How to Maintain Lab Safety While Making Viruses Deadlier 218
Lasrick (2629253) writes "A scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison published an article in June revealing that he had taken genes from the deadly human 1918 Spanish Flu and inserted them into the H5N1 avian flu to make a new virus—one which was both far deadlier and far more capable of spreading than the original avian strain. In July it was revealed that the same scientist was conducting another study in which he genetically altered the 2009 strain of flu to enable it to evade immune responses, 'effectively making the human population defenseless against re-emergence.' In the U.S. alone, biosafety incidents involving pathogens happen more than twice per week. These 'gain-of-function' experiments are accidents waiting to happen, with the possibility of starting deadly pandemics that could kill millions. It isn't as if it hasn't happened before: in 2009, a group of Chinese scientists created a viral strain of flu virus that escaped the lab and created a pandemic, killing thousands of people. 'Against this backdrop, the growing use of gain-of-function approaches for research requires more careful examination. And the potential consequences keep getting more catastrophic.' This article explores the history of lab-created pandemics and outlines recommendations for a safer approach to this type of research."
Homeland security would like a word... (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone put this scientist on the no fly list. That's some Twelve Monkeys shit he's pulling right there.
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Someone put this scientist on the no fly list. That's some Twelve Monkeys shit he's pulling right there.
But if they're on the no fly list they won't be able to get a sample of the original virus.
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The thing that boggles my mind about this is that apparently nobody in the chain of command at the university thinks there's anything wrong with what this brilliant idiot has done. If I were the prosecutor here, I would charge everybody who know about the experiment with a billion counts of attempted murder (just a back-of-the-envelope estimate), and throw the fuckers in the can for life. Unbelievable.
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Not attempted murder, because he didn't attempt to release the virus, and had no intention of doing so. Even if it were released, and he was responsible for the deaths, it wouldn't be murder. Manslaughter, perhaps. As it is it's closer to "reckless endangerment" (a more general class that includes reckless driving as a subclass).
The problem would be proving that he acted recklessly. I accept that this is probable, given the history of biology lab accidents. (Wasn't it earlier this month that someone fo
Re:Homeland security would like a word... (Score:5, Insightful)
You are correct—this isn't attempted murder. But IMHO it's in the same moral category. I think you are basically right that it's a failure to think outside of the immediate problem space, but what a failure. Imagine if 40-60% of the people you have ever met or heard of, as well as those you don't, died within a month. The 1918 flu left emotional scars that persisted for generations. And that had a 2% mortality rate. The amount of suffering this person could have caused through his narrow thinking is more than has ever been experienced in all of history.
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Why is this flamenait? The parent is right!
If I lived in the US I would say 'I feel threatend' by that guy and shot him myself!
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This wasn't a thought crime. This was an actual crime, knowingly committed with full buy-in from the administration. Actual virus was produces, and had the intended effect.
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No, I mean that by any rational standard, deliberately creating a pathogen that can kill millions, whether you release it deliberately or not, is a crime. It may not be on the books, but it should be.
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Construction of bio weapons is forbidden by multiple multilateral contracts since decades, for a fucking reason, idiot.
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So if I fill a big, weak tank with a poisonous substance and deliberately park it upstream from a public reservoir, but don't actually open a valve to dump the toxin into the reservoir, and there's really only about a 20% chance of the thing bursting and dumping the whole load of toxin into the reservoir, you are saying that I have done nothing wrong, and should not be subject to prosecution, because although I set up a situation with a real probability of poisoning the water supply, I didn't actually poiso
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Do you really believe that this is some rogue mad scientist? If so, why is the article not discussing the arrest of said mad scientist and how they are destroying all of their creations?
What's that old saying? "Absolute power corrupts absolutely.", and this is the real state of affairs with the US Federal Government. These projects are being funded and approved by that same source. It's right on par with dumping radiation on impoverished cities in the US in the 50s and 60s, giving ethnic minorities syph
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It is unconscionable for the gov or anyone to actually create this item. There have been too many incidents of accidentally losing and miss filing and just plain letting escape of pathogens here and abroad to purposely create a friggin' virus that is *designed* to elude immune responses - in other words, purposely designed to kill at maximum. Yes, the government is the main culprit but this
Re:Homeland security would like a word... (Score:4, Interesting)
Scientists do this all the time. My buddy once worked in a lab in Maryland that engineered extremely virulent (in some cases deadly) rhinoviruses. Killer colds!
They do this to understand what makes a virus more dangerous, or what makes it more contagious. It's part of the scientific method. If you have a theory that gene Z can make a virus more deadly, the best way to _test_ that hypothesis is to add gene Z to the virus and compare its effects to a control. You're not doing it to make a deadly virus; you're doing it so you can detect deadly viruses in the wild. Over time this has allowed us to estimate the future damage of viral epidemics with increasing accuracy.
Of course, "best" is relative. It's best in the sense that it provides the most sound scientific data. But the potential non-scientific externalities come into play in a big way. The "best" way to test the radiological effects of nuclear fall-out is to drop a bomb on a population, but obviously that's a tad unethical.
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So ... (Score:5, Insightful)
They essentially are making biological weapons in violation of international treaties, but they're saying it's all OK because it's for research?
Sorry, but what? If someone in Iran was doing this people would be calling for airstrikes.
The hubris of thinking "it's OK, I'm a trained professional, nothing bad can happen" is mind boggling.
How is it even legal to be making deadlier strains of viruses?
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There has to be a balance between the risks associated with this research and possible gains. Given the potential cost to human life it is hard to understand why this research should continue. Particularly as it is the community in which the lab is based that will inevitably suffer most should there be an incident.
Re:So ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes that has to be it. It couldn't possibly be because biological research is amazingly difficult, and of the tools we have to study cells (few) we have even fewer to study viruses.
The entire point of gain-of-function studies is that you need to do them in order to confirm a hypothesis about what genes in a virus are actually doing. If you don't do them, you can't know. Knock-out studies aren't enough - you can easily break a certain system, but it doesn't tell you that you actually understand how it functions.
Sensationalist articles like this are incredibly stupid and dangerous to boot. We only have the slim number of effective anti-viral drugs we do because of research like this. How else do you think they figure out which biological pathways are worth targeting to shutdown a virus?
And that's not all: the other side of gain-of-function is of course to try and predict future vectors. Since treating the common flu is usually a losing prospect at the moment, and it takes time to manufacture things, its important to determine if any given species could trivially gain extra functionality which would make it dangerous - since that affects decisions about what strains to grow up for the yearly flu vaccine.
Re:So ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean seriously. Skip the stupid article and actually read the abstract:
Wild birds harbor a large gene pool of influenza A viruses that have the potential to cause influenza pandemics. Foreseeing and understanding this potential is important for effective surveillance. Our phylogenetic and geographic analyses revealed the global prevalence of avian influenza virus genes whose proteins differ only a few amino acids from the 1918 pandemic influenza virus, suggesting that 1918-like pandemic viruses may emerge in the future. To assess this risk, we generated and characterized a virus composed of avian influenza viral segments with high homology to the 1918 virus. This virus exhibited pathogenicity in mice and ferrets higher than that in an authentic avian influenza virus. Further, acquisition of seven amino acid substitutions in the viral polymerases and the hemagglutinin surface glycoprotein conferred respiratory droplet transmission to the 1918-like avian virus in ferrets, demonstrating that contemporary avian influenza viruses with 1918 virus-like proteins may have pandemic potential.
The entire point of this research was to test whether we're at risk of something like the 1918 flu virus reoccurring, since the current avian flu virus is strikingly similar. This strikes me as kind of an important thing to know, since it informs almost every aspect of disease-response planning.
The research was about taking avian flu, performing some fairly likely gene splicing of the type we know can happen during viral replication or incubation, and seeing if the observations of similarity are a problem. Turns out they are. But that also suggests that we might be able to make drugs which target the specific genes which confer the worst effects.
Unless of course we do something really stupid, like letting sensationalist bullshit convince people to go all anti-science.
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Um. Yes, it would be nice to know if we were at risk. But if the way to find out if we are at risk is by massively increasing the risk, maybe ignorance really is bliss in this case. That's the point the authors of the article are making, and I think it's an important point.
Re:So ... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not fair at all to link opposition to gain in function research to an "anti-science" mindset. You should be ashamed that you're resorting to that argument.
This is something which is seriously debated in the pages of serious journals, at scientific conferences and by government program managers. To link valid concerns to an "anti-science" crowd is political bullshit maneuvering.
There is a very real and valid cost/benefit analysis to be done on pursuing this work. As biology catches up to the physical sciences in scope and function, you're going to deal with the same issues we have dealt with (I am a physicist). One of those lessons is that scientists don't get to decide the purpose of our work. It doesn't matter what you write in your paper, or what the program manager tells you the purpose of the work is. It doesn't matter WHY someone does the work, all that matters is WHAT the work is. It's extremely naÃve to think an abstract in a research paper can properly define the purpose of a piece of research.
There are experiments and research paths we do not follow because the intellectual benefit does not outweigh the very real possibilities for misuse. You asked how you expect people to validate these hypothesis without the work? Take a page from physical science and learn to use computer modeling and limited experimental work in lieu of full studies. Do some tool development. Don't just throw up your hands and insist this is the only way. It's not.
This will require a cultural change, and there will be lots of hand-wringing over whether new results are valid, but biology will be a more mature field for it.
Re: So ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: So ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Does this suggest you would be in favor of trying out this virus? Not on yourself of course, but on some other human in a city, as that would be the one and only way to determine how it works inside a human body and spreads?
I am not.
The risk is not minor, it is pandemic.
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Okay, I hope I've misunderstood you. I work in genomics research, and your post seems, on its face, misinformed at best. Are you seriously suggesting that the computer modeling common to physics and chemistry can be applied to biological systems?
Obligatory, https://xkcd.com/793/ [xkcd.com]
Always keep in mind that physicists operate on a different plane in their own world dealing with quite different formal objects (or aspects) of "things" but they don't know it.
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the only way to find out what changing a virus will do to the virus, is to change the virus. ... go back to school.
If that is what you believe you should change your job.
Yes, I saw the line that you work in genomic research, but it seems I as a layman know more than you about it.
"simple" as a virus (which may consist of tens to hundreds of thousands of kb pairs, specifying dozens or hundreds of RNA transcripts),
A flu virus has roughly 100 genes
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And do you have evidence that the possibility of misuse in this case outweigh the benefits?
This research is specifically designed to gain an understanding of how viruses mutate in the wild. This is something we must know if we intend to continue on as a species. Mother nature (in her infinite wisdom), doesn't give a flying fig whether the viruses she is cont
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And do you have evidence that the possibility of misuse in this case outweigh the benefits?
...
What benefit are you exactly having in mind?
This type of research is already going on all the time in nature.
So nature is a mythical beast intentionally combining a fast spreading virus with the most deadly thinkable one all the time? Lucky that nature is so bad at it
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The entire point of this research was to test whether we're at risk of something like the 1918 flu virus reoccurring, since the current avian flu virus is strikingly similar. This strikes me as kind of an important thing to know, since it informs almost every aspect of disease-response planning.
I think there's a valid concern, however, in just who's holding the keys. But I'm sure they'd never, ever abuse any of these technologies.
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seeing if the observations of similarity are a problem. Turns out they are.
Turns out this is a no brainsr.
Where comes the stupid attitude in american minds from that everything a scientific theory predicts, must explicitley be tested?
When the kettle of water on the stove is boiling, I observe steam is produced. I observe the level of water in the kettle is droping. I conclude if it boils long enough the kettle will be empty. There is no fucking need to place 100 kettles of water on stoves and watch them bo
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Go and read the actual abstract. Or look above where I posted it. Because the article buries it under "PANIC", whereas the reasons to do this research are actually pretty obvious. I'll give you a hint: they didn't actually add anything. All they did was re-arrange the existing genome, and do some site-specific mutation tests.
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Why does it make a difference how they made the virus more transmissible?
Re:So ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because nature does that sort of thing all the time. If we do it in a controlled, lab environment, we can understand what happens when genes get switched up and how to stop viruses. The alternative is sitting around until a lethal virus appears and then trying to quickly do research on it while people die. If the story was about some guy who did this research and didn't exercise proper safeguards on the viruses, I'd agree that this was stupid, but as long as proper safety protocols are followed, the risk of the virus getting out can be pushed to nearly zero.
Before someone says "but it's not zero and until there's zero risk you shouldn't do this", that's the same argument that the anti-vaxxers use against vaccines. "They aren't 100% safe so until they are we shouldn't use them." In the case of vaccines, the small risk of the vaccine causing some harm is dwarfed by the huge risk of the disease it prevents. In the case of this virus research, the tiny risk of the virus escaping is dwarfed by the benefit of knowing just how viruses work and how to defeat them.
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So you agree, the risk is not zero. What was that recently discovered lost sample of deadly pathogen again?
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The risk is never zero. Even the most well designed controlled environment can fail. One would hope that enough safeties would be put into place that a failure of one safety system would be covered by another system. Similar to how you don't just toss an anti-virus program on your computer and call it secure. You have multiple layers of security on your computer/network to prevent malware/hackings/etc. However, no matter how many security programs you put on your computer, your risk of being hacked/inf
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Because nature does that sort of thing all the time. If we do it in a controlled, lab environment, we can understand what happens when genes get switched up and how to stop viruses. You talked about a more transmissible virus here.
So: you can check that with a non deadly virus, or a plant virus.
The alternative is sitting around until a lethal virus appears and then trying to quickly do research on it while people die. No, that is not the alternative, this is nonsense, see Ebola or the 1918 flu, do you rea
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I don't find anything about "not adding anything" in the article.
As far as I understod it they combined genes from two viruses.
Your idea that they only rearanged somehtig is bullocks anyway.
A flu virus is very simple, it encodes less then 100 proteins (I bet lots of thems are the same anyway). Rearanging them does not change anything on the end result. There is quite a difference in gene expression of simple viruses or more complex mamals etc.
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Obviously. All samples are shuttled to the Federal weapons-grade biology incinerator for thorough decontamination. What's that? The incinerator looks suspiciously like a cryonics facility? Don't be ridiculous, you're imagining things.
It's nuts, and everyone is doing it (Score:3)
http://www.independent.co.uk/n... [independent.co.uk]
http://thebulletin.org/making-... [thebulletin.org]
Madness...as if Ebola was not enough.
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people would be calling for airstrikes.
Let's hit that lab with a high explosive, exposing the pathogen to the environment and letting it leave whatever containment it might be inside in a completely uncontrolled manner. What could possibly go wrong?
If there was military intervention, I'd hope it was a bit more thought out than an air strike.
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So would I. I'm not sure I'd bet on it though.
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nuke the entire site from orbit - it's the only way to be sure
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Fuel-air bomb maybe? Kill it with fire?
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If someone does it in the US, the USA would have just yet another humanity-endangering weapon. If someone does it in Iran, it would be Iran's only one. Therefore the risk is greater that the weapon will actually be used. And if it were only used as deturrent, Iran would emerge as new power. US already has a UN security council veto chair, so there is nothing to disturb here in the world's country hierarchy.
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The difference between using explosive in mining and construction, vs using them to make a bomb, reduces to nothing more than a matter of intent.
The hubris of thinking "it's OK, I'm a trained professional, nothing bad can happen" is mind boggling.
Much better to naively pretend that if random microbiologist guy can do it, ISIS can't?
IMO, only a matter of t
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Not to mention that nature is constantly messing with genes and creating new, deadlier viruses. Knowing more about how viruses work and how to defeat them means that we'll be better protected against a superbug whether it comes from a terrorist group or from some random natural mutation.
Not doing any research because there's a small risk of the virus escaping the lab is the equivalent of covering our eyes and assuming that a hungry carnivore can't see us because now we can't see him.
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The hubris of thinking "it's OK, I'm a trained professional, nothing bad can happen" is mind boggling.
What is mind-boggling is that anyone takes a virulently anti-science organization like the dishonestly-named "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" seriously as a source of news about anything.
All you have to do is look at the source, and dismiss the claims as hysteria and lies.
This is not to say there might not be a story here, or something worth discussing, but until it is sourced from something other than an outlet for anti-science, anti-technology political shills it is all noise and no signal.
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I'm not sure that it's exactly a weapon. It's hard to control, it's hard to aim, and it's hard to keep it from attacking *you* if you use it on someone else. O, and your population doesn't have a greater immunity than does anyone else's. (Smallpox and measles were used as weapons by US settlers against the Indians...but they were *relatively* immune.)
So I don't think it's a biological weapon. Just an insanely dangerous piece of biological research. And a good argument for a base on the moon where such
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They essentially are making biological weapons in violation of international treaties, but they're saying it's all OK because it's for research?
No, they are seeing what happens with certain changes that occur in viruses that are not improbably to occur in the wild (e.g. any single human that picks-up two strains of flue viruses could be the incubator for a fused variety--and the odds are actually pretty good) so that we know how to respond; I was going to write more but someone else beat me to it, http://science.slashdot.org/co... [slashdot.org]
AND by doing this sort of work they can also develop novel methods of treatment or ideas on how to do so for viruses
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You do know that ine counter example is enough to disprove a general claim?
Ordinary mortals should never be taught the word "hubris", they always use it wrong/inappropriately.
Your parent actually is that counter example, you failed to comprehend it.
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I really hope you're being facetious...
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Mod parent "Funny!" Only maybe s/he was serious. Sigh.
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Make the orbital facility completely unmanned. If you're worried about the delay in sending control signals to robotic manipulators with which researchers can perform experiments, send the researchers to the space station. If the orbital facility becomes contaminated, destroy it and let the heat of reentry sterilize the pieces or send it on a trajectory into the sun (which again will sterilize it.)
If it is just an unmanned experiment station, I wonder how small and how inexpensive we could make it.
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Sending a space station from earth orbit into the sun costs more fuel than the whole Apollo program together ... nice idea but beyond our current scope of space fare. But perhaps you can figure some nice sling shots around other plantes and make it fuel wise less expensive?
WHAT? 2009 pandemic came from Mexico, not China (Score:3)
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Yes, that "thousands of people" doesn't even appear in the referenced articles. In the referenced article [independent.co.uk] it's only speculated that IF the strain would escape from the lab there would be serious consequences. That article is about the justification of doing the said research in the first place, but also quotes the original researchers and their findings.
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There's usually only one pandemic of flu per year, though I don't believe that there's a rule about it. However just because it killed thousands doesn't mean much when the population is as large as it is. I would guess that most people who caught it (assuming it was a pandemic) were mildly sick for a few days, some people had a bit worse case, and one in a million died of it and was counted.
FWIW, I don't really remember the 2009 swine flu, and that's only 5 years ago, so it can't have been very noticable.
Redundancy or illiterate attempt at intensifiers? (Score:5, Funny)
in 2009, a group of Chinese scientists created a viral strain of flu virus
a viral strain of flu virus
Well, at least it wasn't a... eukaryotic strain of flu virus?
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They just mean that everyone on Twitter and Youtube shared it :D #goviral #yolo
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Well, at least it wasn't a... eukaryotic strain of flu virus?
Thank you. Now I don't have to post this.
Disease - deadly vs wide spread (Score:3)
Why? Because it kills before it spreads. That is why Ebola is not particularly scary.
The real 'dangerous' virus kill about 20% of the time, and in the rest of the population it just makes sick - so it can be passed along to other people.
Now, there are exceptions. Prime examples are diseases that spread by air and can also reproduce in non-humans. Another prime example is a disease with a long incubation and minimal symptoms until it kills. Aids is a good example of this. It suffers from the difficulty in transmission, but otherwise is dangerous.
But back to the original dangerous virus. Something that kills 20% of the time, but otherwise lives in you without killing you. This is really nasty. Think of one out of every five people you know being killed by something they caught from YOU.
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Oh my god, what an idiot are you? ... perhaps 14.
Why? Because it kills before it spreads. That is why Ebola is not particularly scary.
Ebola is exactly the opposite. The infection is 'harmless' up to 21 days, the second half of it you are already spreading the virus. Luckily it is not very infectious, unlike flu.
It is high infectious via body fluids when it starts to make you ill, that is roughly after 20 days
And: it kills slowly.
Perhaps you should read up about some of the viruses, you mention and their way
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People think that airborne means it wafts from pole to pole. No. Airborne means it travels short distances. Measles for example spreads by air - up to 2 hours. Generally in the same room.
The deadliest virus in the past 100 years was the 1918 Spanish Flu. 75 Million dead. Less than 7% that got sick died. Source [cdc.gov] Over 60% of the population got s
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That 7% lethality stat was true for SF, not this thing purposefully designed to be more lethal. Makes that 20% look more feasible, doesn't it?
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The effects of the Spanish Flue were no where near as bad as Ebola and in fact often do not kill. Ebola kills 90% of the time if treated with the same level of skill as found in 1918. The 7% death rate was for people receiving 1918 modern medical care and counted for all ages.. Th
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You mix up some things.
Ebola is a very slow killing desease.
And luckily it is also spread very slow, unfortunately depending on strand it is between 40% and 90% lethal.
In our days it does not really matter ... if once a bioweapon is released we can safely asume that everyone who is not on an isolated island will die. Or will be the lone survivor when around him 90% of the people died. Spreading via water or aerosol bombs or simpy relying on natural distribution/infection will distribute it over the whole co
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Perhaps you should read the articles you link. ... first paragraph: up to 100 million died. ... which is obviously wrong.
75 Million dead. Less than 7% that got sick died.
Wrong
Total infected about 500 million, so roughly 20% - 25% of the infected died.
The world population was a bit less than 2 billion, so people accidently calc down to total population and come to numbers around 5%
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Spacestation (Score:2)
Risk vs Reward (Score:4, Insightful)
The inherent risks in producing excessive virulence via human synthesis, not nature, are very high. The reward of studying these types of phenomenon are very low. The virulence factors can be studied in their natural forms, or individually. Studying the impact of excessive synthetic virulence may give some useful insights, but the risks are far too high. I personally would like to see an internationally agreed ban in the following way:
- It is illegal, and criminal, to knowingly increase the virulence of live or replicating versions of bacterial, fungal, or viral forms. Even under the most stringent biosafety level facilities and care, a deliberate increase in virulence is criminally punishable.
As people we should hold this very serious. A person with a mere bachelor's degree in molecular biology can initiate extremely dangerous things. I am a cell biologist and I have experience in immunity and have personally engaged in the application of individual virulence factors for research purposes. I have seen what the application of even one virulence factor can do to cell immunity. I am extremely fearful of people gluing these factors together. I consider their work ego driven and not very helpful in the scope of human health research.
Slashdot Propaganda Machine (Score:3)
10 years ago, there were regularly 800-1000 comments on articles. Now, a highly commented article gets around 200.
It's a shame that the editors have stopped doing their jobs and post anything without checking it (at best!). But this isn't the first time I've seen it.
This submission is obviously false, and it needs to be pulled down or with the inflammatory and false sentence deleted. Since it's been up for hours, and there are numerous posts above that debunk the submission, it leads me to believe that Slashdot wants the clickbait and is leaving it up on purpose.
Do the right thing. Pull the article. Save what's left of your reputation, Slashdot.
Slashdot: It's like FOX News for Liberals (Score:2)
My guess is that the problem is that they sold out.
Simple fact is that the type of person Slashdot used to appeal to is like 1% of the population. The moment a web site catering to 1% of the population decides to become profitable, it's faced with a choice: Continue to serve that 1%, or change your content and appeal to a different but larger 2%, and after that, change it even more and appeal to 4% of the population. Never mind that you lost that original 1%, since you're only in it for the money.
Can't s
Re:The solution is quite simple... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Here. [about.com]
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The Spanish Flu killed upwards of 5 percent of the world's population in one year in a world
Repeating this bullshit 100 times on this article does not make it true.
The spanish flu killed 3 - 8% of the infected people, depending on source. The more agreed consent is: 50 million dead out of 500 million infected.
Some judge up to 25% (70 - 100 million out of roughly 500 million infected). In nations like germany the infection rate was about 60% of the population, but the death toll was relatively low.
The fact
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The safest approach is to not fscking do this kind of insanity in the first place.
Certainly. If the research is likely to have a public health benefit (likely, not tenuous connection), and there is NO other way to obtain the benefit, then I could see room for debate and careful consideration.
Short of that, this is just playing with fire. It seems like we have more controls over using primates in experiments than creating civilization-destroying viruses...
Re:Haven't they read The Stand??? (Score:5, Informative)
Seems pretty obvious you didn't try and click through to the freely available abstract, which explains exactly why they did this. It's linked in the article in the OP (who notably also probably didn't read it).
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Most countries that ratified the Bioweapons Convention [wikipedia.org] just moved all their offensive research under the umbrella of defensive programs.
The difference between "we're making this stuff to kill people" and "we're making this stuff to design defenses against killing people" is one of semantics.
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The difference between "we're making this stuff to kill people" and "we're making this stuff to design defenses against killing people" is one of semantics.
Not really. To make a weapon you need a carrier.
A simple bomb does not work. So you need suicide assassins that 'poison' the target. Would probably work for brain washed 'islamists', or not.
Or you have to do real weapons research and figure how to distribute it with a 'bomb'.
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Seems pretty obvious you didn't try and click through....
Welcome to Slashdot.
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you must be new here. Slashdot articles have devolved into tabloid trash level sensationalist nonsense. Read for entertainment value.
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Slashdot editors - please fix the submitter's grotesque misreading of the linked article in the summary! Creating fictional outbreaks of lab viruses leading to thousands of deaths should be left to bad movies, not 'news' sites. Which isn't to say, of course, that there aren't genuine risks to consider. High level containment of various viruses in China and elsewhere has been breached on a number of occasions in the last few decades, sometimes with fatal consequences, e.g.:
http://thebulletin.org/unaccep... [thebulletin.org]
".
Re:Huh (Score:4, Insightful)
http://thebulletin.org/making-viruses-lab-deadlier-and-more-able-spread-accident-waiting-happen7374
Reading comprehension is such a lost art these days. It was the H1N1 virus that caused the pandemic, which the Chinese scientists used in their research; not the results of the Chinese research that caused the pandemic.
From the cited article:
a team of Chinese scientists to create a hybrid viral strain between the H5N1 avian influenza virus and the H1N1 human flu virus that triggered a pandemic in 2009 and claimed several thousand lives.
For those challenged individuals, this sentence fragment should be parsed as:
(a team of Chinese scientists) ... (create a hybrid viral strain) (BETWEEN) (the H5N1 avian influenza virus) AND (the H1N1 human flu virus that triggered a pandemic in 2009 and claimed several thousand lives).
Re: (Score:2)
http://thebulletin.org/making-viruses-lab-deadlier-and-more-able-spread-accident-waiting-happen7374
Reading comprehension is such a lost art these days. It was the H1N1 virus that caused the pandemic, which the Chinese scientists used in their research; not the results of the Chinese research that caused the pandemic.
From the cited article:
a team of Chinese scientists to create a hybrid viral strain between the H5N1 avian influenza virus and the H1N1 human flu virus that triggered a pandemic in 2009 and claimed several thousand lives.
For those challenged individuals, this sentence fragment should be parsed as:
(a team of Chinese scientists) ... (create a hybrid viral strain) (BETWEEN) (the H5N1 avian influenza virus) AND (the H1N1 human flu virus that triggered a pandemic in 2009 and claimed several thousand lives).
There aren't enough modpoints, they should just let you edit TFS. Good thing the Slashdot moderators fact checked that juicy little detail. Apparently "Lasrick (2629253)" is beyond reproach.
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you. I was fairly surprised when I read that line in the summary and tried to Google it but couldn't find anything. I guess I should have RTFA instead of just RTFS
Re: (Score:2)
or choose to use grammar.
...
Fuckin' commas, how do they work?
Re: (Score:2)
That's a tricky one. I'm told that my usage, to signify phrases and pauses, is incorrect. Nobody has been able to explain what correct usage is, however. So I still use them, commas, to signify phrases or pauses (or changes in emphasis).
Re: (Score:3)
Nobody has been able to explain what correct usage is, however.
The Chicago Manual of Style [chicagomanualofstyle.org] has detailed explanations of correct comma usage. So does Strunk and White's Elements of Style. You can also look up individual recommendations. Things like the Serial Comma have Wikipedia articles that quote both of those sources as well as half a dozen more.
Commas to delimit prepositional phrases have only recently been deprecated. I was taught to use them as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting, but completely off-topic.
Re: (Score:2)
There is potential benefit. The problem is that the costs appear to outweigh the benefit by many orders of magnitude.
Re: (Score:2)
Good things definitely can, and have, come out of this kind of research. But it's walking along close to the edge of a high cliff. Sometims it feels as if they are seeing how close to the edge they can walk without falling over.
Citation Needed (Score:2)
The parent needs to be modded up and Timothy needs to mod himself down for allowing such an inflammatory, unfounded submission blaming the Chinese.
It is no wonder readership is down over the last 10 years.
Re: (Score:2)
The text is perfectly ambiguous. He took it one way, and you the other. But he still should have known better, since there were no headlines in 2009 about a lab-made hybrid killing thousands.