Avian Flu Researcher Backs Down On Plan To Defy Publishing Ban 54
ananyo writes "Ron Fouchier, a researcher at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, whose work on the H5N1 avian flu virus has been embroiled in controversy, has now agreed to apply for an export permit to submit his work to the journal Science. Fouchier's paper is one of two reporting the creation of forms of the H5N1 virus capable of spreading between mammals. The other, by Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of Tokyo, and his colleagues, has already been submitted to Nature. Fouchier had said last week that he intended to defy the government and submit the work to Science without seeking the export permit that the Dutch government says is required."
In related news, renek noted that the U.S. NIH director supports publishing the papers in full.
Fun! (Score:1, Offtopic)
One of the solutions to the Fermi Paradox is there is some feature of physics that is trivially easy for a disgruntled sentient to misuse and kill everybody.
way to cave (Score:1, Insightful)
Pansy.
Re:way to cave (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, it's not like variations of the flu have killed [nap.edu] more people than all of our wars combined. It's not like we have a lack of organizations that believe [bbc.co.uk] in terror or widespread murders. Heck, we don't even have any environmental radicals that just might look at a world wide population reduction [utexas.edu] as the best possible [seashepherd.org] thing that could happen to the environment. Nope, no reason at all to be concerned about this....
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That isn't what I said or implied, your argument is completely off base. I talked about a very specific danger, one that has a track record of killing more people than anything short of communism. This also happens to have a fairly low barrier of entry compared to conventional weapons of mass destruction. Biological warfare in WWII killed far more people than the atomic bombs ever did.
I'm not aware of anything in Chemistry that would allow something to propagate on it's own and kill people by the millions.
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I have advocated for years in support of scientific research and my comments consistently show that position. Are you aware of what the research paper contains? If this was a stock issue research report there never would have been controversy to begin with. Research into dangerous things has been done for decades and it is necessary. The controversy in this case was whether or not it was appropriate to publish to the public at large. The issue was serious enough the government accepted that this needed a hi
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You bet me to it
Okay, I'll give you 8 to 3 against!
Opportunity, not threat (Score:1)
1. pandemia
2. ???
3. profit!
Director of NIH? (Score:3)
There's a guy who's in charge of a department devoted to grumbling that things were "not invented here"?
I wonder where that dumb idea came from.
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How to defend ourselves against technology? (Score:3)
With each new advance come new powers; with new powers, the ability to commit evils.
When humankind invented the axe, murder got a lot easier.
With the computer, hacking.
With home DNA synthesis, biological warfare.
When we get nuclear reactors for the home, all sorts of bad stuff can be done.
Do we retreat from technology just because there are going to be evils?
Or accept that we're going to take some casualties and move forward?
Devil's advocacy department (Score:3)
If I find a way to immunize the population against cancer, but the only delivery system is through a modified bird flu virus, it's very helpful to have this information out in public.
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it's very helpful to have this information out in public.
Is it? The information will already be available to legitimate professional researchers. How many hobbyist scientists do research on deadly epidemic diseases? I have mixed feelings about this, but it seems reasonable to make some effort to keep this information away from the enemies of civilization (and yes, they exist).
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...NOW how am I supposed to create a ultra-virulent virus capable of making humanity extinct!?!?!!?!
Probably avoid using ferrets as your test organism. This is really a media provoked slow-news-day frenzy. The review committee decided it wasn't all that scary (the transmission rate was pretty bad). Trivial analysis of the papers indicated that the method was pretty obvious (serial transmission of the virus to select for better air droplet transmission).
Further research could be left to any one of millions of people with the ability to do this kind of research.
Best of luck in your attempts to rule the w
Triple negative (Score:4, Funny)
You can't handle the truth! (Score:4)
Well and truly fucked, the lot of us.
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Some truths were born [wikipedia.org] unspeakable. [wikipedia.org] And have been for decades.
I hope you're not surprised by this.
Well, that's that. (Score:2)
Science is now dead.
All science and engineering have "dual uses" - good and evil. Basic science more than anything, because it's done without any practical goals in mind - that's figured out later and we call it the applied sciences.
When a government says you can't publish because "someone might use it for bad things" that means you can't publish anything at all. It doesn't matter. A design for a new kind of architectural brick cannot be published because someone might make one and bash someone's head in
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Evil use of aerogel: Someone could probably be asphyxiated with it. Wow, that was hard.
>cheap aerogel
If only. It would revolutionize the home insulation industry.
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BMO
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Except it has been tested and verified countless times independently. Here's a clip from an old Tomorrow's World (a reputable science prog from the BBC):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4nnLP--uTI [youtube.com]
Here's more info:
http://www.reddit.com/r/science/c [reddit.com]
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I came to the conclusion in the 80's that it's either a Hoax, or they has decided no one gets any no matter what. Since his reasons for not selling it or licensing it changes, I strongly suspect hoax.
Patent it, sell the patent. Even if a company sits on it, 20 years latter everyone will be able to get it.
So instead we have had decades with out it?
Hell, go on 'Shark' and get an investor. There are tones of investors that he could get for less then 51% and then manufacture it himself.
It makes no sense at all.
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When a government says you can't publish because "someone might use it for bad things" that means you can't publish anything at all. It doesn't matter. A design for a new kind of architectural brick cannot be published because someone might make one and bash someone's head in.
This is different. You're talking about not just harming one or two people, you're talking about working with a virus that could possibly kill 1/10th of the world's population. From an excessive point of view: If someone developed a way to make a nuclear bomb out of superglue and rubber bands, you think they should publish that, too? The results: -No more superglue and rubber bands. and/or -A whole lot of nuclear weapons. Those are the two options.
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>From an excessive point of view: If someone developed a way to make a nuclear bomb out of superglue and rubber bands, you think they should publish that, too?
Your argument is based upon the assumption that weaponizing a virus is as simple and easy as manufacturing a nuclear bomb from superglue and rubber bands.
Even if you have the equipment, you need the education and training to figure out how to do bioweapons research and take this paper and somehow translate it into something practical. Your assumpt
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>The point is that if it can be weaponized, we at least have to think twice about it before throwing the information out there.
But here's the thing.
The only people *capable* of weaponizing this are in the industry and academia. And these are the people who are going to get access *anyway.*
How does Joe "I set my undies alight and it hurt" Terrorist even comprehend the fucking abstract?
Your argument stems from the entire assumption that this is cheap and easy. It's not. It likely never will be, because
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But what you *are* saying *is* scaremongering.
Momnature will come up with this on her own, eventually.
Researching how this happens will tell us how to create vaccines or drugs in the future that can treat this.
So Joe "I lit my pants on fire and didn't like it" Terrorist decides to invent a "Kill Everyone" virus. The funny thing about actual universities where you learn how to do genetic engineering is that when you're actually done learning all that shit and are capable of doing so, you can get *paid* hand
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Following up to myself, I said this:
>Researching how this happens will tell us how to create vaccines or drugs in the future that can treat this.
Burying this information because "the bad guys might do something" will only *guarantee* that when Momnature actually devises a "kill everyone virus" we will *not* have anything in the toolkit to battle it. So everybody dies.
That's what's so galling.
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BMO
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You sound... ... unemployed.
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BMO
Crimes pays, so does inventing viruses. (Score:1)
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Less overpopulation.
Too much sophistry (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm all for freedom of information. But in this instance, what reason do we have to release it to people that aren't working at research labs? Why would the hobbyist need access to this? I agree, we need to release this to researchers so we can develop a vaccine. But can a person who's not working at a serious research facility develop a vaccine before the eco-terrorist with basic biology skills develop a weaponized form of the virus? I'm not an SME on the field, but I'd bet that the answer is no.
And for a
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I'm all for freedom of information. But...
That says everything about you right there.
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You approach some fuzzy line when you start to tag the research labs as legigimate or ilegitimate, and crossing it will have very bad consequences. Let's all hope the involved government(s) have enough self control to not kill the development of medicine within their borders, or even worse, steer it in a bad way.
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There was an article in Science magazine about why the same U.S. government agency that wanted to withhold the data talked it over and decided that it wouldn't work.
For one thing, it was impossible to make up a list of "legitimate" research facilities and "non-legitimate" research facilities.
On the other side, the "select agents" regulations already threw the field of infectious diseases into an uproar. Foreign graduate students couldn't work on them. One accomplished infectious disease scientist went to ja
Avian Flu Researcher Backs Down On Plan To Defy Pu (Score:2)
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Now it can sit in the back ground until a research who is a bad actor decides to whip some up.
Better to release the info, and make it a priority on vaccine research.
You can't control it from the people who would use it because they have researchers as well.
And if we study it now, if Mother nature tosses it at us, or something similar, we will be prepared.
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It's not black and white like that. It's not "everyone knows or no one can look". It's controlling who looks. Yes that is not democratic and will not lead to the optimum results if your ONLY goal is to study it for defensive purposes- against Mother Nature or terrorists .
But that can't be your only goal. Your goal has to be to minimize the likelihood that terrorists will use it in the first place, or learn from it and do something just as vile against which we have no immediate defense.
So we have an opt