Paper On Super Flu Strain May Be Banned From Publication 754
Pierre Bezukhov writes with this excerpt from an article at Doctor Tipster: "A Dutch researcher has created a virus with the potential to kill half of the planet's population. Now, researchers and experts in bioterrorism debate whether it is a good idea to publish the virus creation 'recipe'. However, several voices argue that such research should have not happened in the first place. The virus is a strain of avian influenza H5N1 genetically modified to be extremely contagious ... created by researcher Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam, Netherlands. The work was first presented at a conference dedicated to influenza that took place in September in Malta."
Peh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Interesting)
If it got out the 'fix' may be natural selection.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mouse Pox Virus Created by CSIRO (Score:5, Informative)
There are a couple of points related to this.
1 You're not particularly good at assessing risk. Do the maths on people killed by disease and people killed by terrorists
2 There is a history of the flu virus turning lethal. Spanish flu and earlier history of extremely deadly pandemics.
3 This study demonstrates breeding a better pathogen using natural means using traits that already exist.
4 Vaccines for flu type virus are very effective.
5 Exposure to a similar flu virus or vaccine confers some immunity.
6 Agents that boost the immune response to vaccines confer an even broader immunity
The point is that government should be preparing broad spectum bird flu vaccines and allowing people to put their hands up to get them as the risk of this type of virus arising naturally is high. This study demonstrates this are fact.
CSIRO, an Australian research organisation released research relating to mouse pox virus modifications that created a deadly virus precisely because it was hoped that it would lead to better treatments. They also surmised that governments around the world already knew about this but had kept it secret.
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001755.html
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Insightful)
If half the world population were to die off (in equal percentages everywhere), countries like the US, UK and Germany would be vastly more affected in terms of productivity, influence, and ability to project military power than countries like Afghanistan, Yemen or Pakistan.
The actual deaths would likely vary somewhat from one country to another - but industrialized nations would still be the most affected, and the terrorists could easily see the deaths of half their own people as an acceptable cost.
Re:Peh. (Score:4, Interesting)
On the flip side everyone would be able to meet carbon footprint treaties; more easily for cultures who bury their dead than burning it though...
Oh, and with death rates likely much higher in the non-industrialized countries, the industrialized ones wouldn't have to worry about sharing resources with the up and coming whippersnappers. In fact, if you think it through, it's more likely that a disease like this (though it would cause massive economic damage) would actually strengthen the relative economic mastery of the industrialized nations over the less industrialized ones. So terrorists should take note that a weapon like this is rather short sided if they want to perturb the balance of power away from current industrialized states (identifiable as having lewd morals and a greater median net worth than the terrorist).
P.S. - It's worth a try convincing them to look at the long road right? Maybe the sort of people who contemplate killing off half the worlds population are just looking for a more reasonable option.
P.P.S. - If you are a terrorist like the sort mentioned in the P.S. you might want to contemplate economic superiority, technological superiority (put all that effort into science), or supporting the formation of democratic regions where your ideas can be publicly debated and made state policy when you have convinced the masses of your philosophies.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Peh. (Score:4, Funny)
I'd say that most of us are pretty well protected here in our parents' basements. We can't catch it if we're not exposed!
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hiding the information just gives those who want to keep it all for themselves more time to do awful things.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're trying to spread it deliberately, don't get on a plane, hang out in the airport.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you can be thankful for the herd immunity that your more sensible peers are providing.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no herd immunity to this. That is the whole point. It's actually surprising that this work finally got done; I remember reading at least 5 years ago about the debate raging over whether to engineer H5N1 to be contagious like human flu. The "for" argument was basically:
Humans infected with H5N1 have high mortality,
H5N1 was appearing in third world countries,
in those countries animals and humans live in close physical proximity,
All it would take was the transfer of a few genes coding for cell surface proteins to be transferred from human flu to H5N1 and it would become highly contagious,
This transfer was highly likely to happen if a human was infected with human flu and H5N1 at the same time,
Which is highly likely given the conditions in third world countries
Therefore it is highly likely that this will happen at some point in the near future,
Therefore we should do it in the lab now and research the resulting virus before the outbreak happens.
The "against" argument was obviously that the resulting virus could potentially wipe out our species. Interesting debate!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Idiot's luck.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly you have complete faith in your immune system. We should have you exposed to this genetically altered, fantastically deadly virus so that you can demonstrate to the world how insignificant it is.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you can explain to me why those who are supposedly providing me "herd immunity" get visibly infected and sick on a regular basis, and I don't.
Hint - it's not any so-called "immune response" from their vaccines.
I'll bite, is it because you're so obnoxious that nobody and no disease wants to be around you???
You have no idea what you're talking about. Immunisation has it's risks (and it would not carry any risk if it was snake oil). But the benefit far outweighs the risk. You may well have a good immune system. I'll also agree that an overly sanitary environment is not good for children and that some germs will help their immunity, but you have to be selective. I don't let my children play in their own vomit, faeces and urine for instance, nor our dog's. I don't let them eat their dinner straight off the floor. The bottom line is that your chances of surviving a new deadly disease depends largely upon immunisation. Entire diseases have been eliminated. I don't care that you don't like it - the truth does not bend to a person's whims.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Informative)
And before you grew up(presumably), the 1918 flu pandemic killed literally tens of millions of people. Just because none of the flew strains that were carried in your youth were especially lethal doesn't mean that flu is some sort of inherently mild illness. It can be very dangerous.
Re:Peh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Heck, the regular flu kills 20,000 Americans a year but gets almost no news attention.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Insightful)
A strong immune system vs a specific virus are two different things. Having your immune system exposed to various bacteria and viruses (on non-dangerous levels) helps strengthen your system to recognize and fight it. In fact, that's EXACTLY what a vaccination is! What you are doing (exposing yourself to common bacteria and virus) and vaccination are both the SAME THING but one is controlled while the other isn't. The problem with your method is that it doesn't NOT strengthen your immune system to viruses not common or are unique. You body can not fight what it does not know. Your body can only know by actually having it, and by having it, you must hopefully live long enough for your immune system to respond (some viruses can kill you before that time). That is why vaccination was created (basically nurtured bacteria/viruses) which introduces these unique viruses/bacteria so your body can learn about it. No matter how much you naturally expose your body, there are many things your body will never be exposed to.
Herd immunity implies prevention of SPECIFIC often rarer viruses. A vaccine for polo only prevent polo, not the common cold if you didn't realize it.
The immune system isn't so clear cut as strong / weak. Rather then that, it's more about how much it can recognize cells as dangers. An antivirus software is a good example. A good antivirus software can prevent alot of viruses but some it will not recognize as dangers. While a poor one may not be as good, as long as it can recognize certain viruses, it can prevent those specific viruses.
Speaking about regular sickness (generic) and comparing it against vaccination (targeted/specific) shows that you obviously know nothing.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Informative)
Of further interest, it is sometimes those with the strong immune systems that die, rather than the weak. Various conditions provoke immune response that chemically eats at important organs and tissues, e.g. the recent flu that they warned was killing more 18-25 year old men than others: that is because 18-25 y.o. men have the strongest immune systems in general terms, and I do mean in the sense of strong/weak.
What you did not mention is the distinction of immunity types, that is, specific vs. general immunity; a body that is unable to immediately react to a new threat with a precise, targeted approach can do so through chemical warfare: unfortunately it can also burn itself within in this way; the weapons of this warfare are hydrolytic enzymes, bleach, hydrogen peroxide, and a myriad of other goodies that you would not dare drink, and having a generally strong trait for nonspecific immunity means that with 'bugs' that are really provocative, viral or otherwise, can cause your own strength to finish you off.
The first stage of immunity usually is a clear cut strong/weak scenario, and frequently this turns out well, at least in the modern era of antibiotics to make overresponse unnecessary as the body finds a slowed, dying, or severely weakened threat, but with viruses (far less treatable), and especially novel variants (the more novel, the worse), the response can often be catastrophic. Of course that clear-cut sense of "strong/weak" is restricted to general (nonspecific) type response rather than specific response (i.e. already having antibodies to an intruder), and is the basest sense of force/hostility/violence that people use those terms, in this case with regards inundation (churning out) the goodies as opposed perhaps to a light spray; then of course the simplicity soons begins to fail when one considers the interaction between infected cells and their environment to attract the bombers, and even between them and the leukocytes directly to hand over proteins to go make antibodies...
Of course "go make antibodies" is inaccurate if taken to imply that the cells who receive proteins from infected cells are the actual makers, actually...
Oh whatever. Not speaking about general or nonspecific immune response vs. specific or targeted immunity, and comparing the immune system in general to antivirus software for computing 'health', shows that you obviously know nothing. : )
p.s. I do mean it as a chide rather than really trying to be adversarial, okay?
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Informative)
Because vaccines only work against the particular illnesses one has been vaccinated against. They don't protect against other diseased. That's why your neighbours keep on getting sick with various lesser infections. And the more serious ones never come your way, due to herd immunity (which means everyone around you is immune, so there's none that could give you the disease, which is exactly what large-scale vaccinations provide - so why the quotes?).
Luckily, you appear to have a naturally strong immune system, so you can deal with little stuff; unfortunately, it's gone to your head and made you think you could deal with something like polio too. Luckily, there's still enough vaccinated people that you're unlikely to have to put that hubris to test; unfortunately, there's a tipping point when there's enough unvaccinated people in the population for it to start spreading amongst them even if the general population is immune.
In the meantime, try to avoid getting scatched by any rusty items - tetanus shots only last 10 years.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Funny)
Finally! A disease sent from God to punish people for being Un-American.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Funny)
"You do realise that half the world could die from a virus like this without anybody from America ever being infected, right?"
It doesn't affect the obese? (runs)
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Informative)
disease like swine or bird flu that kills like 5 people
You might want to read some history. 1918 flu pandemic [wikipedia.org]:
"Between 50 and 100 million died, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history.[4][5][6][7][8] Even using the lower estimate of 50 million people, 3% of the world's population (which was 1.86 billion at the time[9]) died of the disease. Some 500 million, or 27% (1/4), were infected."
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes but you must also take into account the globalization of the population in general. In 1918, we didn't have a jet set crowd, and a virus was limited to physical transmission based on how far an infected person could travel. In today's environment, it could easily spread worldwide in a day into heavily populated zones that are multitudes more dense (per capita) than anything that existed in 1918. Couple that with the fact that it could easily overwhelm the medical infrastructure in high population zones if it spreads fast enough. Just assuming that advances in medical science negate a virus is a false assumption as everything else is not equal in this scenario. Transmission rates and transmission range have changed drastically since the early 1900's.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Informative)
Someone infected with the 1918 flu strain has a significantly better chance of recovery under modern medical care than their 1918 counterpart.
Change that to "marginally better" and I might agree with you. There is still no effective treatment against a cytokine storm reaction, which is what primarily killed people in 1918. All current treatments are still experimental.
There might be marginal cases where better monitoring would have resulted in fewer deaths, but the vast majority would find no better help with current medical technology.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Funny)
That's assuming, as well, that travel is not restricted once an epidemic is identified ( which of course it would be ).
Fucking Madagascar.
Re:Peh. (Score:4, Informative)
What stopped it from being just as deadly?
No, it wasn't living conditions. For avian flu, it is because it isn't very contagious to people. For swine flu, it just wasn't any more deadly than ordinary flu (even in places where living conditions are poor.)
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Insightful)
So just because some (likely stable) government has it, we should give it to all comers? That's absolutely insane. Distrust the US government all you want, but they are far less likely to release a superflu into the wild than some random nutjob with a biology degree and an axe to grind.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Three words: Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Three more words: Apples and Oranges.
Not to excuse the inexcusable, but to deliberately fail to treat disease with very limited communicability and long incubation period is hardly the same is releasing Captain Trips... While I might think my country can make some pretty stupid choices, they aren't the kind that would destroy civilization.
Re:Peh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because he's just ITCHING to push the button, right?
Or maybe ... that button has kept the peace between the super powers. And it's not that US, USSR and China where you have to worry about a madman pushing the button, it's some non-nation setting off a few stolen (or provided) nukes...
In the context of the conversation above,you need to rememer nukes don't make the US suicidal crazy -- and not in the context of overly sensitive and paranoid anti-americanism.
Re:Peh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Three words: Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
You're right. It's high time that the administration that was responsible for that episode was finally voted out of office. It's hard to believe that - after all these decades - they're still setting such policies, and still running those sorts of tests.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, obfuscation is not security.
Wait...did I post this in the right topic??
Cost of controlling the damage (Score:3, Interesting)
Its better that it got out and fixes are prepared.
Sure - AS LONG AS the "fixes" (e.g. antidote or vaccine) are engineered, produced and ready for distribution BEFORE such info gets out.
Moreover, if you're going to take the prerogative of developing a bioweapon with the capability of causing mass casualties, it's also your responsibility to secure funding for inoculating or treating everyone affected. Just recently there was an outcry here [slashdot.org] about the government spending $433M on smallpox treatment in the event of an outbreak. If this is as dangerous as the
Versions may not be equivalent (Score:5, Informative)
Someone has probably already crafted a similar version in a distant private or military research lab anyway. Its better that it got out and fixes are prepared.
Actually various independently crafted versions may be different enough that a "cure" for one is ineffective against another.
Re:Versions may not be equivalent (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone has probably already crafted a similar version in a distant private or military research lab anyway. Its better that it got out and fixes are prepared.
Actually various independently crafted versions may be different enough that a "cure" for one is ineffective against another.
True enough, but having practice in developing "solutions" for dozens of similar problems is a lot better than starting from sulfa drugs and trying to work your way up.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Peh. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Terrorists generally want to target specific sub-populations of the human species, whether that sub-population be defined by nationality, ethnicity, wealth etc."
yes, their massive car bombs are exceptionally precise.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is false. It is not like a computer patch.
The fix may be a vaccine against one particular instantiation---and deploying vaccines to 7 billion people for a virus which doesn't exist naturally is a big and expensive problem. There's no such thing as auto-update. This is real and expensive and will take away resources from other things which could also improve people's help. Any failures mean people, like your family, will die.
The real danger is that the techniques and insight involved could be used to make a wide variety of weaponizable viruses, in which case one might face a wave of dangerous viruses each of which is not covered by the previous's virusweapon's vaccine. These waves would sweep faster than vaccines could be isolated and produced (which for influenza is about 9 months to a year---for this you have to count proven manufacturing not some future hope of how something might work). How fast can Dr Evil produce new sequences? A bunch faster.
If the description of the research is accurate, this is like publishing a paper on how to manufacture, and mass-produce thermonuclear weaponry with the tech available in a typical university lab, without using any expensive fissile nuclear materials or isotopic separation. What a wonderful world.
Re:Peh. (Score:5, Funny)
So... (Score:4, Insightful)
...that is what will happen to the 99%
Re: (Score:3)
...that is what will happen to the 99%
That's ok, because we already know what happens to the 1% [angryflower.com].
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Funny)
The (Score:3)
The zombie apocalypse awaits.
M-O-O-N (Score:5, Insightful)
That spells life imitating art!
Yes, it should be published (Score:5, Insightful)
If it was done, the information's out there. If the work's already been presented at a conference, it's pretty much a guarantee the black-hats have it. And if they don't already, they know it can be done and they've got enough clues to know where to go looking. So the question isn't whether we give the black-hats the information or not, it's whether only the black-hats get the information or whether the white-hats get it too. I'd rather have the information circulated so doctors and public health systems know what to look for and how to treat it when it shows up.
Barn doors and horses: (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. The important info was that the strain can be made to be transmissible by air in mammals.
That was an open question, and some felt that it was unlikely. Now, it's known that it can be done.
If you know that it can be done, there are only a limited number of ways it could have been done. Now, you just have to figure out which. They even outline the basic idea in several places.
It looks like it was a pretty standard method of passing the virus repeatedly through ferrets to select for those variants best adapted.
There may be a few nuances, but now that it's been done just about any lab that works on that strain with ferrets for test animals can probably repeat the work even without further info.
Re:Barn doors and horses: (Score:5, Funny)
Well gentleman, we can stop this problem in it's tracks.
We will patent the little motherfucker.
Re:Barn doors and horses: (Score:4, Funny)
And then we can sue anyone who catches the disease for patent infringement!
Re:Yes, it should be published (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yes, it should be published (Score:4, Funny)
Hereby I claim that factoring large primes can be done. The task of finding fairly trivial implementation is left as an exercise for the reader.
Re:Yes, it should be published (Score:5, Insightful)
That's your assumption. I'd rather we operate under the assumption that the black-hats don't have it. First of all, that seems more likely (it's not as though the full recipe would be presented at a conference), and secondly the penalty for releasing it if they don't have it is much worse than the penalty for withholding it if they do have it.
Possibilities:
00) Black hats don't have it, we don't release it. Very Good! No one has to die.
01) Black hats don't have it, we do release it. Very Bad! We just gave the tools for murder on an unprecedented scale to everyone who wants them.
10) Black hats have it, we don't release it. Bad. When and if they use it, we will be somewhat delayed while we realize "Hey, there's this new superflu that seems a lot like the one that Dutch guy came up with."
11) Black hats have it, we do release it. Maybe good. We save some time researching cures, at the cost of making the recipe even more available than it already is (and thus saving the bad guys some time obtaining it).
Make your own little game theory chart. Unless there is a very high probability that they have it, we're better off not releasing it. And as I said before, they likely don't have the whole thing.
I know this is Slashdot and a lot of people think that information wants to be free, but trust me on this. The information doesn't give a shit. Some things really should be kept secret.
Re:Yes, it should be published (Score:4, Informative)
Remember that knowing something can be done is often 90% of the battle.
So, while your assumption that they don't have it now may well be valid, it won't be in 5-10 years. Thus, probably a good idea to get the white hats working on counter measures now, which means (by your own logic) that it should be published.
Re:Yes, it should be published (Score:5, Informative)
Someone doesn't remember their GI Joe math. Knowing is 50% of the battle.
Re:Yes, it should be published (Score:5, Insightful)
That's your assumption. I'd rather we operate under the assumption that the black-hats don't have it. First of all, that seems more likely (it's not as though the full recipe would be presented at a conference), and secondly the penalty for releasing it if they don't have it is much worse than the penalty for withholding it if they do have it.
Your assumptions are one sided. There is enough information to make the virus. The influenza virus is well studied and there is a wealth of information down to atomic level in some cases how it functions. We know the genetic background (H5N1), we know that the strain has a combination of naturally occurring mutations, and we know that we can use ferrets to test it. It doesn't take much trial and error to figure out the correct combination. Even if the presented information is misleading, the fact that the virus can be made more aggressive is enough. It is trivial to culture and has very short reproduction cycle,which allows anyone with a little time on their hands to do selective evolution. If they don't publish somebody else will repeat the experiments and publish the data instead. I wouldn't be worried about biotherorists. Making, containing and using bioweapons is hard, dangerous and extremely expensive. You can't cook it in your basement.
Re:Yes, it should be published (Score:5, Insightful)
The black-hats might have it, but the question is do you really want to release it to all the script-kiddies?
virus researcher practical jokes (Score:4, Funny)
I can just imagine the practal jokes in that lab.
My god! the seal on the container has come undone - the virus has excaped!!
Ha - got you! that's just the box my lunch came in
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I would expect them to have a guy in hazmat suit stand ready with a flamethrower somewhere in the corner of the lab, just for such occasions. "I hope you like your lunch well-done, sir."
Yikes (Score:4, Funny)
Now I don't wanna go to work tomorrow (I work there). :)
Re: (Score:3)
Now I don't wanna go to work tomorrow (I work there). :)
SURPRISE! You're patient zero! You just won free health care for the rest of your life!!!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yikes (Score:5, Funny)
Hehe for the short duration that it would be? :)
Funnily enough, mortality rates should be higher outside of Europe, due to a gene that survivors of the Black Plague passed on. It should make those people more resistant to this flu as well. So my chances aren't all that bad probably.
Although it's never a bad idea to start stockpiling canned goods and tissues ;)
I plan on being a cannibal... No need to stock up and no one ever thinks of cannibalism right from the start. Sort of gives you a leg up on everyone else really.
Banning a HUGE Mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
With regards to the fears of terrorists, it's not a high probability, most of them wouldn't have the vaguest idea what to do with that information, the few that are left know enough to not be stupid enough to release a superplague on the planet. Your biggest worry should be the Military making a superplague, and being stupid enough to let someone dumb enough to use it actually get access to some of it.
If you stop research because you are afraid that terrorists might use it, you would have to stop all research of any kind.
Re:Banning a HUGE Mistake (Score:5, Interesting)
If you stop research because you are afraid that terrorists might use it, you would have to stop all research of any kind.
That's a nice soundbite, but somehow I find myself opposed to giving terrorists weaponized super-flus, while at the same time not being so worried about them getting access to the latest touch screen technology. I mean, we've already stopped research into human vivisection, and that didn't require us to stop "research of any kind".
Just a thought, but maybe we can take a step outside of the world of black and white you're painting, and allow all research except that which could destroy human civilization?
Re:Banning a HUGE Mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it's more along the lines that the barbarians who conquered Rome did so by traveling along Roman roads to get there. One could say, yeah those stupid Romans shouldn't have built those highways, they just gave the terrorists mass transit abilities (i.e., mass transit Iron Age style...) but the Romans used those roads for trade and commerce. The question that's missing here is what this highly contagious flu research is useful for. While it's possible, I highly doubt the guy is a mad scientist, so... who funded him and why? What's the purpose of this research? In the very last paragraph they give the answer:
There you go, if you see a flu virus gaining the five mutations discussed in TFA, you know you're going to be in trouble.
Point of history: (Score:5, Informative)
It was a bit more than the roads. Many of those "barbarians" that conquered Rome were themselves former Roman soldiers.
Alaric was just one of many of them.
Re:Banning a HUGE Mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
"You have to assume that the other side (be it an enemy nation, a terrorist, a tax collector, or whatever) can obtain the information if they wanted it. It's stupid to assume they can't know (they're capable of spying)."
This is false. Sufficiently strong security measures mean that only the most determined adversary can obtain the information if they wanted. In practice this means that the information will be available to intelligence agencies of the most advanced nation-states and nobody else (for example, who has detailed thermonuclear weapons design knowledge? there is apparently one 1960's era secret not at all yet publicly revealed.). These people have institutional and practical barriers to instigating mass genocide.
However, there are many smaller groups with insufficient capability to penetrate a well-protected technical secret (e.g. TS/SCI) but more than enough capability to do some apparently reasonably simple molecular biology.
This is a historically unique situation.
Welp (Score:4, Funny)
Looks like I'm moving to Madagascar. [crazymonkeygames.com]
Reminds me of GLaDOS (Score:5, Funny)
Lynn Enquist, quoted in the article, reminds me of GLaDOS:
I find it really, really hard to think about telling people not to do science.
Too late (Score:5, Insightful)
With this sentence, they have practically gave it away already. All one has to do now is to scan the scientific literature for the appropriate five mutations that confer increased airborne transmissibility, perform site directed mutagenesis and voila.
They should follow the footsteps of Australian researches (who inserted IL4 gene into the mousepox creating a very lethal strain) and publish this anyway.
Re:Too late (Score:4, Interesting)
Develope a vaccine, then publish (if they must) (Score:3)
Don't see why they *need* to publish this work, but if it is done can they atleast wait until they have administered 200 million or so vaccinations?
Alert the Vendor (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously the responsible thing to do is to give the vendor time to fix the vulnerability. I propose the researcher submit his findings to God and wait 5-7 days for a response before full disclosure.
I'd Say No (Score:5, Insightful)
It all comes down the the breadth and transparency of the ecosystem, in my layman's opinion. It's entirely plausible with, for example, Adobe software running on Windows operating systems to say that if White Hat A found it then certainly Grey Hat B and Mustache Twirling Russian Mafioso Black Hat C will find it or have already found and exploited it. Those are specific, limited, and completely knowable ecosystems invented entirely by humans, however. Of course someone else will find it; the universe in which "it" lives isn't terribly large, when you really look at the situation.
Biology, on the other hand, is much bigger and much more mysterious; we're far stupider in biology than in any other science. We certainly didn't invent, do not control, and do not understand the ecosystems involved. You know far less from the sentence "I found five mutations that transform a particular H5N1 into a global killer." than you do from the sentence "I found a stack overflow hack in Acrobat which lets me read any pdf the target machine opens."
In short, security through obscurity actually gets you a very long way in biological research. Not to mention that creating a virus is a lot faster than creating the vaccine; perhaps a substance of which a single vial released in downtown Detroit could kill half the humans on Earth long before the antidote was invented and adequately synthesized isn't the place to object on principle some deliberate obscurity.
Seriously, look at the way flu vaccines are prepared. Maybe people should argue for the development of a faster way of inventing and growing vaccine (that is to say, faster than trial-and-error monkey testing followed by incubation in chicken eggs) before they request that blueprints for a killer flu become public information.
Serial Passage (Score:5, Informative)
This news has been bouncing around the biology world for a few days now. To add some perspective, the "super flu" was created via the technique known as Serial Passage [wikipedia.org], developed by Louis Pasteur. Yup, that Louis Pasteur [tvtropes.org]. All you really need is a sufficiently large colony of ferrets, a source stock of H5N1, and some time -- there is not going to be any secret Atomic-Bomb recipe in the paper, the virus does the hard work itself, via evolution.
Oh, and by the way... At one of the labs I used to work at, my fellow researchers once were chatting about what the various stereotypes for their colleagues were. I learned that the virologist stereotype among the other researchers was "a little bit crazy". Nightnight.
DRACO to the rescue (Score:3)
Triggering apoptosis in infected cells ftw [mit.edu]
What if it CAN't be fixed? (Score:3)
The concept of publicizing security flaws makes some semblance of sense in the security world, but when it comes to viruses that could wipe out 50% of the world's population...because patches can be easily made and distributed rapidly over the internet.
When it comes to vaccines, that is NOT the case. It could take years, decades, or possibly never to create a vaccine..or the only vaccines might be too expensive or difficult to distribute on the scale that is necessary.
With a population of over 7 billion, not ALL rational people, not ALL happy people, I'm sure there are some individuals out there sick enough to want to destroy the human race. By reducing that barrier to entry to...perhaps...little more than the $20 it costs to purchase an online journal...it becomes an immediate death sentence for billions of people.
So shut the f* up about your ultra forward thinking concept of sharing info on how to kill us all, you sadist.
This is crap... (Score:5, Insightful)
The flu in question is highly responsive to modern flu anti-virals as well as "MODERN MEDICAL TREATMENTS". What made this flu so devastating in the first place was its ability to cause a life threatening immune responses in young healthy adults, ultimately damaging the lungs so badly that victims drowned in their own body fluids. That's why this particular flu devastated healthy 20-somethings when it first spread as a global pandemic.
An outbreak today could easily be mitigated and seeing as the people most at risk would have viable medical treatments to prevent both spread and lethal complications this flu would be unable to produce the catastrophic effects it created in its first run through the human population.
The real threat would be an outbreak in a place like Africa, where a large infected population could become a huge bio-reactor evolving the virus into a real monster that was both lethal and untreatable. So our best bet for world pandemics in general are to place special focus on developing nations and make certain they have the resources needed to stop outbreaks of both old and new diseases.
Counterpoint (Score:5, Insightful)
"Whatever doesn't kill us, makes us stronger..."
Whatever kills us, makes us dead.
Re:Whatever doesn't kill us, makes us stronger... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless it cripples us. People always forget about the cripples.
Re:Whatever doesn't kill us, makes us stronger... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless it cripples us. People always forget about the cripples.
That's because we more or less wiped out Polio with a program of mass vaccinations.
Back then, if the anti-vaxxers were around in full force like they are now,
we'd probably still have significant numbers of crippled adults and children to this day.
Re: (Score:3)
"Whatever doesn't kill you, only delays the inevitable..."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Whatever doesn't kill us, makes us stronger..."
Nonsense. There are things that won't kill you but will leave you weak like an infant, so that you suffer miserably until something else comes along and kills you.
Friedrich Nietzsche was a moron.
Re:Whatever doesn't kill us, makes us stronger... (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a question of how you define "strong". A more accurate saying would be, "What kills people but spares those with certain characteristics, increases the ratio of people with those characteristics in the general population." H5N1 kills the young and healthy, and spares the weak and elderly, just like the Spanish Flu:
"Another unusual feature of this pandemic was that it mostly killed young adults, with 99% of pandemic influenza deaths occurring in people under 65, and more than half in young adults 20 to 40 years old. wiki [wikipedia.org]).
Increased mortality in young and healthy people is attributed to a stronger cytokine response from the immune system wiki [wikipedia.org]:
"It is believed that cytokine storms were responsible for many of the deaths during the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed a disproportionate number of young adults.[1] In this case, a healthy immune system may have been a liability rather than an asset. Preliminary research results from Hong Kong also indicated this as the probable reason for many deaths during the SARS epidemic in 2003.[8] Human deaths from the bird flu H5N1 usually involve cytokine storms as well."
Re:scientists and the End (Score:4, Funny)
Who says the world hates scientists? That's news to me.
Re:scientists and the End (Score:4, Funny)
Re:scientists and the End (Score:4, Insightful)
The NIH has caused this... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, that would be the NIH ( http://www.nih.gov/ [nih.gov] ), who requested that this research be done, funded it, etc.;
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/11/scientists-brace-for-media-storm.html [sciencemag.org]
And really, I'd rather they do research it and find some manner of defense against it than that some actual 'asshats' figure it out and use it as a weapon first, or nature finds its own way to such a 'killer virus', without a defense in place.
The only particularly troubling time is when these findings are made public, because among the "ZOMG WE'RE DOOMED" people like you there's always the chance that there's one complete nutcase who goes to such a research facility to try and disrupt the work - and inadvertently releases things into the wild with far worse consequences.
That's not to say it shouldn't be made public - just that the designation of risk is often misplaced.
Besides, the world doesn't hate scientists - if they did, the world should be largely Amish (actually, they don't even hate scientists, but their lifestyle would come close to one in which a society does hate scientists).
Re:The NIH has caused this... (Score:5, Interesting)
there's serious doubt, even among his colleagues that pointed the FBI in his direction, that he did it. Was it him? Was he a patsy? Was he even involved or did he just have a guilty look and happen to be in the right place at the wrong time.
Really interesting read, and plenty of the facts can be found from other sources, I'm just too lazy tonite to find more links. mmm beer good. Read it, whether you still think he's guilty or not, you may learn some interesting stuff.
Re: (Score:3)
We're not getting off this planet. We'll kill each other first.
Now you have to ask yourself - is this a feature? Or a bug?
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Captain Trips (Score:5, Funny)
Re:summary wrong (Score:5, Informative)
The Canadian Press, which brings us the Winnipeg Free Press article, fails to provide anything real to back up its statements. I can't really follow it any more than looking up the organizations provided and looking for related news postings (of which I found none.) Subsequent searching leads me to a Gizmodo [gizmodo.com] article (links provided for those who wish to follow my searches.) Of it, there are two meaningful citations (that is, not links to the about pages of the source in question.) Science Insider [sciencemag.org] and a pdf [eswiconference.org] announcement detailing the schedule of the September influenza conference in Malta, in which this announcement is quoted as having been made.
The first thing I noticed within the pdf (aside from the garish design) is the absence of any announcement on GM influenza, (or Ron Fouchier, or his organization.) Admittedly, this hardly means this didn't occur; merely that this (what is essentially a flier) is not a meaningful source of information.
As for the Science Insider, it provides few additional details, mostly regarding vaguely related discussions on the classification/pre-approval of these sorts of studies. The closest thing it provides to something interesting is a (Dutch language) greenlight [cogem.net] for what is supposed to be Ron's project.
Indeed, the Dutch link does concern GM influenza, and is an answer to a question on procedure for studying this sort of thing (of which they already apparently had a license to do.) It does not corroborate any of the stand out details of this article (how could it, considering it's from 2007.) Of minor note, there is no mention of ferrets; only standard embryonated [sic. Google Translation] chicken eggs.
Color me skeptical, to say the least.