last inhabitants of Atlantis. As far as "race" goes, even to the Nazis, race meant something much different than the genetic meaning we assume and involved proper spiritual traits as well as genetics. That's why they liked the Japanese but not others.

    19. Re:What a great thing. by elucido · · Score: 1

      I don't think we have to be afraid of race-based targeting. Ethnic groups aren't homogenous enough for that to be possible. Would the Nazis have invented a Jew-killing virus, Hitler would've been the first of its victims.

      It can still target families. Families do have the same genes.
      But I think the main thing is, if it can be made to target just one individual thats probably as dangerous as a weapon can be.

    20. Re:What a great thing. by HiThere · · Score: 1

      If it could dependably be targeted to just one individual, it wouldn't cause me any worry at all. Less than a pistol or a knife. Very few individuals have enemies that determined, and the ones who do generally deserve it.

      But it's not that reliable. Look at it's means of spreading. Every time it reporduces there's the likelihood of at least one minor mutation. (You probably have about 40-50 in your germ-line cells, and viruses have less error-correcting machinery, albeit their genetic information is shorter.) So it may have been designed to target only one individual, but at best it's going to be a shot-gun approach, with one "golden b-b". There's going to be a LOT of collateral damage, and nobody can predict ahead of time just how bad it's going to be.

      THAT's the reason I consider it a very bad weapon. Also the fact that it's cheap. OTOH, it will probably only injure people. So it's much better than nuclear weapons. Still, unless an early infection gives you an immunity to further infection, it could easily wipe out all humanity, even if properly designed. Just a few wrong mutations during the spreading phase.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    21. Re:What a great thing. by BevanFindlay · · Score: 1

      It's intriguing that both the name (Aryan) and the swastika are used in India: "Indo-Aryan" is one of the two largest people-groups in India (the other being "Dravidian"; the former are generally lighter-skinned and live in the north, the latter more southern with darker skin). Seeing a swastika on a Hindu temple was very confusing at first (though I believe the glyph is oriented the other way around to the Nazi symbol).

      Even the name "swastika" is Sanskrit.

    22. Re:What a great thing. by BevanFindlay · · Score: 1

      Just as something to think about: wouldn't open-source bioweapons be easier to defend against, as you'd be able to code an anti-viral as specific as the virus because you would know exactly how it functioned? I would imagine that if open-access knowledge on targeted viruses became a reality, then the first thing a lot of people would be doing would be designing a defence.

    23. Re:What a great thing. by BevanFindlay · · Score: 1

      Also sounds like the Daleks (who were apparently based on Nazism, so it figures) - they often seem to kill themselves or each other off because of "imperfection".

    24. Re:What a great thing. by tragedy · · Score: 1

      And imagine what the Nazis of Germany could have done during WWII - a virus designed to kill off everyone that wasn't pure Arian.

      That would be pretty hard to do since the "Aryan" race is just some crazy idea they came up with based on a wacky mythical/religious/philosophical fusion. They got the actual name of their supposed "race" from Iran, for crying out loud.

    25. Re:What a great thing. by tragedy · · Score: 1

      That's a good argument... for when we can actually design effective anti-virals. We have made some pretty neat strides in that direction. There's the anti-retrovirals that could probably cure HIV if it couldn't shelter in immune cells. Then there's that anti-flu stuff that actually works to significantly shorten and weaken a flu infection... provided you start taking it long before any flu symptoms present.

    26. Re:What a great thing. by Remus+Shepherd · · Score: 1

      To have an effective anti-viral, you need to know what virus you're defending against. A would-be assassin could make a targeted virus out of a dozen or more base strains -- ebola, smallpox, hemorrhagic fever, maybe even the common cold. You might not know about the virus until the target began showing symptoms.

      Maybe high-value targets could take an omnibus anti-virus, protecting them against all likely viral attacks. But if that's open-access as well, the assassins should be able to find (or engineer) a virus to run around it. This could become an interesting shell game.

      --
      Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
    27. Re:What a great thing. by painandgreed · · Score: 1

      Yep, there are reasons that the SS Ahnenerbe performed expeditions to Tibet. Of course, those reasons have more to do with ancient astronaut theories than actual genetics or archeology.

  4. I had to cringe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:I had to cringe by poity · · Score: 1

      It hasn't been researched or developed. It's been noticed that such a thing is possible with current technology, so they're taking precautionary measures.

      --
      your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
    2. Re:I had to cringe by Shaman · · Score: 1

      Uhm... you have no idea what the U.S. government or any of its allies or protagonists have that has not yet seen the light of day. The U.S. in particular has a next-generation arsenal they are sitting on which has never yet been used in a conflict.

      --
      ...Steve
    3. Re:I had to cringe by i+kan+reed · · Score: 1

      Yes, but this actually COULD be a treatment for some caused by mutations(a fair percentage, I'm lead to believe). Sequence the tumors and the native cells. Make a virus that kills only cancer cells.

      Besides, we've had nuclear weapons and mutated smallpox for years, ready to go. This is basically a NICER choice for genocide.

    4. Re:I had to cringe by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      Actually research into this is targeted at fighting cancer. If you can kill cells with defective DNA you can cure cancer.

      It has been obviously for a long time that such techniques could target particular races or individuals as well. These researchers are just pointing out that the cost of the technology needed to create such a weapon is rapidly falling, and that the equipment is freely available on eBay.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re:I had to cringe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      What fantasyland are you living in? Who wants to cure cancer, other than cancer patients? Militarize it all first. Extend life of those who can afford it. Who wants to extend entire human species' life span and fir what? To overpopulate and destroy all good things? Who do you think humans are anyway?

    6. Re:I had to cringe by alexgieg · · Score: 1

      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?

      Simple: Destroying is always much easier than constructing.

      --
      Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
  5. I'm a little confused... by bistromath007 · · Score: 2

    I'm on bluesnews, right? This is an announcement for another Resident Evil game?

  6. Collecting DNA by OzPeter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?
    1. Re:Collecting DNA by Meneth · · Score: 2

      Considering how dumb our bad guys are, I wouldn't be sure of anything. :)

    2. Re:Collecting DNA by ledow · · Score: 1

      If I was a foreign power wanting to specifically target the President, I wouldn't be concerned about the collateral damage of the rest of the people wherever he was. You could argue they might be interested in remaining undiscovered, but that's just an application of military secrecy to whatever you plan anyway.

      And the president has a publicly announced schedule for a lot of things, an easily-discovered schedule for the majority of what remains, and will be in secure military facilities for whatever is left anyway.

      As a terror plot, it's not really very interesting, and the complexities involved go slightly beyond lumping a few scientists in a room with some kit from eBay. The effort-payoff ratio just isn't worth it, like almost all "potential" terror scenarios, but it makes a nice headline, like almost all "potential" terror scenarios.

      In fact, what would happen is one of several thousand people watching him (or her) give some speech somewhere would have a conventional weapon. Effort-payoff is vastly increased and you can probably get a lot of attempts before you need one to be successful or run out of opportunities.

      Now if we were talking about a genocide-weapon, then the possibility is more realistic. There are countries and dictators that would happily spend whatever it took to wipe out people with whatever-variant in their DNA, not care about being too specific, and applying it globally, and if the technology had been around in the Second World War, things might have played out a LOT differently.

    3. Re:Collecting DNA by OzPeter · · Score: 4, Funny

      Considering how dumb our bad guys are, I wouldn't be sure of anything. :)

      Can't we have any discussion without mentioning the current Presidential election?!?!?!?

      --
      I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
    4. Re:Collecting DNA by Taibhsear · · Score: 1

      "Now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb."

    5. Re:Collecting DNA by LordNightwalker · · Score: 1

      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 wouldn't worry too much.. The bad guys can't shoot straight either!

      --
      Install windows on my workstation? You crazy? Got any idea how much I paid for the damn thing?
    6. Re:Collecting DNA by OzPeter · · Score: 2

      As a terror plot, it's not really very interesting, and the complexities involved go slightly beyond lumping a few scientists in a room with some kit from eBay. The effort-payoff ratio just isn't worth it, like almost all "potential" terror scenarios, but it makes a nice headline, like almost all "potential" terror scenarios.

      I agree it s unlikely given the current state of technology, but I can see why an assassination technique that doesn't look like assassination is attractive.
       
      To give an analogy consider a discussion I had years ago about the merits of Judo/Jiu-jitsu vs Tae Kwon Do with my Judo Sensei if you are caught up in an altercation in a bar. Both forms are equally effective in incapacitating your opponent and leaving them lying on the ground. But using a Tae Kwon Do crescent kick to your opponent's head will also get your opponents friends all riled up over the violence you imparted and the insult you implied by obviously beating their friend to a pulp - plus when the police get called they can easily spot the bruises all over your opponents face. However by using a subtle Judo take down combined with some nerve point attacks, your opponent's friends won't be sure what happened - was it an attack, or did your opponent simply slip on the wet floor?? Plus when the police come there is no residual physical damage to your opponent, so they are more likely to believe that he just fell on the floor by himself.
       
      Now compare this with the President being shot in the head vs dying of some virus, and what the likely public reaction will be.

      --
      I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
    7. Re:Collecting DNA by ledow · · Score: 1

      Agreed, and I do mention that in my post (albeit discretely).

      But the fact remains that the pay-off won't be there. The cover-up element is only a part of the story, though. The difference, though, is that it's also much easier to fake such "indicators" if they are public - getting a gunman who aligns to your enemy and thinks he's working for them to do the dirty work and you immediately implicate them (falsely). You can't do that with a "stealth" assassination.

      Hell, there are still countries technically at war / not at war after ten years with other countries because of a terrorist that operated from inside one of those countries (not the country itself). And I've repeatedly seen that China is "cyber-attacking" the US, which I'd love to know how they know that and/or how they are sure they aren't being used as a proxy target.

      The value of steering a misdirected retaliation probably far outweighs any benefit of secrecy (especially secrecy at ENORMOUS expense).

    8. Re:Collecting DNA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Actually it has gotten harder to do.

      Just think how easy it would have been to get Bill Clinton's DNA.

    9. Re:Collecting DNA by Nemyst · · Score: 1

      Considering how ham-fisted most so-called "terrorists" actually are, I'd say we give the bad guys way too much credit. Goldfinger-style plots only happen in movies.

    10. Re:Collecting DNA by kelemvor4 · · Score: 1

      Actually it has gotten harder to do.

      Just think how easy it would have been to get Bill Clinton's DNA.

      That's what she said!

    11. Re:Collecting DNA by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      Considering how dumb our bad guys are, I wouldn't be sure of anything

      *groan* If the bad guys are dumb, the cops must be mentally retarded, since 90% of all crime goes unsolved. But I have a hard time believing that the cops are that dumb, so I have an even harder time believing the criminals are dumb, too.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    12. Re:Collecting DNA by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't worry too much.. The bad guys can't shoot straight either!

      That's a bad thing. About 20 years ago when my kids were little, we were eating dinner and heard what sounded like a string of firecrackers... but I thought it sounded like gunfire. We went outside to see what was going on, like everyone else in the neighborhood. As we stood watching, a cop car came down the street so fast his car became airborne going over the railroad tracks.

      There was a gang war down the street, dozens of shots were fired, only one shot hit flesh -- a white guy trying to get his children inside was hit in the back by a stray bullet. Not a single shot had hit its intended target.

      Had they been able to shoot straight, the white guy wouldn't have had his life really fucked up for a really long time, and there would have been a dozen dead gang bangers.

      Every shooting I read about in the paper is like that; the only people who get shot are innocent bystanders, often children.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    13. Re:Collecting DNA by BinarySolo · · Score: 1

      Doesn't even have to be a foreign power. Just look at how vehement some Americans are in their anti-Obama or anti-Romney stances.

    14. Re:Collecting DNA by magarity · · Score: 1

      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.

      That doesn't work in the case of the current president; he went from junior state senator to junior federal senator to president so fast no one with such a program would have considered him 'top echelon' in time.

    15. Re:Collecting DNA by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Two things:
      1) Solving crimes is a lot more difficult than committing them.
      2) You're assuming that solving crimes is their priority. Their priority is maintaining order. Solving crimes is just a means to that end, and not the most important one.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    16. Re:Collecting DNA by HiThere · · Score: 1

      The only thing wrong with your analysis is the statement "ENORMOUS expense". The second time this is done it will probably be cheaper than hiring a gunman who believes he's working for someone else. (I'll grant you that the first time it's done a lot of expensive research will be involved, but most of that will have been done for other reasons.)

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  7. Produces memory loss? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  8. Horrible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    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.

  9. Not worth the effort by tstrunk · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:Not worth the effort by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      If that was actually possible, people would use it to do good (Gene therapy etc).

      We're working on gene therapy, but so far it has killed test subjects. But if the goal is killing people... Phage therapy is a thing, and it works, so I suspect it's possible.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  10. Idiots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  11. what could POSSIBLY go wrong? by v1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:what could POSSIBLY go wrong? by HPHatecraft · · Score: 2

      "You bet! M-O-O-N, that spells "zombie apocalypse"!

    2. Re:what could POSSIBLY go wrong? by Nemyst · · Score: 1

      In fact, I'd call for a treaty on the level of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Perhaps stronger.

      Bioengineering is still in its infancy, but it could be a hell of a lot more lethal than nukes. It's definitely a lot harder to track.

    3. Re:what could POSSIBLY go wrong? by TubeSteak · · Score: 1

      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.

      Does that include the US Government?
      By treaty, we do not have any offensive biological or chemical warfare programs.
      In reality, offensive bio-chem research was rolled into our defensive programs, and the scientists have been happily developing and weaponizing ever since.

      Just to be clear: the type of research the CDC regularly does is nothing like the type of research the DoD is up to.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    4. Re:what could POSSIBLY go wrong? by HiThere · · Score: 1

      This, and it's close cousins ("grey goo", nuclear apocolapse, etc.) are, indeed, one answer to the Fremi Paradox. (It's famously one of the factors in the Drake equation, i.e., the expected lifetime of a technological civilization.)

      There are others. Try Dogbert's answer "I can predict the future by assuming that technology is driven by money and male hormones. When virtual reality becomes cheaper than dating, society is doomed." (That's a paraphrase.) I find this another reasonable answer. There are others. People might become EXTREMELY reluctant to go to areas with no internet coverage, e.g. (There are already plans to extend the internet to Mars, but the lag would be terrible, and I doubt it could ever be usefully extended to beyond the solar system.

      So the Fermi Paradox doesn't mean that a existential catastrophe happens. It could be that everyone just turns inwards. And, of course, with so many possible reasons, it could well be that different species fall victim to different ends. (If you can call "withdrawing into virtual reality" falling victim. You may enjoy every minute until the last member of the species dies of old age.)

      The thing to note here is that we are just at the beginning of these existential calamities. We've arrived at the cusp of nuclear annihilation. We're approaching a cusp of biological engineering...close enough to see its existence. We can understand, if not believe, withdrawing into virtual reality. There are others that are beyond our current horizon.

      It is my belief that the species that survive adopt a macro-life lifestyle. Mobile LARGE space-habitats, each with the population (at climax) of, say, New York or Tokyo. We are not yet at the point where we can really build such things, but we ARE quite close. These things will generally move quite slowly. My current conception is that they would be propelled by a kind of advanced ion engine. Early ones might make do with nuclear fission reactors, but they won't be really independent (able to browse among the comets of the Oort clouds, and even go intestellar...at about a maximum of 0.1c) until we have mastered nuclear fusion. And the current reality is that we can't even maintain a nearly closed ecology on a spacecraft, or even in a test environment down here.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    5. Re:what could POSSIBLY go wrong? by metaforest · · Score: 1

      You raise an interesting point with the "kill switch"

      One interesting facets of working with "live" (scripted and physical) objects in SecondLife is all the extra work you have to go through to avoid accidentally griefing, spamming a Sim, or having your workpiece go blasting across a Sim and wedging itself Linden knows where.

      Anyone who engages in the development of such crazy types of objects has funny stories about them getting loose even when prudent precautions were taken to keep things under control.

  12. Why the focus on one person? by Coisiche · · Score: 1

    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.

    1. Re:Why the focus on one person? by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      Fear, intimidation, and control.

      You bump off one man bend, shape, and mould foreign politics to your liking. Those that are alive will eventually catch on to the MO of the ideology and catch on to toe said ideological momentum. That ideology can be in the form of God fearing Conservatism (religious), Communism, Socialism, or any other 'ism' you can think of.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
  13. Highly specific by overshoot · · Score: 2

    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, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."
    1. Re:Highly specific by Remus+Shepherd · · Score: 1

      Theoretically you can put in a generation limit; a mutation that appears only after a number of generations that kills the virus and makes it untenable. That's easier to do with bacteria, but it might still be possible with virus agents. Then even if the infectious agent mutates, it will still die out after X number of replications, limiting your plague to a small region.

      --
      Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
  14. Excellent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    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.

  15. FOXDIE by Mike+Domanski · · Score: 2

    Reminds me of the FOXDIE virus from the original Metal Gear Solid game.

  16. Whew, reassured. by Arancaytar · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:Whew, reassured. by gr8_phk · · Score: 1

      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.

      Oh, that's been possible for at least a decade and is easier than this. You just transfer one nasty gene (there are several choices) into a flu virus and let it go. It's the targeting specific people that's new. But still, what could go wrong? The fact that people actually think they could control something like that is proof of some kind of god complex.

  17. "Genocide" by aNonnyMouseCowered · · Score: 2

    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.

  18. Too soon! by Remus+Shepherd · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Too soon! by Remus+Shepherd · · Score: 1

      I've made three posts in response to this article, and only mentioned the comic in two of them. If I can't mention my comic in response to an article which is precisely relevant, when can I?

      Thanks for your review of my faces; you must be looking only at the current post, with the two male main characters. My female faces and a few other males in the comic have less blocky features. But I know my limitations as an artist -- I'm a writer first and foremost. Hope you read a few more pages and enjoy the story!

      --
      Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
  19. Swine flu and SARS vs Mexicans and Arabs by flyingfsck · · Score: 1

    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!
  20. Hide those nail clippings and hair trimmings by Tex+Bravado · · Score: 1

    and don't get pulled over for anything.
    I wonder how big is the DNA content in a breathalyzer test?

  21. President by SigmundFloyd · · Score: 1

    Americans sure are obsessed with their president.

    --
    Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
    1. Re:President by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      Yup. It doesn't help that the US system of government gives the President far more powers than any one person has in most democracies.

      Typically the head of state in a democracy is a prime minister, who really is just a representative of the parliament. If they died parliament would just pick somebody else who would enact the exact same policies. They aren't directly elected.

      In the US people go nuts over who is president precisely because they do have so much power, and they are directly elected. In fact, it has become the latest fashion for them to basically ignore the laws when they're really inconvenient, so they're almost the only person with any political power to begin with.

  22. Re:fox.... by poity · · Score: 1

    I thought this was troll, too, but as pointed out here it's very much relevant.

    FOXDIE is an engineered retrovirus developed by the DIA for the Pentagon. It is programmed to kill specific people by identifying the person's DNA and their nanomachines then causing cardiac arrest. The only known host for FOXDIE was Solid Snake.

    --
    your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
  23. Anybody remember that SCIFI story The Trigger? by tanveer1979 · · Score: 1

    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
    FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
  24. Sanitized or destroyed by RDW · · Score: 1

    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..?

    1. Re:Sanitized or destroyed by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Nah, they are talking about malefactors, while in *that* security incident, the female factor was definitely involved.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  25. This sounds like a GREAT idea. by Roger+Wilcox · · Score: 1

    What could possibly go wrong?

  26. Bah... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 3, Funny

    "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
  27. Re:How to protect the President? by skywire · · Score: 1

    But in fact the particular warm body currently occupying the office of President is not a single point of failure. He is an easily replaceable politician whose life is of no more value than yours or mine. It amazed me, the turn the story took into this silly business of protecting His Highness.

    --
    Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
  28. DNA Bio Weapon on a Political Candidate? by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

    And just how effective is this methodology when the candidate changes completely every 5 minutes?

  29. Revelation Space by sixtuslab · · Score: 1

    Just like the weapon Ana Khouri uses to assassinate Taraschi in Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds

  30. Old idea, MASSIVE PROBLEM by meerling · · Score: 2

    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.

  31. As long as they can clone our leader from his nose by commodore73 · · Score: 1

    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,

  32. wool series by rsdavis9 · · Score: 1

    Read the "wool" series and the sequel "first shift - legacy" same basic idea except with nanomachines.
    Both by hugh howey.

  33. Re:I have an even bigger question: by fliptout · · Score: 1

    Reminds me of the book Alas, Babylon where everybody in the line of succession is killed by Russian nuclear weapons.. Down to the Secretary of Education, if I recall.

    --
    A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
  34. Re:fox.... by Valor958 · · Score: 1

    Not sure why this was rated as 'troll'... this is basically just the FOXDIE virus from Metal Gear lol. Someone below already pointed this out, but I planned on making the post that got flagged lol.

  35. Re:Aparteid Era South Africa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    > I remember reading that doing Aparteid the South African government worked on something like this against the African population.

    They collaborated with Israel, as one wanted negro-nixing viruses and the other wanted a virus nixing the ishmaelite (arabs). Luckily this collaboration happened before the arrival of DNA chips, so they did not get much result, but human experimentation on negro and pali prisoners happened anyhow. If .il was not untouchable this scandal would have ended in a new Nurenberg doctor trial.

    BTW, the top5 .il ex-leaders of this programme were eliminated when the ukrainian air defence "accidentally" missileered a russian Tu-154 airliner over the Crimea in 2001. The five were en route to the Vektor Institute in Siberia, the russians' bioweapons centre.

    According to some, who are into conspiracy theories, the society of the nine unknown men was behind that downing. That is supposed to be an ancient hindi organization that was secretly set up by King Ashoka to curb warfare all over the world. A host of other bio-weapons experts culling also shows their hand still being active in the defence of mankind versus madmen.

  36. That could prove self destructive. by bdwoolman · · Score: 2

    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
    1. Re:That could prove self destructive. by Truekaiser · · Score: 1

      Of course it would, I never did state they were rational now did I?
      My second biggest fear is random mutation. Only the first generation of such a targeted virus or bacteria is certain to attack the intended target. Natural selection takes over afterwards, it might mutate to get at everyone. Or it might become harmless.

  37. 01 let's get rid of flys and mosquitos first by cyberspittle · · Score: 1

    Why target 1 annoying human being when we have flys and mosquitos to kill instead?

  38. Re:Socialism or barbarism! by sjames · · Score: 1

    It's time to occupy Wall Street cell by cell!

    Gesundheit Mr. Blankfein!

  39. It's the age of Cybernetic Warfare by elucido · · Score: 1

    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.

  40. Re:I have an even bigger question: by magarity · · Score: 1

    That was "Battlestar Galactica" and the bad guys were called "cylons" not "Russians".

  41. The red team gave us weaponized anthrax by nbauman · · Score: 1

    "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?

  42. is this a hollywood movie by KingBenny · · Score: 1

    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 ?
  43. Not too bright... by Kazoo+the+Clown · · Score: 1

    All it would take is one of these to mutate in the wild into something not so particular, and wham, worldwide pandemic.

  44. Prior art by PPH · · Score: 1

    Dr. Noah (Woody Allan) in Casino Royale made a bomb that would kill off all men over 4' 10" tall.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  45. Very OLD news! by gabrieltss · · Score: 1

    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!!!"

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    The Truth is a Virus!!!
  46. A good reason to develop space habitats by Paul+Fernhout · · Score: 1

    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/

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    A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
  47. Open Sourcing... to a Select Group by bitspotter · · Score: 1

    > 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.

  48. Re:I have an even bigger question: by dkleinsc · · Score: 1

    In case you were curious, the actual line of succession includes:
    1. VP (Joe Biden)
    2. Speaker of the House (John Boehner)
    3. President Pro-Tempore of the Senate (Daniel Inouye)
    4. Secretary of State (Hillary Clinton)
    5. Secretary of the Treasury (Tim Geitner)
    6. Secretary of Defense (Leon Panetta)
    Other cabinet secretaries, but if you've gone this far down we're already in heaps of trouble.

    Because the cabinet secretaries go in order of the creation of their departments, Homeland Security (Janet Napolitano) is currently last on the list.

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    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/