Black Death's Genome Cracked 252
exceed writes: "This article on Wired, and this article on Yahoo! News states that scientists have decoded the genome of the bubonic plague bacterium. This will now (hopefully soon) lead to vaccinations and treatments for the disease it causes."
Technology is a Double Edged Sword... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wasteful (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wasteful (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wasteful (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why you worry. People playing with bio engineering could come up with a new version that could be very nasty.
Re:Wasteful (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wasteful (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Technology is a Double Edged Sword... (Score:2, Insightful)
With something of this scope I'd rather take my chances without it. Personally if I found out that I had contracted some infectious disease as a result of bio-terrorism, I would be on the next flight to Pakistan trying to cross into Afghanistan so I could personally infect some of those idiots.
To clarify a couple points (Score:5, Insightful)
Vaccine pricing (Score:0, Insightful)
Sure, but we both know that the people who will never see this vaccine are the people who need it the most.
No doubt, there will be patents involved. The first thing they will patent is the Genome itself. So, only one major company will be able to make these vaccines. And the result will be prices that only the wealthiest will be able to afford.
Another good idea down the shitter.
Re:It's not fair (Score:1, Insightful)
But then again, if you can read this, you already knew that.
Re:Technology is a Double Edged Sword... (Score:3, Insightful)
For a moment, let's just replace the words, 'publishing bubonic plague genome information' with "releasing source code for the 2.4 Kernel". Are we all of a sudden afraid that the script kiddies are going to root our box, or do we realize that the release of such information will allow the many skilled programmers of the Linux world to make fine adjustments to the security features of Linux?
I'm talking out of my ass for this last bit here, but I'd have to figure that it takes a significantly skilled person to engineer a more dangerous strain of a given bacteria. I would also have to figure that the thousands of other people with roughly the same skill level could probably come up with a vaccine in a shorter time period. If I wanted something super-destructive, I'd probably stick with a nuke. They're a lot cheaper, and no one's come up with a personal nuke/radiation proof shield that can be injected into a toddler.
Not far from AIDS (Score:3, Insightful)
Now the chances are VERY big that this same immunity is causing some people that are HIV possitive never to get AIDS.
Now we can only hope that the two discoveries can work together in ending both AIDS and the plague.