'Safe Ebola' Created for Research 198
Nephrite writes "By removing a gene from the virus Ebola, UW-Madison scientists have managed to stop the deadly pathogen from replicating. This first step may be a start down the path to a vaccine or drug screening. 'The scientists still want the virus to replicate in order to study it, so they developed monkey kidney cells which contained the protein needed. Because the cell was providing the protein, and not the virus itself, it could only replicate within those cells, and even if transferred into a human, would be harmless.'"
The Sky is falling (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure Ebola is dangerous, but labs are working around the world with massively dangerous pathogens. Britain's numpties in the bio-farming area managed to release Foot and Mouth into the wild (genius) so of course there is a risk. The question is whether it is safe and what can be achieved by doing this, not simply thinking about the Horror flick that played a ridiculous story line out. Bio-shock story lines are just as realistic as techno-shock ones, i.e. about as realistic as a George Bush explanation on Iraqi WMD.
Bio-science is one of the most real frontiers in science today and its simply stunning what is being done. Sure there need to be controls, but educated people need to stop behaving like Fox News Anchors.
Re:oops (Score:4, Insightful)
Why wouldn't you support that?
treat the host pool (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why imho vaccine efforts should be directed at the animal host pool in order to eradicate the filovirus, ie make it extinct.
The host is widely considered to be bats http://www.emedicine.com/MED/topic626.htm [emedicine.com] and if only a tiny portion of the grant money spent on dna twiddling was spent establishing this and looking at either eradicating the bats or vaccinating them then, perhaps, the whole filovirus family could be eradicated.
Before all the bat-lovers start crying foul I would like to point out that it is only ebola's high mortality rate that keeps it contained. If mother nature dose a bit of her own dna twiddling and hits the sweet spot for mortality versus infectivity then haemorrhagic fever will reach Hollywood proportions.
But, call me cynical, this would leave no recurring income for vaccine makers.
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Genetics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
We would like to study ebola, so that we can save your sorry ass if you get it. To do that, we've modified it to weaken it, so we don't kill ourselves studying it. We're not really going to put it in your food and air supply!
As far as why Bush hates funding genetic engineering as a whole you're correct. Your post illustrates PRECISELY why people hate funding it - they are ignorant, scared sheet, and content remaining such.
Re:Nerves of steel (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you think happens should "something go wrong" when you're assembling a skyscraper? Pouring molten steel? Flying a plane? Heck, just driving a car can kill you in the most horrible ways.
If you want safe, you're pretty much hosed.
If you want to balance risk with precaution, work in an industry where the life and death of not just you, but lots of others are on the line. You'll quickly find that the level of precaution taken is burdensome, but quite reassuring.
PS: It doesn't kill everyone. To quote Wikipedia:
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola [wikipedia.org] (citation from http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol11no02/04-0533.htm [cdc.gov])
Re:The Sky is falling (Score:3, Insightful)
Worrisome, most certainly.
Out of all the techs we've yet produced as a race, all of them (with the possible exception of the nascent self-replicating nanotechnology field) have been firmly controlled by humanity.
Biotech on the other hand, we create something, and when it leaves (and sometimes before it leaves) the 'home', it gets all grown up, with the possibility of getting a serious attitude of it's own and some seriously big boots to come back kicking with.
With all our machines, you turn off the power, and they're useless. Starve them of fuel, and they stop.
With something living we don't have the 'off switch'. Even if we do at the time it's released, it only takes a few organisms to be 'faulty' and not respond to the 'off'.
So, no.. It's not bad. It's just something that we have to be far more careful of than we do the digital. If digital is broken, the worst that happens is that money is lost, and people get miserable (OK, possibly VERY miserable).
If Biotech gets 'Broken', lots of people can die. Rapidly.
Re:The Sky is falling (Score:3, Insightful)
That is a bit simplistic. The story summary is pretty neutral, and the "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag is a humorous tag used for many stories. Actually, reading the list of stories [slashdot.org] is bound to give you some giggles.
Re:Genetics.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:From TFA (Score:4, Insightful)
Only eight genes? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Before you panic (Score:4, Insightful)
Just a guess, but for some people, a cure to this miserable disease, and for others, one heck of a biological weapon. It is so limited in transmission that one might feel safe using it in certain situations to cripple an enemy. It is so incredibly debilitating while one has it that it would render combatants or other individuals incapacitated and too weak once they recovered, though they probably would not recover.
Ebola is just another tool in this case.
InnerWeb
Re:This is how weaponized strains are made (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Tags (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, the people studying ebola are smart and they are safe. The people at the CDC and elsewhere have, I'm sure, explored the full spectrum of Michael Crichton related disasters. They may even have considered some other pulp fiction horrors, as well as actual real life threats.
Viral research is important, and yet, despite all the armchair virologists here on slashdot somehow we glossed over that this actually is making the virus safer to study, so that perhaps someday, Outbreak can be prevented.
Re:treat the host pool (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is how weaponized strains are made (Score:3, Insightful)
But still, if you get every enemy soldier to line up for the biggest shot of their life you could easily wipe them all out with this strain.
Re:The Sky is falling (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right. If those evil scientists keep tinkering around with Ebola like this, it might end up turning into something really bad.
All sarcasm aside, creating less-pathogenic versions of deadly viruses is one of the best techniques available to provide hope for developing vaccines. It's already been done with the H5N1 "chicken flu" virus, for example, and scientists are now proceeding to find ways to turn this weakened virus into a vaccine. Other scientists have successfully spliced West Nile virus DNA into a weakened version of the dengue virus, and this vaccine seems to be effective in immunizing horses and monkeys against West Nile.
Both these diseases are highly dangerous, emerging pathogens against which medicine currently can offer very few defenses. What would be your alternative? Let everyone breathe in the germs, let the weak ones die, and let the strong pass on their immunity via natural selection? Seriously, how would you go about finding cures for these emerging diseases if scientists are forbidden to use "worrisome" science?
Bluntly put: You fear these techniques because of your own ignorance. You don't know anything about biohazard control procedures or the techniques of biotech that go into developing these vaccine candidates, but you have seen "28 Days Later," so you hear that scientists are conducting science and you instantly think "hemorrhagic zombies." This is a dumb attitude. If you're concerned about "what might happen," read the literature, find articles in popular science magazines, and educate yourself.
To give you a general idea ... you remember that whole "sequencing the genome" thing? It might surprise you to learn that scientists these days do a lot of "breaking the digital" before they ever get a shot at "breaking the biotech." And, no offense, but I think the scientists in charge of setting up major disease research laboratories have a far more intimate knowledge of the risks of the pathogens they confront than you do. What makes you assume that they'd be willing to just "let it slide"?