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Biotech Science

Superflu Being Brewed in the Lab 332

Posted by michael from the 1-6-million-dead-and-pass-to-your-left dept.
Genial Generalist writes "Superflu is being brewed in the lab, an article by Michael Le Page, describes some of the ongoing efforts to genetically modify the different strains of flu, specifically CDC modification of bird flu for the purpose of developing new vaccines."
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Superflu Being Brewed in the Lab More

Superflu Being Brewed in the Lab

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  • Oh NO! Worldwide Outbreak!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by dukeluke ( 712001 ) * <.moc.liamtoh. .ta. .61ekulekud.> on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:09AM (#8408524) Journal
    Wasn't there a movie about this very topic not too long ago?...hmm...I believe it was dubbed Mission Impossible 2.

    Point being, haven't we learned any lessons from the movies?!

    Create super virus - (and hopefully the corresponding vaccine).
    Sell super virus to terrorists - (and act like it got stolen).
    Keep vaccine to sell to public when 'Outbreak' occurs (another good movie).

    I hope someone can understand the devastation that could arise should this truly happen!

    But, if 'Outbreak' does occur or 'Mission Impossible 2' then I'm getting out of the city and heading to the hills!
    • Quickly, someone call Hollywood! Only Tom Cruise can save us now.
    • A movie about the superflu? There was the miniseries of "The Stand".

      Here's a bit of lyrics by The Alarm:

      "When I looked out the window
      On the hardship that I struck
      I saw the seven phials open
      The plague claimed man and son
      Four men at a grave in silence
      With hats bowed down in grace
      A simple wooden cross
      It had no epitaph engraved
      Epitaph engraved
      It had no epitaph engraved

      Come on down
      And meet your maker
      Come on down
      Come on down
      And make the stand"

      And yes, Stephen King is alive and well.

    • shouldn't that be? (Score:5, Funny)

      by caino59 ( 313096 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:20AM (#8408653) Homepage
      1. Create ubervirus
      2. Create vaccine for said ubervirus
      3. ????
      4. Profit!

      sorry about that...
    • And you forgot "The Stand" by Stephen King.
    • Do you want to know what is really going on? The superflu, as well as other chemical and biological agents, are being distributed in designer immitation perfume and cologne.

      Those pushy people who pounce on you in the mall parking lot are the terrorists, but they don't even know it.Read more. [uncoveror.com]

  • From the article:
    In 2001, for instance, Australian researchers created a mousepox virus far more virulent than any wild strains. This scenario is unlikely, but not impossible, says virologist Earl Brown of the University of Ottawa, Canada.
    "You could create something that is right out of whack, but I'd be surprised."
    Mousepox virus. Is it good or is it whack?
    Looks like this researcher has been reading a little bit too much slashdot.

  • Good morning, Captain (Score:5, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:10AM (#8408528)
    First news item about Cap'n Trips I've seen in a while anyway.

    I'd better start looking for real estate in either Boulder or Las Vegas. Not sure yet.

    • Re:Good morning, Captain (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Writing from Boulder, the average house here is $483,000. Things are really different than when King lived here. Of course, when the population dies off, you can move in anywhere. My house is pretty nice, with a view of the mountains, a couple of NeXTs and SparcStations, and 3Mb braodband.

      "The Stand" was the first thing that I thought of upon seeing the article, too.

      Right now, the world could be dying off around me, and I wouldn't know it for weeks. Why? Because I live in the world of ONS-Torlan in U

    • Re:Good morning, Captain (Score:4, Insightful)

      by JasonMaggini ( 190142 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:18AM (#8408624)
      I'd stick to Boulder. Vegas didn't end up too well after Mother Abigail's gang got there...

  • Bosh (Score:5, Interesting)

    by shystershep ( 643874 ) * <bdshepherd@@@gmail...com> on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:10AM (#8408536) Homepage Journal
    This make anyone else think of Stephen King's The Stand [amazon.com]?

    That said, I think the dangers of this are exaggerated. No doubt it would be a catastrophe if it were to escape the lab, but life is a lot more resilient than it is usually given credit for. Creating "a virus that could kill tens of millions if it got out of the lab" is a catchy line in an article (or a cheesy plot for a movie), but there is absolutely no basis for it. I think any benefit that comes from this sort of research far outweighs the hypothetical dangers.

    • Re:Bosh (Score:5, Funny)

      by ArmenTanzarian ( 210418 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:13AM (#8408580) Homepage Journal
      That's it, you're goin' on the B Ark...

    • Re:Bosh (Score:2, Interesting)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 )
      Umm, I think the use of "Superflu" in the headline was a direct reference to The Stand.

      Would it be a catastrophe if it escaped the lab, or is this just run of the mill New Scientist fear mongering?

      There are plenty of lethal strains of the flu, and other nasty bugs out in the open. Yet, humanity survives.
      • Given that the story is based on efforts to make a useful vaccine against a _known_ virus already out there, talk of creating 'superflu' is just ... superfluity.

        -wb-
    • Yep, "The Stand" was the FIRST thing that popped into my mind. "M-O-O-N, that spells Armegeddon and I'm a gettin' tired of it!"

      But if the chance is only 1 in 1000, do you want to bet the whole species on it? Do the other 6 billion souls on the planet get a vote?

    • How about 100 million? 200 million? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kcurtis ( 311610 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:21AM (#8408668)
      The 1918 pandemic killed 30-40 million, about half of them otherwise healthy adults (as opposed to most flu's, which affect mostly the young and old).

      Given that the world population has more than tripled since then, and given the increases in world travel, a death toll of over 100 million would not be unlikely for a similar flu. I wouldn't be surprised if it went higher (with a similar strain to the 1918 flu).

      I heard on NPR a week or two ago, from an author who wrote about the 1918 pandemic, that in one instance a man boarded a trolley. Before the trolley got to the end of the line, the conductor and several passengers were dead.

      As far as the benefit outweighing the dangers, I agree. But I don't think the dangers are exaggerated.
      • You fail to take into account the state of medical care advancements since 1918. The simple ability to better treat infected individuals and innoculate others would mitigate the spreading factors you cite.

        -Rusty
        • Umm, that would only hold true in the industrialized world, and then only portions of it. Other portions of the world would be slammed hard, especially those more overcrowded in the third world, where sanitation and overcrowding would cause a 1918 type plague to sweep through the population with extreme rapidity.
        • Innoculation assumes you already have millions of doses of an effective vaccine, which we don't yet have for most viruses with pandemic potential.

          Better medical care assumes that you haven't overrun the capacity of the healthcare system. Many of the who survived SARS only did so because they were put on a respirator at a hospital. How many respirators exist on the entire planet? The number is probably only in the thousands. Once those are used up, along with stocks of antiviral medicines, infected individu

      • Re:How about 100 million? 200 million? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Sumocide ( 114549 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:32AM (#8408785)
        I heard on NPR a week or two ago, from an author who wrote about the 1918 pandemic, that in one instance a man boarded a trolley. Before the trolley got to the end of the line, the conductor and several passengers were dead.

        Probably because the trolley crashed, he just failed to mention that. Book sales and all.

      • Re:How about 100 million? 200 million? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by javatips ( 66293 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:37AM (#8408832) Homepage
        I heard on NPR a week or two ago, from an author who wrote about the 1918 pandemic, that in one instance a man boarded a trolley. Before the trolley got to the end of the line, the conductor and several passengers were dead.

        How long was the journey in the trolley? I doubt it was long enought to cover the incubation period. So the people on the trolley were probably already sick and in an advance state of the infection.

        If a virus has a short incubation period and is very virulent (you die quickly) the less likely it will affect a large proportion of people.

        The more successfull virus are the one will long incubation period, take the virus that case AIDS for example.
      • Here's a great read on the 1918 Flu outbreak:

        Flu : The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic by Gina Kolata.

        http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0 7 43 203984/qid=1077900610//ref=pd_ka_1/103-9029329-360 3017?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

        The book covers much of the 1918 outbreak. It also details recent effort by two teams to exhume 1918 flu victims from permafrost to study the 1918 flu virus. IIRC, the conclusion was that today's flu is genetically similar to the 1918 strain, but that it does

      • Re: 1918 Pandemic- yes, it WAS that bad... (Score:5, Informative)

        by cbelt3 ( 741637 ) <cbelt@@@yahoo...com> on Friday February 27, 2004 @12:02PM (#8409103) Journal
        My grandfather came down with the 1918 flu with his entire Army unit just before they shipped out to France. 2/3 of the unit died. These were young men at the peak of physical condition, but living in very close quarters. Most died literally overnight. He was hospitalized for a month, and fortunately, missed the war. And by the way, it was called "Spanish Flu". Most of the /. crowd is too damn young to remember the major pandemics of the 20th century (Spanish Flu, Polio, TB). Viruses can and will kill a hell of a lot of people in a hurry. Any nice theory to the opposite is obviously developed by people who failed to sudy or remember history. So far we've been damn lucky in the last 30 years. While I'm sure our luck will run out some time, deliberately coming up with an agent that will ENSURE megadeaths is the height of arrogance and stupidity.

      • Re:How about 100 million? 200 million? (Score:4, Informative)

        by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @01:03PM (#8409801)
        "But I don't think the dangers are exaggerated."

        I had my grandmother tell me her account of living through that epidemic. She lost two brothers then.

        The symptoms werent pretty, and everyone was paranoid... even in the rural area she lived in, every family lost members.

        I was totally creeped out by the details.

        And people were much more community oriented back then... I can only imagine what would happen if such an epidemic occured today in individualistic North America...
      • The 1918 pandemic killed 30-40 million, about half of them otherwise healthy adults (as opposed to most flu's, which affect mostly the young and old).

        You make a good point about the young and old being affected more than healthy adults, but you need to include the immuno-compromised. The flu can be quite deadly to those living with AIDS.

        To put the 1918 pandemic in perspective, each year the flu kills about 30,000 people in the U.S. (according to my source that participates in CDC flu studies every ye

    • This make anyone else think of Stephen King's The Stand?

      Yep, when I read this article the first thing that came to mind was an old black women with psychic powers living in the middle of a corn field.

      While we're talking fiction, 28 Days Later also comes to mind.

      Dan East

    • Re:Bosh (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Nurseman ( 161297 ) <nurseman@CHICAGOgmail.com minus city> on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:46AM (#8408924) Homepage Journal
      Creating "a virus that could kill tens of millions if it got out of the lab" is a catchy line in an article (or a cheesy plot for a movie), but there is absolutely no basis for it. I think any benefit that comes from this sort of research far outweighs the hypothetical dangers.

      If you really want to be scared, read this TRUE account of a near outbreak of The Ebola Virus in Reston Virgina. This book is called The Hot Zone [desires.com] by Richard Preston. When you realize how easily viruses ar spread in hospitals, and labs you should be terrified. Superbugs/Superflus/SARS these are the real dangers to mankinds future.

    • Release this puppy, it's the only way I can use all those "I guess yes, if the world were going to end." lines girls gave me!

    • Re:Bosh (Score:5, Interesting)

      by michael_cain ( 66650 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @12:19PM (#8409295) Journal
      That said, I think the dangers of this are exaggerated. No doubt it would be a catastrophe if it were to escape the lab, but life is a lot more resilient than it is usually given credit for. Creating "a virus that could kill tens of millions if it got out of the lab" is a catchy line in an article (or a cheesy plot for a movie), but there is absolutely no basis for it. I think any benefit that comes from this sort of research far outweighs the hypothetical dangers.

      Life may be resilient, and even human life may be resilient, but civilization is somewhat more fragile. Postulate a death rate from an engineered organism similar to the Black Death in Europe: one-third of the population killed in five years. In the US, that's almost 100M deaths, 20M per year. The current US death rate is about 2.4M per year. Disposing of the bodies is going to be a large, but probably managable, task. How much of the rest of the infrastructure will we be able to keep going? Or at least, at what level will we keep it going?

      Here's another scenario that you might consider. Suppose it's just the US that gets hit. The US economy would have BIG dislocations -- consider what happens in the housing industry as an example. New construction essentially halts, since we would have an enormous oversupply. Some number (probably large) of banks and other holders of mortgages would fail, since a third or so of their mortgages are now worthless. The fallout is not just domestic. At the present time, US consumption of goods and services is driving the world economy (the Economist bemoans this situation on a regular basis). If the US suffers an epidemic that kills a third of the population, US consumption falls drastically, probably by an even bigger factor. The result would be a world-wide depression as enormous numbers of workers whose jobs depend on sales in the US become unemployed.

      Taking a long view, engineered bioweapons scare me more than nukes do. Today building such a bug is still a difficult task, but it's getting easier. At the current rate of progress, how hard/expensive will it be in 20 years? Will a lunatic with the resources of a small country (even a poor one) at his/her disposal be able to do it? There are still going to be a lot of poor countries in 20 years, many with a grudge against the rich countries, and at least a few controlled by lunatics. OTOH, I don't lose sleep over the issue, since (a) there's not much I can do about the risk and (b) the options for trying to protect myself (say by becoming an isolated subsistence farmer somewhere) are unpalatable.

    • Re:Bosh (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TGK ( 262438 )
      Read Ken Alibek's autobiography [amazon.com]. It details the time he spent as the director of the USSR's bio-weapons program. One incident detailed therein is the accidental release of weaponized anthrax spores from a weapons plant in Siberia.

      It more or less annihilated a town downwind of the plant.

      Anthrax isn't contagious from person to person and thankfully these people didn't do much traveling.

      Want a virus that got out of the lab and is wracking up casualties in the 10s of millions? Try AIDS. Of course, the "l

    • Re:Bosh (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JASegler ( 2913 ) <jasegler.gmail@com> on Friday February 27, 2004 @01:03PM (#8409804)
      Guess you don't read much history do you.

      The Pandemic flu of 1918-1919 - 10-25% exposed died, 25-37 million victims. They think it was a mutated swine flu.

      Bubonic plague (bacteria actually but just to point out a very deadly NATURAL biological agent) - ~90% exposed died, ~137 million victims.

      When europeans came to the US the diseases they brought wiped out about 90% of the Native American population simply because they didn't have the resistances the Europeans had.

      So you think a genetically engineered flu like what was in The Stand isn't possible?
      That it couldn't have a kill rate as high as 90+%?

      Genetic engineering of this kind is far worse than radiation. At least radiation will decay and disappear in 50,000 years or so.

      Biological agents mutate and get stronger through the standard darwinian evolutionary processes.

      They only reason we got rid of smallpox was there was a global effort to vaccinate everyone on the planet for decades. Colds and flu strains are so numerous that we haven't been able to devise a way to get rid of the ones we know of..

      And they want to build super versions of something we can't irradicate now?

      To paraphase from memory The Stand:
      This is how the world ends, not with a bang but a wimper.

      -Jerry

  • well, i'm not too terrified (Score:4, Funny)

    by Transient0 ( 175617 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:11AM (#8408551) Homepage
    We've been in a position for years where a massive failure at any number of nuclear or biological research facilities could effectively kill us all.

    so they've added one more to the list.

    It's the sort of thing you get used to.

  • SuperFlu! (Score:3, Funny)

    by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:12AM (#8408556) Homepage Journal
    Sounds like a superhero name. "What's wrong with that guy? It's mono! It's a cold! It's....SUPERFLU!"

    Please take a number to administer beatings.

    • Or even:

      Darkest of night
      With the moon shining bright
      There's a set goin' strong
      Lotta things goin' on
      The virus of the hour
      Has an air of great power
      The dudes have envied it for so long

      Oooh, Superflu
      You're gonna make your fortune by and by
      But if you lose, don't ask no questions why
      The only game you know is Do or Die (mostly Die)

      Second line for beatings to the right, please.

  • Dangerous research? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:12AM (#8408565)
    Some say that this sort of research is dangerous because of the risk of the virus escaping or being using in bioterrorism, and others that it's good science.

    Refusing to perform research does not preclude others from doing the same for evil purposes.

    • Re:Dangerous research? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by LearnToSpell ( 694184 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @12:10PM (#8409202) Homepage
      No, but "they" don't have as much money as "we" do. This stuff isn't something you just cook up in your garage. It's like the weaponized anthrax - there are only a couple of countries that have produced it. All those envelopes flying around the post office and Congress weren't from Iraq.

      Having said that, I agree with this poast.

  • Going the wrong way (Score:4, Funny)

    by chamilto0516 ( 675640 ) * <conrad,hamilton&gmail,com> on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:12AM (#8408566) Homepage Journal
    Making a superflu? Did they read the memo wrong? We need something to FIGHT a superflu! Hey guys, your scientist, we expected you pay a bit more attention to the details.

    Yet another post by someone who didn't click-thru to the article

  • They don't need a lab... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Lattitude ( 123015 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:13AM (#8408574)
    My kid's daycare has a pretty good batch going at all times...
    • Where's my +1 tragic mod when I need it?

      I completely agree - everyone in my family has had something really nasty that knocked us all on our tails for upwards of two weeks - including about five days where it was impossible to get off the bed/couch. Plus, my son and I ended up with ear infections, sinus infections and bacterial conjunctivitis as a result - and the ear and sinus infections were resistant to the first set of antibiotics.

      AND we all had the flu shot this year - I'm reluctant to think we all

  • Superflu (Score:5, Funny)

    by illuminata ( 668963 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:16AM (#8408608) Journal
    Isn't that a bit superfluous?

    Oh snap, oooooh snap! Score one for the big I!

  • Fear psychosis? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by aacool ( 700143 ) <aamanlamba2gmail,com> on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:18AM (#8408625) Journal
    Stories of this nature tend to bring out alarmists, Cassandras, and 'the sky is falling' types as well as rationalists and 'it-couldnt-happen-here' types.

    The tendency of the human race to both improve it's awareness of the world while at the same time endangering itself has been the cause of grief and happiness.

    This though, seems to be of little benefit to anyone, unless it guarantees a cure for the common cold!

    • Re:Fear psychosis? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by PhuCknuT ( 1703 )
      I disagree, making modifications and seeing their effects is a good way to learn about viruses and how they function. The benefit to making deadly viruses is learning how to control and kill them. Would you rather wait for one to pop up naturally outside the lab and have another 1918 flu that kills 20 million people (probably alot more with today's population density).

      The quarantine levels within these labs are insane, the odds of 'the stand' happening accidentally are very near 0.

  • old news ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tazanator ( 681948 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:19AM (#8408639)
    sorry but the USSR plan was nukes and a "virus cocktail". They would hit major cites with nukes and lay waste there, however the fields that made crops had to be saved (we ship most of the grain they live on to them). They planned to release biological weapons on the great plains, not just a little problem stuff but things like anthraz and small pox or malaria and eboloa. By mixing the virus it becomes harder to trace what antibody the hospital needs, and the next year they can vacinate some people against what was spread in the area to allow farming to resume, 2 winters later the dieases would have died.

    • Re:old news ... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by aacool ( 700143 )
      Please cite references - dont believe everything you read in pulp novels. Then again, don't assume that the USSR had exclusive rights on bio-warfare.

    • Re:old news ... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27, 2004 @12:08PM (#8409187)
      Ok, I call bullshit. First of all, your supposed 'virus cocktail' would be composed of viruses, right? Anthrax = bacterium (bacillus anthracis sp.) Malaria = bacterium (plasmodium faciparum sp.) Ebola makes a very poor choice for a biological weapon, because after all the point of biological weapons isn't to kill, but to incapacitate and by so doing take another 4-5 soldiers out of the fight because they're needed to take care of the infected. You'd also need to find a way of keeping the Ebola from infecting your own people as well. Malaria makes a poor choice as well, mostly because you'd have to train the mosquitoes to attack the right soldiers as well! (malaria can't be spread from human to human contact) Of those you mentioned, only anthrax makes a good battlefield weapon, mostly because it can't infect human-to-human (you need to breathe in the spores, or come into contact with viable spores through an open wound, etc.) As far as 'antibodies' go, scientists are quite able to identify these diseases quickly with the use of a laboratory. A great book on this is "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/038 5334966/qid=1077901428/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-93670 52-8776105?v=glance&s=books"
      written by a guy who actually RAN part of the former soviet's program to manufacture biological weapons.

      • Germ Warfare (Score:3, Insightful)

        by drox ( 18559 )
        Malaria = bacterium (plasmodium faciparum sp.

        IIRC that's a protozoan, not a bacterium.

        But it's not a virus either, so your point stands.

        The best biological weapons are the ones that act fast and have cures. You want your own troops to be immune while the disease incapacitates the enemy.

        The best biological weapons are non-lethal. They make the enemy so sick they can't fight, while your healthy troops move in and sieze power, set up friendly governments, etc. After the New Boss(tm) is firmly in place,

  • Is it worth it? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:20AM (#8408645)
    Are the benefits of such a vacine really worth the chance of the virus excaping and causing an epidemic?

    I'm not saying it isn't, just a point to ponder.

    • Re:Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stevesliva ( 648202 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:29AM (#8408747) Journal
      It's potentially dangerous! Ban it!

      Forget that it's worthwhile research that may save millions of lives. We've already killed promising stem cell research in this country with Bush's stupid executive order. In the future we may be buying our Parkinson's treatments from South Korea...

      • Re:Is it worth it? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Rostin ( 691447 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:55AM (#8409007)
        The argument about stem cell research wasn't that it was "potentially dangerous." Bush and many others consider it be immoral. There's a difference. Worthwhile research that could save millions of lives could be performed on (for example) the prison population, but I don't hear many people clamoring for that.

  • I get to play the part of Stu! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Digital Dharma ( 673185 ) <max AT zenplatypus DOT com> on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:20AM (#8408651)
    Mainly because he's one of the few that lives in Steven King's "The Stand".

    The part of the Walking Dude should be played by Darl McBride =]

  • It's only a matter of time... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hoggoth ( 414195 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:22AM (#8408683) Journal
    It's only a matter of time, perhaps 10 or 20 years, until a grad student or third world scientist will be able to easily engineer his own deadly plague virus.

    Human nature is not going to change. We are petty and short sighted, driven by emotion. These things WILL be made, eventually. It is likely sooner or later something really bad will get loose.

    I am afraid for the whole Human Race. How do we prepare for this or prevent this?

    • I am afraid for the whole Human Race. How do we prepare for this or prevent this?Antibacterial soap and a shotgun? Or how about all those little masks I see old Asian people wearing around San Francisco?

    • And maybe vaccines are "10 to 20 years" more advanced by then? To make a really devastating disease you'd have to engineer something ingenious -- like an airborne AIDS. That's not your standard high-school science project, even 20 years from now. Also, most viruses have the disadvantage of having a low incubation time, which means that epidemics can be spotted early and quarrentine meassures can be done fast. Technology can cause death, but it can bring protection as well.

      Don't be a Prophet of Doom. It su

    • It's only a matter of time, perhaps 10 or 20 years, until a grad student or third world scientist will be able to easily engineer his own deadly plague virus.

      You forget that by that time a grad student or third world scientist will be able to easily engineer the cure, too. And advanced medicine in a first world country even moreso.

      Look, I understand that people want to be all doomsday to knock some sense into people, but really no human invention except the atomic bomb and television has actually had the
    • It's only a matter of time, perhaps 10 or 20 years, until a grad student or third world scientist will be able to easily engineer his own deadly plague virus

      How do we prepare for this or prevent this?

      The same way we should be preparing for any major world disaster: self-sufficient off-world colonies.

      Or, how about creating viruses in legitimate labs right now so that the legitimate grad students and third world scientists (out-sourcing, you know?) will have enough knowledge later to develop vaccines? Now
    • It's only a matter of time, perhaps 10 or 20 years, until a grad student or third world scientist will be able to easily engineer his own deadly plague virus.

      I wouldn't sell the scientific community short on this. Scientists are well aware of the consequences of their reasearch and the ethical foundations of said research. They are also aware of the various techniques that politicians use to force them into to unethical research and development and how to fight this coersion.

      Scientists are not so
  • Sounds not unlike a certain 70s novel I read once. Maybe the survivors of said flu can battle out the final war of good vs. evil! Post apocalyptic society here I come! -Runz

  • Human Evolution (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lord_Frederick ( 642312 ) * on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:24AM (#8408700)

    I've read that human evolution has stopped, because modern medicine has eliminated most of the diseases that cause death prior to being mature enough to reproduce.

    If one of these superviruses was released, could it be viewed as a way of pushing along evolution, since only those strong enough and with the genetics to survive the virus would live to reproduce?

  • This reminds me of some of the Animaniacs sketches (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Darken_Everseek ( 681296 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:24AM (#8408705)
    Good Idea: Studying naturally occuring flu viruses to learn how to prevent future pandemic outbreaks.

    Bad Idea: Deliberately creating new versions of the flu, to learn how to prevent future outbreaks.

    The frightening thought is that they aren't using the highest grade of quarantine level. I suppose though, when it does get out, they'll know how they made it, and theoretically, also how to fight it. At least until it mutates naturally.

  • CDC Superflu modeling info (Score:3, Informative)

    by bcolflesh ( 710514 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:24AM (#8408706) Homepage
    Interesting article with Superflu mathematical modeling information:

    http://www.maa.org/editorial/mathgames/mathgames _1 2_22_03.html

  • Nature's better at this than we are (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:24AM (#8408708) Journal
    Movies generate a lot of fear of science, from the nuclear boogeyman who manifested as Attack of the 100 foot [animal] in the 50s and 60s, to the recent batch of nano-germ-megaflu series of movies, like 12 Monkeys, Outbreak, the Andromeda Strain, the Stand, etc..

    Fact is, noone brews up a killer virus like Mother Nature. There are thousands of strains of the flu, many fatal to a percentage of their victims.. HIV, Ebola, Smallpox, Anthrax, etc.. Lots of nasty shit out there. There's fecal coliforms on your toothbrush! Eww, I saw it on Mythbusters.

    Anyways, humanity survives. We survived the plague, we'll survive AIDS, we'll survive whatever Professor Peabody and his mad, mad test tubes come up with.

    After all, we don't know enough to cure the common cold, how could we know enough to create the perfect virus?

    • Re:Nature's better at this than we are (Score:4, Insightful)

      by lowe0 ( 136140 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:32AM (#8408784) Homepage
      Lemme put it this way: it took centuries for us to develop rockets to go to space, but we had bullets figured out real quick....

      Humanity is very good at coming up with clever methods of killing ourselves and everything around us. Actually doing something to improve the world is a distant second.

    • Re:Nature's better at this than we are (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Darken_Everseek ( 681296 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:33AM (#8408800)
      That's the problem; we don't know how to create the perfect virus. If we did, we could avoid doing so. I have great faith in human stupidity; we'll stumble across something nasty, even if we do so unintentionally.

      If a script kiddie can create a virus that infects millions of computers, a team of trained biologists can certainly create a virus that can infect millions of humans.
    • Natural evolution is a mindless force.

      Trained scientists working on a "superflu" have a focus, a goal in mind.

    • Natural viruses not as deadly as man-made ones (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tehanu ( 682528 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @12:24PM (#8409362)
      But Nature also seems to be good at counter-balancing its viruses so that they don't wipe out everything (thus ending up killing the virus as well - it needs something to spread to).

      For example many of the most deadly viruses which you have practically no chance of surviving such as Ebola are not airborne. Syphilis used to be much more deadly but gradually evolved into a less potent form.

      Also you forget that a lot of the diseases we survive (as in the population in general not individual people) because people gradually develop immunity to them especially due to proximity to animals. For example smallpox. For examples of what happens when people are suddenly exposed to diseases just look at aboriginal populations like the Australian Aborigines, the South American or North American Indians.

      So a man-made virus:
      (1) While a natural virus's main aim is to survive and hence not kill everything in sight, thus either is either difficult to spread (anything that doesn't involve airbourne or a simple touch) or is simply not instantly deadly, a man-made virus does not need to fill this condition and thus can be both deadly and easy to spread. In fact these are the sort of mutations they are working on in the experiments.
      (2) The virus escapes suddenly into a population which has none or practically no immunity to it.

      So a man-made virus could very well be something that nature has never produced and is not likely to produce - a virus as deadly as Ebola (99% death rate), as easy to spread as the cold (airbourne and touch) released suddenly into a population which has even less immunity to it than the American Indians to smallpox.

  • Not what you'd want to overhear at a bar... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Howard Beale ( 92386 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:28AM (#8408731)
    So, would you go out with me if I was the last man alive???

    Yes? Hmmmmmmm....

  • The problem with flu vaccines... (Score:5, Informative)

    by jeblucas ( 560748 ) <jeblucas@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:32AM (#8408783) Homepage Journal
    Flu vaccines--for the last several decades--are cultured in chicken eggs. The little eggs gets injected with flu virus, the virus replicates and the little liquid chicken produces antibodies, which are then sucked out and jabbed in Gramma's arm at the clinic. This works great. For swine flu.

    Avian flu, however, would likely kill the egg--Dead Eggs Produce No Antibodies, i.e. no vaccine. Luckily, it's more difficult for avian flu to make the species jump to humans in a virulent form, but the WHO, CDC, and other groups are scared to death some bird flu is going to figure this out soon and we'll be helpless in front of it. It's 1918 [stanford.edu] all over again.

    Don't get to cranky about these folks looking at ways to culture flu virii in something other than chickens--they're looking for answers.

  • Hey all this superflu being brewed in a lab HAH

    Ive got strains of all kinds of previously unknown shit growing in my fridge at the moment

    Ive even tested the human vector factor by eating some greenish ham yesterday, GUESS WHAT ????

    Im sick as hell, guess it works !

  • U.S. i -was- working on it's own version. (Score:4, Funny)

    by dameron ( 307970 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @11:45AM (#8408905)
    It was to be dubbed Superflu-US, but then it was decided they didn't need it after all..

    -dameron
  • The folks at Symantec will take care of it. Actually, I suppose getting a flu shot is conceptually the same as doing a "liveupdate" -- it just hurts more.

  • Virii and toxins (Score:5, Interesting)

    by miketo ( 461816 ) <miketo@nwlinOOOk.com minus threevowels> on Friday February 27, 2004 @12:04PM (#8409134)
    IANAS, but if I recall correctly, the problem with biological agents like virii are that it's very difficult to create a highly contagious, high-mortality virus. Virii need a living host to reproduce, mutate, and pass on their modified genes to the descendants. Airborne virii need to be extremely hardy to survive outside their ideal breeding conditions (read: human host). And a virus that is so virulent it kills its host almost immediately won't live for very many more generations -- it's an unsuccessful mutation.

    That being said, it's still possible to balance all the factors so you have a fairly lethal virus, relatively contagious, that mutates quickly and successfully. It's just not as likely to end up as a Captain Tripps, or even an Ebola.

    Toxins, on the other hand, are better for short-term, near-instantaneous death, and are more likely to be "controllable" through judicious application. Again, there are contraindications such as method of application, weather, &tc. that would warrant not using them.

    The various death merchants will keep experimenting anyway, but it's nice to know that we're far more likely to be wiped out as a species by a giant asteroid than from a little critter built in a lab.

  • Comparatively little work (Score:3, Informative)

    by abiggerhammer ( 753022 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @12:06PM (#8409162)
    Just to put some perspective on the situation: I mentioned this article to my boss (I work for a company which produces oligonucleotides [idtdna.com]), and he immediately recalled (though, to be fair, he didn't cite a source) the results of a comparison between the bird flu variant that killed a few people in Southeast Asia several years back and the H5N1 bird flu virus. Apparently the viruses only differed by about 12 genes. He speculated that the researchers in this case might just be trying to find out which of those 12 produce the human-infectious variation.

    Needless to say, this knowledge would be incredibly valuable. And, yes, dangerous in the wrong hands -- but the genes which allow human infection in bird flu may not be, and in fact are probably not, the same genes which allow human infection in other viruses.

  • When will we learn? (Score:4, Funny)

    by kippy ( 416183 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @12:13PM (#8409235)
    All science and research should be stopped for fear of the off chance that something out of a crappy checkout-line novel will occur.

    Have Stephen King books taught us nothing?

  • Crime fighter (Score:3, Funny)

    by geekoid ( 135745 ) <`moc.oohay' `ta' `dnaltropnidad'> on Friday February 27, 2004 @12:59PM (#8409759) Homepage Journal
    When Superflu is brewed in the lab, he will fight crime while driving around in a cadilac convertible.
    And he'll get all the chicks.

  • Just wait for it to happen (Score:3)

    by dacarr ( 562277 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @01:04PM (#8409807) Homepage Journal
    It's only a matter of time before conspiracy theories pop up on this, or at least include this in their current theories. Or rather, pull the I-told-you-so card.

  • I wonder if... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bendebecker ( 633126 ) on Friday February 27, 2004 @01:09PM (#8409852) Journal
    The price of housing in Boulder, Colorado is going up cause of this...

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