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Scientists Are Getting Seriously Worried About Synthetic Smallpox (sciencealert.com)
An anonymous reader quotes ScienceAlert: Earlier this year, scientists published a paper describing how they pieced together segments of DNA in order to bring back a previously eradicated virus called horsepox. The paper, written by two University of Alberta researchers and the co-founder of a New York pharmaceutical company, was controversial because, as various experts told the magazine Science, someone could use a very similar process to bring back a related virus: smallpox. Smallpox, you'll recall,
killed hundreds of millions
of people before the World Health Organization declared it eradicated in 1980. That was the result of a long vaccination campaign — so the idea of piecing the virus back together from bits of DNA raises the specter of a horrifying pandemic.
Two journals rejected the paper before PLOS One, an open access peer-reviewed journal, published it. Critics argue that the paper not only demonstrates that you can synthesize a deadly pathogen for what Science reported was about US$100,000 in lab expenses, but even provides a slightly-too-detailed-for-comfort overview of how to do it. Some of the horsepox scientists' coworkers are still pretty upset about this. PLOS One's sister Journal, PLOS Pathogens, just published three opinion pieces about the whole flap, as well as a rebuttal by the Canadian professors. Overall, everyone's pretty polite. But you get the sense that microbiologists are really, really worried about someone reviving smallpox. MIT biochemist Kevin Esvelt, for instance, wrote on Thursday that the threat is so grim that we shouldn't even talk about it.
Two journals rejected the paper before PLOS One, an open access peer-reviewed journal, published it. Critics argue that the paper not only demonstrates that you can synthesize a deadly pathogen for what Science reported was about US$100,000 in lab expenses, but even provides a slightly-too-detailed-for-comfort overview of how to do it. Some of the horsepox scientists' coworkers are still pretty upset about this. PLOS One's sister Journal, PLOS Pathogens, just published three opinion pieces about the whole flap, as well as a rebuttal by the Canadian professors. Overall, everyone's pretty polite. But you get the sense that microbiologists are really, really worried about someone reviving smallpox. MIT biochemist Kevin Esvelt, for instance, wrote on Thursday that the threat is so grim that we shouldn't even talk about it.
Hubble went dead last week, followed by Chandra this week. Am I the only one that sees what is happening here? What's the first thing you do before you invade a country? Blind them. Take out their eyes and ears, their radar installations, etc. Then you send in the forces. With Earth effectively blinded I bet there are massive battle cruisers hidden in the asteroid belt that are even now powering up their engines and finalizing battle plans. Wake up people!!!!
However my two younger brothers were not. I doubt it would provide much protection after this long anyway.
At least in the US, it should be trivial to get funds to make a release a vaccine, because it's preventing a terrorist attack.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Fortunately, it's not actually that simple: some humans will likely have a mechanism (or develop one) to get rid of the virus. Even things like Ebola and rabies which are nearly 100% fatal aren't 100% infectious -- i.e. some unvaccinated people will have some sort of mechanism (be it a strong immune system, a missing surface antigen, etc) that will keep it from infecting cells.
If it is possible to synthesize a smallpox vaccine, someone would do it. For every one publishing there are perhaps a few hundred who have had the idea occur to them. If you stigmatize it and drive it underground, when some one unleashes it, we would not even know what hit us.
To borrow a phrase from our second amendment friends, if you outlaw synthesized smallpox only outlaws will have synthesized small pox.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
They should be but this will happen anyway whatever the attempts to prevent it. You probably should not write it in the daily sun but my understanding is this is not the level of propagation we talk about here. Instead of worrying we should get to know what we can do about the eventual but right now still hypothetical threat. What will happen however everybody gets excited now and nothing will happen besides some sloppy attempts at preventing such research from getting into open.
Come on, it's not like we are dangerously unprepared for pandemic.
A few months ago, a disease caused by an engineered biological weapon played the antagonist in a fictional outbreak scenario that ended with more than 100 million dead and the global economy crippled.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
You know, vaccination actually works and has eradicated smallpox. We just have the means to revive it again.
You do realize that when it was declared eradicated we stopped vaccinating against it, right?
Anyone under the age of 30 (and probably a couple of years over, but 30 is a nice round number) is at direct risk if there's a smallpox outbreak - and if the virus was reverse-engineered it may be JUST different enough that even the people who WERE vaccinated would be at risk.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Vaccination works but it's not 100% effective. Nothing real ever is. Vaccination becomes less efficient as time passes, the immune system "forgets" what should trigger it.
Same reason mustard gas wasn't used extensively in WWI - a shift in the wind could blow the gas over your own troops. The rationale of a terrorist is to inflict death and destruction among a target population. If a bioengineeered smallpox virus attack were successful and started an epidemic in a target country, it's almost certain to travel around the world and eventually arrive back at the terrorists' home country. As fatality rates would be higher in countries with poor medical care, and most terrorist organizations are based in developing countries, they would end up harming themselves more than their target.
The only people I could see trying to do this are anarchists, and reckless researchers or home biologists.
As Col. Potter would say, cowfeathers!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Typical practice is to first submit to the prestige journals like Science or Nature, since those give you more points towards tenure and also look better on future grant applications. Then, when that get rejected, you rewrite slightly and submit to the next tier. Lather, rinse, repeat...
#DeleteChrome
While scientist are worried about synthetic smallpox, they have not suddenly become more worried as a result of this paper. The reasons is that the DNA synthesis and virus production techniques are not new. The whole process has been published before and every step is well understood. The virus production is not even the focus of the paper, because there is nothing new about it. The story is that the small pox vaccine from vaccinia virus has some side effects. The authors of the paper decided to check if the related horse pox virus may work better as vaccine. As luck will have it the damn thing is extinct, so they made it themselves using published protocols. The horse pox virus they made seems to work well as a vaccine. The fact that making a synthetic virus was considered just a bump in the road towards some other goal should tell you how easy it is to do. The reason the paper was rejected from more prestigious journals is not that it was conveying some dangerous new information that should be suppressed. Quite the opposite, there isn't anything significantly new in the work. The reason it went to PLOS One, is that the editorial policy of this journal is to publish soundly executed research and not consider if the research discovered something new or significant.
Ebola isn't "nearly 100% fatal". While earlier estimates put its mortality rate at about 85% to 90%, the much bigger outbreaks of the past few years have caused that figure to be revised down. Wikipedia lists the highest fatality rate of any outbreak in the past 10 years as 74%.
I was born in 1968, and just missed out on the vaccination back then. However, before going to Afghanistan in 2006, I had to get a smallpox vaccine.
Fortunately, I had it easy since I never had it before, and it was only like 2 or 3 pokes. Those who did get it when they were little for some reason received considerably more than us first timers.
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if scientists had not been fascinated by the possibility and made one? Scientists do what they do, and amorality is immorality.
E Proelio Veritas.
Anyone under the age of 30
Actually: It's anyone under age 46. Routine vaccination against smallpox ended in 1972.
A great line ruined by the fact that it is just not a fact. Rats, mice, etc will breed as long as their is food, even to the point that they fill their environment and live, get sick and die in their own faeces.
Goats are a better example. There are plenty of small islands where they have wiped out all sizable life, including themselves, by over grazing and destroying the soil (via erosion after the plants have been stripped off it).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If you're claiming that smallpox inoculation didn't work, and all that history is just a hoax, then you're delusional - and no arguments win over delusions. Don't bother replying if you haven't read that wikipedia link above - I mean it; read it first or shut up.
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
But if you show how easy something is, all the script kiddies will want to have a try.
Has the genome of the virus been published?