Slashdot Mirror
Urgent Needs To Prepare For Manmade Virus Attacks, Says US Government Report (theguardian.com)
A major U.S. government report warns that advances in synthetic biology now allow scientists to have the capability to recreate dangerous viruses from scratch; make harmful bacteria more deadly; and modify common microbes so that they churn out lethal toxins once they enter the body. The Guardian reports: In the report, the scientists describe how synthetic biology, which gives researchers precision tools to manipulate living organisms, "enhances and expands" opportunities to create bioweapons. "As the power of the technology increases, that brings a general need to scrutinize where harms could come from," said Peter Carr, a senior scientist at MIT's Synthetic Biology Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The report calls on the U.S. government to rethink how it conducts disease surveillance, so it can better detect novel bioweapons, and to look at ways to bolster defenses, for example by finding ways to make and deploy vaccines far more rapidly. For every bioweapon the scientists consider, the report sets out key hurdles that, once cleared, will make the weapons more feasible. The Guardian references a case 20 years ago where geneticist Eckard Wimmer recreated the poliovirus in a test tube. Earlier this year, a team at the University of Alberta built an infectious horse pox virus. "The virus is a close relative of smallpox, which may have claimed half a billion lives in the 20th century," reports The Guardian. "Today, the genetic code of almost any mammalian virus can be found online and synthesized."
The report calls on the U.S. government to rethink how it conducts disease surveillance, so it can better detect novel bioweapons, and to look at ways to bolster defenses, for example by finding ways to make and deploy vaccines far more rapidly. For every bioweapon the scientists consider, the report sets out key hurdles that, once cleared, will make the weapons more feasible. The Guardian references a case 20 years ago where geneticist Eckard Wimmer recreated the poliovirus in a test tube. Earlier this year, a team at the University of Alberta built an infectious horse pox virus. "The virus is a close relative of smallpox, which may have claimed half a billion lives in the 20th century," reports The Guardian. "Today, the genetic code of almost any mammalian virus can be found online and synthesized."
CRISPR makes it easier for ISIS to create a doomsday virus, but at the same time the tech makes it easier for us to respond to threats like this. If the No GMO activists force us to recuse from using CRISPR because of this potential use, all it does is prevent us from fighting back. Could this perhaps be their original motivation?
Hello, Adolf! Is that really you after all these years?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Too many different types of Asians.
It'll be the Han Chinese.
and modify common microbes so that they churn out lethal toxins once they enter the body
In the specific case of viruses, it's counter productive. As some hyper dangerous viruses have shown like Ebola, it you kill your host, you won't have a host into which to reproduce anymore.
Viruses aren't full autonomous life forms, their just simple genetic code (recipes that need an actual host's cell with cellular machinery to interpret the code and produce more viruses).
The "evolutionary target" that most viruses aspire to become (i.e.: the fittest mutant that are selected by natural selection) isn't ebola, it's the common cold : a virus that is relatively benign and doesn't harm the host too much, so it can safely keep replicating in a still-alive host, and can have the time to find other alive hosts to which to transmit (while leaving as much alive hosts as possible for a potential future new round of infection by a new variant)
If some mad scientist create some lab monster that produces lots of lethal toxins, that synthetic virus is at a high risk of killing the host without having had any chance to spread.
With bacteria, the problem is similar but in reverse : bacteria are autonomous life forms - cells that multiply on their own. They basically don't need us (beyond a few disease-inducing bacteria that rely on bodies for environment (relative warmth) and food).
Whatever weird dangerous gene the mad scientist sticks into them, that poison isn't necessary to achieve what it basically wants (to multiply).
So, unless these poison-producing genes are somewhat linked to some critical biochemistry needed by the bacteria, there will be no evolutionary pressure to keep producing the poison (quite the opposite : due to the way they replicate their genome (=single origin) bacteria tend to lose useless gene. Less bullshit genes = less times spent in replicating that bullshit)
(also, if the bacteria needs some environment for potential victim (say, again warmth) the same logic as with virus applies (a dead host won't be producing any warmth anymore).
The first infected victim with a synthetic bug will die, but over lots of generation, the bacteria will eventually lose the poison-producing gene because it will be able to replicate faster (and thus over take the slower replicating bacteria that have more bullshit gene) (*).
So yeah, a few mad scientist could try to CRIPR their way in clandestine lab to build super-bugs with ultra-killing genes, but if these monsters kill too fast, they won't stand a long term chance.
It will suck for the first few patients who get sick, but the bugs will have a hard time taking over the world.
---
(*) - conversely, that's why antibiotic resistance started to become "a thing" only recently when antibiotics started to get used on large scale (by the agricultural industry, by over prescription, etc.). Before that large scale antibiotics use, there's any pressure to justifiy the bacteria keeping the extra genetic material coding for the resistance (e.g.: the plasmid carrying beta-lactamases).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The Sky Is Falling, and we must ... we must ... we must ... Honestly, We don't have the slightest idea what to do about this even at the conceptual level. Much less the practical level.
If we are lucky, the threat will be ignored. If not, we'll do something stupid, absurd, and counterproductive that provides no actual security. Anti-viral theater.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
It's really not a problem, just use OpenBSD, they're invulnerable to Spectre now, and the put security as a top priority (only two remote holes in the default install in a long time!), so you're probably safe.
Oh, what? Like human viruses? What is the bs doing on Slashdot I'm going to write a nastly letter to Logan.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
There's a comic called "Genocide man" about a world where open source extended to biology as well, which brought many changes, including deadly man made plagues. It is a rare known gem that I highly recommend.
http://www.genocideman.com/?ca...
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
Shades of "Burning Chrome"
Custom-tailored viruses. I should read that story again.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
The US have been experimenting on these sort of things for quite some time. They recently apologised for injecting Guatemalan detainees with STDs including syphilis https://www.nytimes.com/2010/1... One can only assume that this science has continued, but in a more clandestine manner.
If your point is to directly strike and not count on the weapon's own built-in capability to spread.
(I.e.: you count on spreading viruses that will kill the host immediately without much chance of spreading further)
why waste resource making *bio* weapon in the first place?
Chemical warfare has been a reliable way to kill in scary gruesome ways already known and put to large scale use at least one century ago (yperite in WW1).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
various new diseases that our immune systems don't know how to handle.
By definition our immune systems doesn't know how to handle disease (be it new or not) with a few exceptions,
because our immune systems relies on adaptive immunity (with a few exceptions where the innate immunity can wipe a couple of pathogens).
Our body have evolved not to handle only *known* pathogen (which would have been a pretty stupid strategy : such animal would be only 1 mutation away by a known pathogen to evade the innate immunity and wipe out the innate-only animal. Such animal would have been unfit and would have gone extinct if they ever hapenned to exist).
Our body have evolved to be able to handle any unknown pathogen as long as they can survive long enough for the adaptive immunity to kick in, actually adapt and come up with a solution to wipe out the attacker.
Works pretty well most of the time (most of the time, you don't even get sick, a few of the time you get sick but manage to fight off the infection. Only a few pathogen that have evolved ways to fuck up the adaptive immunity - e.g.: HIV fucks up the lymphocyte - or hide away -e.g.: rabbies achieves evasion by burrowing into the hard-to-access nervous system)
And vaccination is basically just giving a "practice target" to the adaptive system to practice its adaptivity against and come up with an efficien wiping-out solution, before an actual occurrence of a disease.
Its leveraging the same natural adaptive process that your body does every day against any upcoming as of yet unknown disease it encounters (and on some bad days, while already having caught and being sick from said just-yer-encountered disease).
Your white blood cells are literally encountering crazy amount of new compounds every days and inventing new anti-bodies against them. Vaccination is just adding yet another compound on the list, because one day, you might encounter a pathogen with said compound on its surface that could make you sick.
the semi mad ones have been doing it since the 1930s by using mouse brains and other animal tissues to grow or weaken the viruses used in vaccines. And in the process, transferring animal viruses into the human population causing various new diseases
There is very little scientific research showing actual problems caused by vaccination. (e.g.: the "autism caused by vaccine" paper was retracted due to being actually bullshit).
There is huge amount of litterature showing the actual benefits of vaccination (you can spend days hunting for meta-analysis about vaccinations on search engines like PubMed).
I'm not aware of serious peer-reviewed scientific article showing that vaccine are a vector of animal viruses jumping to human hosts (again, please concentrate on serious scientific journal, that will anounce retraction if an article turns out to be bonker. Not click-baity random websites).
The documented jump-over-species barrier are usually caused by combination of environmental exposure (e.g.: people working knee-deep in animal excrement) and by chimerisation due to co-infection (e.g.: a pig on a farm with dubious hygiene managing to get infected both by some bird-exclusive influenza and a human-compatile influenza. There's quite some research into this. Again rely on scientific publication from reputable sources.)
So at that point you have to admit that the "cancers are caused by all the weird mouse-brain-vaccine-hybrids" doesn't sound a very compelling theory.
Or that absolutely the whole planet is in a conspiration to hide the fact from you personally.
Vaccines are safe, they are among the most well studied modern medicine.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Overpopulation consumes more resources and produces more environmental toxins. I asume rates grow exponentially as population grows. Overpopulation is the biggest man made impact on accelerated climate change, over fishing/hunting, and air, water and soil pollution. Reset is needed, sadly only the richest of the rich will be playing after the reset.
Disease, starvation or war. Overpopulation will sort itself out one way or another.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
With everyone living like the average American schmuck, it will certainly not work.
Luckily, it's only really americans that do that.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
If you can obtain, use and apply the knowledge to create a virus from scratch or from a genetic blueprint, then it's a given that you must already have thought "What if?"
The barrier here is the tech, the chance to apply it, and access to genetic structures. Not the intent, the capability, or "Oh, I didn't think of that".
What stops this happening is international agreements to ban chemical/biological weapons, and that to get someone to do this requires a lab full of equipment that tends to cost a lot and arouse suspicion.
Russia were MAKING their own nerve agents in the 70's and for decades before then. That's just as dangerous, if not more, and they are still using them. The only reason non-state terrorists aren't doing the same is that it's hard to do, needs an awful lot of equipment, is likely to kill you too, and it's just a damn sight cheaper to hijack a plane, drive a car at people, etc.
> Disease, starvation or war. Overpopulation will sort itself out one way or another.
Indeed, but human overpopulation is causing the anthropocene mass extinction event, so we're currently taking out most complex species along with us.
Bioweapons are not the solution to the biosphere destroying problem of human overpopulation, because people will just go quiverfull to not let them there scientists tell them what to do.
The only solution to human overpopulation I can see is if something like the anthropogenic climate change induced collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet suddenly kills several billion people, which might make people realize that human overpopulation caused problems like anthropogenic climate change, the anthropocene mass extinction event, habitat degradation and destruction, factory farms, industrial fishing, etc. is a real problem, and that massively reducing our unsustainable overpopulation is the only thing that can fix it (except possibly for super general AI, which is more likely to be an existential risk rather than a solution).
Just keep dropping a fresh batch into whatever area you are targeting..
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
This is all totally FUD. Do you honestly think the left-wing nutjobs at the UN will let this through?
As much as I support inflicting the most pain and suffering to the enemy (it's a fucking war, not a daycare center), I recognize this won't fly, since all bioweapons are banned already anyway.
Switzerland would be my winner in that.
How to stop the EU from invading Switzerland?
Switzerland would need a solution to stop the EU from keeping an invading EU army supported.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
This might explain Fermi's Paradox
Table-ized A.I.
Create it again and release it on an International airplane ride.
Your immunization is up to date?
While it is difficult to determine exactly how many Natives lived in North America before Columbus,[6] estimates range from a low of 2.1 million[7] to 7 million[8] people to a high of 18 million.
Try again, where did you get your 100+ million native American Indians from?
And as we have seen in many documentaries made in Hollywood, do not spend to much in your underground layer that is a single point of failure. Also do not wait for some melodramic release.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Hello, Adolf!
The nice thing about a final solution is that you only have to use it once. If we could get these libtards to let go of their "the impoverished are people too" nonsense, we'd be in business.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
There really isn't any means to " prepare " for it.
You won't know the signature for it until after it is released. We can combine a payload with any number of existing pathogens altered just enough so the body won't know what it is, until it's too late.
You can't prepare for this any more than you can prepare for the next computer virus that has yet to be released.
Sounds to me like we need to get Rainbow Six in on this. Don't they have experience dealing with eco-terrorists using bioweapons?
https://www.sott.net/article/3...
https://joninews.wordpress.com...
https://orientalreview.org/201...
For a really funny treatment of this rather serious topic, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... where it is alleged that, having run a biological weapons research program from 1918 until 1973, the Pentagon then decided to end it. Cold. Yeah, sure.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Please provide a few references for your statement. I am not a troll of any kind, but a concerned British citizen pointing out massive and flagrant breaches of international law.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
We have a resovour of millions of people who can't afford to see a doctor. They won't go unless it is clear that whatever they have is life threatening. Many more who could just afford a doctor won't go because sick days are either unpaid or carry an unwritten penalty come review time.
If a bioweapon is released in the right areas we could be swamped before we even notice.
Again with baseless accusations, yet you wonder why I still like to point out your lies...
Buy a clue WindBourne.
Rhino virus does NOT spread around the globe.
I think WindBourne just discovered the cure for the common cold, just travel to another country and the virus won't be allowed in. I think it's because the virus doesn't have a passport and gets sent home.
Maybe you can explain exactly how it works if I'm wrong?
Pointing out WindBourne's lies isn't offtopic, it fits any topic he lies about, which is just about all of them.
Whoa dude, you have been watching too many science fiction or conspiracy theory sites.
We know where they come from. I remember as a kid it was usually the swine flu. That's because in third world countries they would raise pigs and ducks/fowl together. It would mutate a bit and take off, and come over here. Same thing today. Sometimes stuff remains dormant in people until they become old and weak, then it can infect and escape and start all over again.
Just mother nature.
If you infect people in an area, those people won't immediately fall dead. They will move about and die slowly. People won't know if they are infected too. It would cause chaos.
So definitely *NOT* a fast-burning virus that infect{s} the people exposed to it immediately {killing them} in a gruesome way" as you proposed above.
But something that spreads insidiously.
What you don't want is a bioweapon than can spread indefinitely. Those are the kinds of things that can get out of your control quickly and end up turning on your own forces.
Which brings us back to the main topic of discussion :
- increasing the lethality of virus won't help doing that. If people start dying immediately, it won't move slowly, it will kill immediately a couple of people and then to move further due to absence of next victims in the immediate vicinity.
Basically : you don't want to CRISPR-in some extra deadly stuff into you virus.
- instead you could take a historically deadly virus that has spread wildly in the past, but was eradicated thank to vaccination, and mutate and/or tweak its surface antigens until it's not recognizable at all by the older antibodies. Then you make a vaccine against this new virus and keep it secret and vaccinate all your soldiers (and your civilians if possible, but at that scale it's going to be hard to keep the vaccine secret). You spread it on your target.
Basically: you want to do what europeans managed to inflict to amerindian using smallpox (which the indian had never seen before and lacked anti-bodies).
If you don't have the resources to mutate your own virus, it's even easiers: Do the "underdog influenza" - try to pick one of the minor emerging influenza strains that isn't predicted to go into the upcoming seasonal flue and isn't included in the latest vaccine mix that the WHO recommends and that vaccine maker cover.
Simply grow that one and make your flu vaccine against that one using usual methods.
(That regularly happens when WHO and the vaccine makers mis-predict which virus eventually does the seasonal flu. Except you do it on purpose and weaponize the mis-predicted virus strain).
As a bonus :
- the disease won't necessarily kill everyone immediately (smallpox might be fatal in adult but flu generally isn't as frequently) you seem more humane, while at the same time overloading the health care network of your adversary who'll have to divest resources from the war effort to handle the overcrowded hospitals.
- eventually new (non-secret) vaccine can be created against the new virus and/or people will end-up developing an immunity, so by the time the war is over, the new virus won't pose any large-scale world-problem.
You only need to have enough new viruses and secret vaccine to cover the period of war, while at the same time ramping up your own vaccine production against whatever your enemy throws at you. Basically playing bilateral cat-and-mouse with viruses.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Actually, flu is indeed the best bio-weapon.
It's a virus that constantly mutate, new strains coming up constantly (see overcrowded regions with livestock you mention).
Pick a minor variant that isn't predicted by WHO and vaccine manufacturer to become spread, and isn't thus on the list of variants covered by the upcoming seasonal flu vaccine.
(e.g.: pick-up a minor variant that was quickly squashed and didn't get beyond a single farm, thanks to quick treatment of the farmer and quick killing of the sick livestock)
Cultivate that one, and secretely make your vaccine against that one. Vaccinate your troops with your secret vaccine, spread the "alternate-flu" on your adversaries.
Bonus point, as flu isn't extremely fatal, thus your enemy will have to divert resources away from war effort to take care of the over-flowing hostpitals.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Unlike publications in journals :
- books don't undergo peer review
- books don't have a mechanism for retraction
(i.e.: You could publish whatever shit you want, as long as it's not pure libel and/or xenophobic hate-incitement.
As long as it sells, there will be a publisher ready to print, no matter how close the content of the book is to what is currently considered truth).
Books done by professional journalist are a good way to attract attention to some problem, but problems needs to investigate using scientific methods.
i.e.: it's interesting if a journalist mention "that one study about {horrible thing} being caused by vaccines ! that THE BIG PHARMA INDUSTRY don't want you to hear about !"
But if no other studies has managed to replicate the same result, it's worth shit.
If a study turns out to have been done shodily (data manipulation) it can be retracted.
Non-disclosed conflicts of interest can be added at a later point of view.
In the scientific world, you need replication, multiple studies (all done as peer-reviewed professional publication).
(Because a fluke can always happen)
Then you need meta analysis : also peer-reviewed article that take the time to review all the various published studies up to there and look what's the most often found out come.
You might found out that further studies mostly showed NO such {horrible thing} effect, there was one other result but it was due to the scientist having b0rked the data and got retracted, and only handful had actually the research receiving money from BIG PHARMA, the huge remaining part of studies are actually legit.
Science's final opinion : it's safe. End of story (or at least until new data comes out and is replicated and is meta-analyzed)
Publisher's opinion : hey, the books sells ! keep the printing machine working !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
When someone says "Vaccines are safe,,," I find it fruitless to debate the issue on an Internet forum.
Sorry, I'm from medical professional background, I'm aware of the problems that anti-vaxers are causing to population health (herd immunity is what I'm talking about) and thus I tend to over-react.
But I invite you to do a little more digging. A book called Plague, by Kent Heckenlively and Judy Mikovits PHD is a good place to start.
And of course, there is so much more out there if you are willing to look.
Unlike publications in journals :
- books don't undergo peer review
- books don't have a mechanism for retraction
(as long as it sells, it will get printed)
I'm not saying that this peculiar book is shit (haven't read it), I'm just saying that there's no way to easily know if any book in your hands contains known shit.
Books can bring attention to some not well enough considered problems, but problems needs to investigate using scientific methods.
The traditional sources (such as PubMed) may not show you the whole story. The medical research in this area has not always been controlled by the most ethical people, as Plague will spell out very plainly.
Yes, but did the articles get retracted following proof of result falsification or plain clumsiness b0rking the data analysis ? (as the famous "vaccine causes autism" article got).
Did the missing conflict of interest got added where due ?
Did further attempts to replicate the result fail to reproduce them ? (One study's result is interesting, but replication is key point, other wise you might be facing a random fluke without knowing it).
What did meta-analysis determine is the general trend when reviewing all the published literature about a subject ? (That is the golden standard).
I'm not saying that science never makes mistake (it does).
I'm saying that science has methods to eventually self correct mistakes.
That's why I'll rely more on what I read in scientific publication rather than in best-sellers.
To set the record straight, I am not anti vaccine. They can be a life saver.
Not only to you but to people around you who failed to develop immunity (the whole concept behind herd immunity).
But I am very much against the aggressive vaccine schedule today's children in the US endure. I am also against combination vaccines like DTAP, MMR, etc.
Keep in mind that your body is constantly exposed to a flux of new pathogens (viruses, bacteria, etc.) or of mutation in your body that needs to get eliminated (thing that would have had become cancer if your immune system didn't keep them in check).
Even if you're not feeling sick, your body is constantly fighting aggressor, successfully (this success is the reason why you're not constantly sick despite the constant exposure).
You only get sick once in a while when your body has managed to fight of the pathogens quickly enough.
(Think of all the time you cut yourself in a non-sterile environment, say while preparing food, while working in your garage, etc. but didn't got an infection, only local redness)
Even against a single target (a single attacking pathogen, against a single vaccination) your body will produce multiple antibodies. You don't produce a single anti-body against disease X, you produce several different antibodies which will all target various parts (e.g.: different surface glyco-proteins) of the targets. You neighbor with the same vaccine might produce different anti-bodies (but which will also manage to stick on the same target, but maybe at other parts).
DTAP, MMR might sound scary to you, because it's *multiple target* in the same shot.
- From the point of view of your body which is used to constantly fight of aggression, it's just business as usual. (Not much different from that other non-infected cut you got a few days ago while garden
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
but rather just the natural terrors that have arisen from places like The Congo and how the world is horribly unprepared for a repeat of the 1918 Flu Epidemic.
Indeed the flu is a good exemple (well save for the high mortality which was due to europe being post-war).
All it takes is WHO and the vaccine manufacturer to mis-predict which emerging new virus strains are likely to show up in that year's seasonal flu and produce a vaccine that's thus useless.
And by random chance that missed strain being sufficiently different from anything else, so very few people happen to still have good antibodies laying around.
And as the flu isn't destructive, it won't immediately kill the first couple of patient and then stop spreading for lack of finding new victims within sneezing range.
It will instead spread slowly, taking over the whole population.
Once people start to get sick and overcrowding doctor's waiting rooms and hospitals, society will be slowed down at a crippling pace and won't work as nicely.
(Who's gonna save you from your house burning down if all the firefighters are sick at home in their beds ?)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]