A Federal Ban On Making Lethal Viruses Is Lifted (nytimes.com) 156
schwit1 shares a report from The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): Federal officials on Tuesday ended a moratorium imposed three years ago on funding research that alters germs to make them more lethal. Such work can now proceed, said Dr. Francis S. Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, but only if a scientific panel decides that the benefits justify the risks. Some scientists are eager to pursue these studies because they may show, for example, how a bird flu could mutate to more easily infect humans, or could yield clues to making a better vaccine.
Critics say these researchers risk creating a monster germ that could escape the lab and seed a pandemic. Now, a government panel will require that researchers show that their studies in this area are scientifically sound and that they will be done in a high-security lab. The pathogen to be modified must pose a serious health threat, and the work must produce knowledge -- such as a vaccine -- that would benefit humans. Finally, there must be no safer way to do the research. "We see this as a rigorous policy," Dr. Collins said. "We want to be sure we're doing this right." "Now where are those twelve monkeys?" adds schwit1.
Critics say these researchers risk creating a monster germ that could escape the lab and seed a pandemic. Now, a government panel will require that researchers show that their studies in this area are scientifically sound and that they will be done in a high-security lab. The pathogen to be modified must pose a serious health threat, and the work must produce knowledge -- such as a vaccine -- that would benefit humans. Finally, there must be no safer way to do the research. "We see this as a rigorous policy," Dr. Collins said. "We want to be sure we're doing this right." "Now where are those twelve monkeys?" adds schwit1.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong? (Score:5, Funny)
So long as Will Smith survives, we'll be fine.
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Which is, in my opinion, the much better way to end the story. It's far more poignant for the protagonist to learn that he's actually the antagonist in the viewpoints of everyone else. The way they ended the movie was like ending Lovecraft's "The Outsider" with the narrator figuring out how to banish a ghoul that's been following him.
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Which is, in my opinion, the much better way to end the story. It's far more poignant for the protagonist to learn that he's actually the antagonist in the viewpoints of everyone else. The way they ended the movie was like ending Lovecraft's "The Outsider" with the narrator figuring out how to banish a ghoul that's been following him.
You can blame the studio for that. In the original ending that was shot (available as an extra on the dvd), Neville realizes that the Alpha male who has been attacking him was just trying to get to the female he'd been experimenting on for a cure, and that the Darksiders just wanted her back. He ends up returning to the female to the group and apologizes to them, since although they were no longer human, they had retained some of their humanity and their emotions. The Alpha orders the rest to leave, and Nev
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You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Just as with nuclear technology, if we recuse from using CRISPR, all that means is that if and when bad guys use it, we will be unable to defend ourselves with it.
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Wow, someone needs a reality check (Score:3, Insightful)
There is scientific research and then there is outright stupidity
Wouldn't "outright stupidity" be tying scientists hands so they were unable to study things like extremely contagious bird flu well before it ever reaches the U.S. as an epidemic?
You seriously need to read up on the conditions under which this is allowed, and why they are allowing it.
Under your doctrine the U.S. would eventually have an unstoppable epidemic of some kind; under the rule change we may have a chance to stop it.
I think I saw a twe
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I think I saw a tweet once to the effect of "If Trump cured cancer, Trump Haters would back cancer".
And you believed it, because you're an intellectual coward who refuses to face actual arguments and would rather tackle pathetic strawmen.
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Tackle away, dude. That is, unless you were trying to be ironic in your post.
Re:Wow, someone needs a reality check (Score:5, Insightful)
Studying the existing bird flue != creating a more dangerous version.
Yes Actually (Score:2)
Just like
"If Obama wants something to get done he needs to be against it."
It is just like that; only it's even more true with Trump than with Obama. At least with Obama almost no Democrats opposed him, Trump has many Republicans against anything he does as well.
The simple truth is government is too partisan these days and the other "side" too keen to block anything even if they agree with it in private, because they don't get the "points". It would be a lot nicer if we'd really see all of the elected offi
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Why does the left spend traffic so heavily in sexualized imagery? It even gets to seem like homophobic imagery if you think about it much.
Unfortunately for you, I thought about it for four (Score:1)
I forgot to add, I know this because I both read the summary and thought about it for two minutes,
A shame you didn't spend two minutes longer, or you'd have bypassed your simplistic vision and realized being able to cure something is vastly better than being able to "deal" with it, i.e. manufacturing ten million body bags with a really good seal on them.
Instead of the New Deal, what you are giving everyone is a Raw Deal.
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I would agree although I'd have said it in a much less diplomatic and understated way.
Re: Are we luddites? Why do we ban scientific rese (Score:1)
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LOL editor... if they were an actual editor, the summary wouldn't duplicate sentences in the summary. I'm just waiting for a dupe post of the article so we can have a dupe of the dupe.
From the summary (as posted when I posted this, in case the monkeys try to ninja-fix it):
Some scientists are eager to pursue these studies because they may show, for example, how a bird flu could mutate to more easily infect humans, or could yield clues to making a better vaccine. Such work can now proceed, said Dr. Francis S. Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, but only if a scientific panel decides that the benefits justify the risks. Some scientists are eager to pursue these studies because they may show, for example, how a bird flu could mutate to more easily infect humans, or could yield clues to making a better vaccine.
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Repetition works, David. Repetition works, David.
Re: Are we luddites? Why do we ban scientific rese (Score:1)
Ethics are important to science, and now smore than ever since science now is abused for politics.
Remember Bayer and Krupp?
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This is closer to Haber and Bosch.
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Weaponization of chlorine gas [wikipedia.org].
And the rest of his great inventions during those years, and after.
Bosch is one a bit more sympathetic character, he did found and head IG Farben, but at least got up and quit when he saw what the Nazis are going to do with his inventions when he noticed that he can't stop them, at least he didn't want to be part of it.
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Why do I think that you'd fight tooth and nail against stem cell research, I wonder...
Stephen King (Score:5, Interesting)
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Just watched that again over the summer. Scary beginning, 99% pointless middle, ends with the evil city destroyed by bad guy Trashcan Man. He's the only character in 8 hours that actually did something to stop Flagg. Still, that first act should be something to pay attention to.
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That's "Blue Öyster Cult". Doesn't your keyboard have a Ö key?
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Shush, I'm trying to get iPhone users to try to post accented characters so we can laugh at them when it comes out all fubar.
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and paste
...and never read it out loud or you would hear the mistake in your own voice...
Oh well, it's still a fine summary.
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Slashdot is just upping its efficiency by duping within one summary, instead of two.
In other news (Score:5, Funny)
Such work can now proceed, said Dr. Francis S. Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, but only if a scientific panel decides that the benefits justify the risks. Some scientists are eager to pursue these studies because they may show, for example, how a bird flu could mutate to more easily infect humans, or could yield clues to making a better vaccine.
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Without government funding, life itself is impossible.
blockbusters (Score:2)
Sounds like code for pharmas need new blockbuster drugs...
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Sounds like an improvement on those LUDDITES AND FOOLS at the University Ethics Board telling me I can't do simple experiment to make velociraptors. They kicked me out of my laboratory and now I have to do my experiments in primitive conditions down in the sewer.
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To cure that new disease that is suddenly spreading like wildfire?
You're a marketing GENIUS!
Although... cure? Maybe just "control". Ensures a more constant income than a one-time cure.
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MAGA = Make America Genocidal Again?
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MAGA = Make America Genocidal Again?
Again? When was America NOT Genocidal? I seem to have missed that day.
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When was America not great? Same principle applies. :-)
Charles Montgomery Burns biological warfare lab (Score:2)
Charles Montgomery Burns biological warfare lab is going to reopen with nuclear power
You Want Zombies? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because This is How You Get ZOMBIES!
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Actually it's how you get killer mutant bird flu. Which is worse. You can't stop flu by shooting it in the head.
location location location (Score:1, Insightful)
Who else thinks this lab should be located somewhere isolated like Antartica, Assencion Island or middle of a very desolate desert ?
Someplace where the risk of "12 monkeys" exposure disasters are minimized.
I really don't like the lab located in an area with an active civilian population and scientists that go home every night.
We get enough exposure to the new flu strains from having school age children in the family, without a better engineered killer version possible.
Germ & chemical warfare is morally
Re:location location location (Score:5, Interesting)
location location location, oops! (Score:2)
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Right, the thing to do is to route bioweapons researchers through airports every couple of weeks when they rotate home..
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Or.. you tell them they have a 1 year tour. At the end of the year they spend a month in an isolation ward.
Unless you're willing to "violate someone's civil rights" by jailing them, you'll probably get some assholes like Kaci Hickox who will refuse to abide by any reasonable quarantine order.
oh crap (Score:1)
> ... only if a scientific panel decides that the benefits justify the risks.
Why does that not make me feel even slightly safe?
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Why does that not make me feel even slightly safe?
Because you were brought up by an ignorant and largely anti science society and media and were taught this from a young age. It's not your fault.
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Why does that not make me feel even slightly safe?
Because you were brought up by an ignorant and largely anti science society and media and were taught this from a young age. It's not your fault.
It is his fault, wilful ignorance is always your own damn fault.
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Just because they're scientists doesn't make them any less corruptible or fallible.
Gotta catch 'em all... (Score:5, Insightful)
The rest of the world didn't care about the ban, and neither would domestic terrorists, so it's not really like we're any less safe than before. This should, in theory, allow us to find the "low-hanging fruit" as far as lethal modifications is concerned. Since that's very likely where malicious actors would look, we should be looking too. Only then can we plan a defense against them.
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Enough of the world has the capability that we need to be on top of it. Let's posit, just for the sake of argument, that only China and Russia have this ability -- that's still several times the population of the U.S. that can be tapped for researchers. That's not "most of the rest of the world", but it is over a billion people and thus my argument still holds.
The USSR, and now Russia, has had a biological weapons program [wikipedia.org] for almost a century. Like their nuclear power, they have massively fucked up and atte [wikipedia.org]
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Don't care? I don't know about that. If they don't care it's probably ignorance.
If you travel around the world, and you read the local newspapers (presuming you can read the language), what you discover is that the world relies on us for a lot of their science and social science research. Articles discussing air pollution will cite EPA studies of the United States because they simply don't have any data at all for their own country.
Now for some years I worked with public health agencies as a vendor, incl
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Not on this particular point. The Soviets had the most aggressive, most successful, and most disastrous biological weapons program on the planet (yes, all three at the same time). This continued in post-soviet Russia, and while publicly available information is over a decade old, it damn well looks like they still haven't stopped.
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Insurance does not work like that. Insurance moves money around, it does not magically take the damage away. If a trillion dollars worth of damage is done, the world production will be severely affected, and many innocent people will still be hurt.
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Insurance does not work like that. Insurance moves money around, it does not magically take the damage away.
Yes.... that's why they should be required to pay what premium insurance will require to cover $1 Trillion in liability.
To make sure at least SOME of the risk is leveled directly on the head of the people and organization that will be doing the research.
And not every random weenie who thinks they might have a good reason to put the public at risk gets to do that without also
making a significan
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Parent is not arguing for insurance protection, but that the premium on a trillion-dollar policy would be too much for any researcher to afford, and that therefore the research does not get done. What would actually happen if we passed such a law is that no legal research of this type would get done.
Will these viruses be available on NCBI? (Score:5, Informative)
Speaking purely as a biotechnologist with no interest in creating world ending viruses (virii?).
Will the genetic sequences of these viruses be available on the genome databases hosted by the NIH, the NCBI? (National Center for Biological Information).
For those of you who don't know, the U.S. Govt. hosts basically all known genomic data for many many species on the NCBI in the form of complete DNA sequences. If you downloaded the sequences for some of these viruses, you could, with the help of a DNA synthesizer (about $10K-$40K), make some of them. Once injected into a suitable host, they would self-assemble into virulent particles capable of transmittal.
From what I understand, some of the newer DNA synthesizers "phone home" to tell the appropriate government agencies what you're up to. Also, perhaps there is some mechanism at the NCBI to prevent/monitor you when you attempt to download these sequences.
Of course, the problem with biological weapons is that they are notoriously hard to control, in fact the first victim(s) may very well be their creator. However for those with apocalyptic visions of paradise after death (70 virgins), that may not be a deterrent.
hirees (Score:2)
Sounds like a lot of jobs for summer hires and interns
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Speaking purely as a biotechnologist with no interest in creating world ending viruses (virii?).
Viruses is the correct plural in English, you got that right.
Conjugating a word to ii is only for pluralising certain Latin words ending in "ius" and has largely been replaced by standard English conjugation, I.E. the plural of genius is still geniuses.
Way to go!!!! (Score:3)
We found something else we can blame Trump for now!! Woooohooooo!!
germs != viruses (Score:2)
Schwit1; the article linked doesn't mention germs, so why did you?
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The common definition of germ is that it's a superset of viruses. IE, bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa are all separate from each other, but they are all "germs." That doesn't mean of course that bacteria == virus, but it's not limiting the term "germ" to bacteria either.
Does ANYONE read the summaries? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't be the only one that noticed this "typo":
Such work can now proceed, said Dr. Francis S. Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, but only if a scientific panel decides that the benefits justify the risks. Some scientists are eager to pursue these studies because they may show, for example, how a bird flu could mutate to more easily infect humans, or could yield clues to making a better vaccine. Such work can now proceed, said Dr. Francis S. Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, but only if a scientific panel decides that the benefits justify the risks. Some scientists are eager to pursue these studies because they may show, for example, how a bird flu could mutate to more easily infect humans, or could yield clues to making a better vaccine.
Yes, the summary repeated two sentences - how did the editors not catch this before publication? Furthermore, remember how all the smart kids - under the previous administration - "restored science in it's rightful place"? It was those kids, three years ago, that chose to ban scientific research, no matter the benefit! Now the current administration actually lifts the ban and restores scientific research that has a demonstrable benefit, and because their candidate didn't with the last election they have taken a 180 and now oppose scientific research.
I wonder if they changes their position on Stem Cell Research as well?
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Just because the Nazi's discovered some things of benefit to man kind does not mean doing experiments on live humans was a good plan.
I just finished a book on Unit 731 [wikipedia.org] which was the Japanese unit doing experiments (lots of vivisection of prisoners without anasthesia, among other things) using humans during the 1930s-1945,
It's time to throw away the meme of 'the Germans doing experiments on live humans' as the default. Because almost nobody in Unit 731 ever was punshed for any of the activities they performed. The US Military swooped in immediately after the defeat of the Japanese to contain these folks and get their data and findings.
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Andromeda (Score:2)
2 words: Suh weet (Score:1)
TRUMP APPROVES SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH (Score:1)
Oh wait that doesn't fit our narrative.
Some government group in the executive office that Obama banned from doing scientific research is now doing it again.
"High Security Lab" is hope, not a reality (Score:3)
So far every "High Security" lab that worked for some time had germs escape and infect people and that includes nasties like Marburg. These labs cannot be made as secure as they would need to be for this research. Lets just hope the fools at work on this do not create a bug that kills but has a long incubation time. However, them being fools, my hopes are slim.
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Look up "hubris" some time. And then try to argue that it does not apply to you. Good luck.
I'm not saying it's bad, but it looks bad. (Score:2, Interesting)
First you pass a tax law to initiate a massive and hilariously unsustainable wealth transfer to the 1%, then you approve research into potential pandemic-causing bioweapons...it looks bad when you do these things together, see where I'm coming from?
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Pretty sure that "looking bad" is now the standard that has to be met when americans formulate new policy. It is perhaps the only standard left. Gotta distract people from russia some how. Spam the world and the actual issues get lost in all the noise as people just tune out at a certain point. That's your executive in a nutshell - distract, distract, distract.
Its an amazingly effective trick that magicians have known for centuries.
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It's really my opinion on it, but my sources are everywhere outside of the American right-wing reality distortion field, including the US Congressional Budget Office.
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It is called 'wealth transfer' when people and organizations are allowed to keep their money rather than it being taxed away.
It's a weird mindset that mostly Liberals and 'Progressives' engage with.
Obligatory Simpsons Reference (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
How to hide $1T of military spending (Score:1)
Put Chemical Weapon research into "insecticide" at Agriculture
Put VA costs offline entirely
Make Dept of Energy into Dept. of Nuclear Weapons maintenance.
Put weapons guidance into NASA
See? How the War Machine is really paid for
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Whatever this is must be bad because OMG TRUMP won't let anybody do any science anymore. That's a settled fact because Slashdot comments said so (oh and he's a RUSSIAN SPY TOO!)
So obviously this isn't science, it's uh.. capitalism... and is therefore not science.
Sounds like you're claiming someone has this opinion. Go ahead and give the link. Otherwise... stop playing with dolls, presumably you're a grown-up?
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Or shooting elephants just to cut off their tails as trophies.
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Or shooting elephants just to cut off their tails as trophies.
Elephant.... tails? I think you're doing it wrong!
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Don't tell me, tell this creepy SOB:
http://assets.nydailynews.com/... [nydailynews.com]
In case you're not from the US, the person in that picture holding the dead elephant's severed tail is Donald Trump, Jr.
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It WILL happen again!
Anime Janai!
Nevermind.. move a long..
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No we haven't. That's a ridiculous statement.
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No we haven't. That's a ridiculous statement.
And Fukushima is a conspiracy theory. Just like Three mile island and Chernobyl.
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Are you somehow thinking I just claimed it was perfectly safe? That's not what I said.
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Chernobyl could not explode because it was constructed with heavy lids on top of the reactors, which would be strong enough to contain any explosion if any should ever occur.
Jesus. Stop it, it's embarrassing. You have no fucking clue.
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They just want more people to binge watch The Last Ship.
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Yes. So why whine about the fact the MSM is MOSTLY telling the truth about Idiot Boss?