Microbe extinction

[TomFoolery]

And you know the classified stuff?

I don't know the classified stuff, but the guy that wrote The Hot Zone also wrote a nonfiction book called Demon in the Freezer about smallpox. It's scary stuff. For example, scientists bioengineered a mousepox virus using pieces of mouse DNA that make a mouse's immune system incapable of responding to the virus. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3341563/ns/health-bioterror_news/t/bio-engineered-superbug-stirs-debate/#.VjgCPtappFI

It's extremely lethal, and the failure of the immune system to respond also renders a vaccine impossible. Now imagine that with smallpox, which naturally has a mortality rate of around 30%.

[Baruch]

Tomfoolery ... just the kind of public info and rational speculation I am talking about.  Now I am not saying that the Rothschild family has a plan to selectively exterminate all Gentiles ... but we will soon have the technology to do just that ... or selectively kill all Jews etc.  Just kill off their immune systems (oh ... like Aids?) and let ordinary germs to the dirty work.  Or develop a targeted or indiscriminate super-germ.  Whoever has this ... if only one nation had it ... can demand the surrender of the whole planet ... even if they don't have a Mini-Me.

[TomFoolery]

Now I am not saying that the Rothschild family has a plan to selectively exterminate all Gentiles ... but we will soon have the technology to do just that ... or selectively kill all Jews etc. 

Um, no, we won't soon have a plan to bioengineer viruses that can tell a Jew from a Gentile.

[Mermaid]

I don't know the classified stuff, but the guy that wrote The Hot Zone also wrote a nonfiction book called Demon in the Freezer about smallpox. It's scary stuff. For example, scientists bioengineered a mousepox virus using pieces of mouse DNA that make a mouse's immune system incapable of responding to the virus. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3341563/ns/health-bioterror_news/t/bio-engineered-superbug-stirs-debate/#.VjgCPtappFI

It's extremely lethal, and the failure of the immune system to respond also renders a vaccine impossible. Now imagine that with smallpox, which naturally has a mortality rate of around 30%.

I read that, Michael Crichton was a physician.

I am actually worried that with melting of arctic land, that bodies of people who died of smallpox will surface and become infectious again.

[Mermaid]

Tomfoolery ... just the kind of public info and rational speculation I am talking about.  Now I am not saying that the Rothschild family has a plan to selectively exterminate all Gentiles ... but we will soon have the technology to do just that ... or selectively kill all Jews etc.  Just kill off their immune systems (oh ... like Aids?) and let ordinary germs to the dirty work.  Or develop a targeted or indiscriminate super-germ.  Whoever has this ... if only one nation had it ... can demand the surrender of the whole planet ... even if they don't have a Mini-Me.

This conspiracy theorist stuff annoys me. I put it in the same category as those who can't explain natural phenomena, so they credit God with creating it.
Are you actually suggesting that AIDS was engineered?

[TomFoolery]

Are you actually suggesting that AIDS was engineered?

Of course it was: by apes. It was the original storyline to Planet of the Apes, but they didn't want anyone spilling the beans before they could wipe out all the gays. Naturally.

[PopeyesPappy]

Are you actually suggesting that AIDS was engineered?

Well Duh... Gawd did it to kill off the fags.

[Mermaid]

Of course it was: by apes. It was the original storyline to Planet of the Apes, but they didn't want anyone spilling the beans before they could wipe out all the gays. Naturally.

Blasphemy. This was the best movie ever. (well, maybe second best). The story line was so perfect it makes me weepy thinking about it.

[Hakurei Reimu]

I don't know the classified stuff, but the guy that wrote The Hot Zone also wrote a nonfiction book called Demon in the Freezer about smallpox. It's scary stuff. For example, scientists bioengineered a mousepox virus using pieces of mouse DNA that make a mouse's immune system incapable of responding to the virus. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3341563/ns/health-bioterror_news/t/bio-engineered-superbug-stirs-debate/#.VjgCPtappFI

It's extremely lethal, and the failure of the immune system to respond also renders a vaccine impossible. Now imagine that with smallpox, which naturally has a mortality rate of around 30%.

And more importantly, no one being able to stop it if it got out. Not even your own borders, or nationality, or releigion. Such a thing is not a "weapon." It's a doomsday device, pure and simple.

[peacewithoutgod]

Not many people seem to think it's ok for us to wipe out rhinos or tigers but why? They play a role in ecosystems sure, but so do things like tapeworms and tuberculosis. Tapeworms and tuberculosis may kill people, but so have rhinos and tigers.

It's an ethical question I struggle with because I ardently support modern medicine and vaccines and I'm not the sort of asshole that would tell a mother whose child was wasting away from Naegleria fowleri that "all life is precious, even the lives of brain eating amoebas..." I don't think all life is equally precious but that comes from a very human viewpoint. The best I can say is that all life is relevant in its own way.

I'm very glad you're not one of those assholes, in a world where there unfortunately is no shortage of those who are. On that I am quite serious, because there are laws that subject victims of accidents with uncurbed animals to danger by requiring them to seek out the dead animal's owner, who is as likely to be unstable and armed as he is negligent. One asinine rule of many created by those who think we actually owe something to the animals, and it should be other people (not themselves) who should pay it.

It makes perfect sense to weigh the value of different life forms from a human perspective because we are human, the next several generations are likely to be closer to being the same than to our closest ape relative or even the most recent intermediary human (Neanderthalensis?). So what that it's selfish, as if any other species would behave differently? There is some reasonable degree of responsibility which goes with the power which we wield over our planet, but we are no more our cousins' keeper than the dolphins are ours, and if we decide and agree by overwhelming consensus that this earth is better off without viruses, certain bacteria, insects, or even some four-legged creatures such as rats, and it can be done so, then let it be done - the word "right" should not even come into play.

[Baruch]

Um, no, we won't soon have a plan to bioengineer viruses that can tell a Jew from a Gentile.

Doesn't have to be accurate ... terror weapons are indiscriminate ... but false claims ... marketing!  Actually Cohens are genetically unique.  But one can choose any of many actual genetic markers.  That would be a good way to mask a partial attack.

[Baruch]

This conspiracy theorist stuff annoys me. I put it in the same category as those who can't explain natural phenomena, so they credit God with creating it.
Are you actually suggesting that AIDS was engineered?

Could have been.  Most of Africa thinks so.  Back then it might have been a challenge, but trivial now what we can put bacterial DNA in goats.  AIDS aka is a virus ... this is more challenging, but not impossible.

I feel sorry for optimists ... who believe that a Hitler or Stalin can't happen again ... or who even believe that neither Hitler nor Stalin happened, it was just propaganda to control allied populations.  Any real dick-tator would get a woody over this stuff.

[Hakurei Reimu]

Any scientist able to engineer a virus like that would also be able to appreciate that viruses don't play favorites. Even if you were to somehow engineer a virus that did, it would quickly evolve in the wild into something that didn't.

[TomFoolery]

Any scientist able to engineer a virus like that would also be able to appreciate that viruses don't play favorites.

Maybe the classic notion of a scientist as an old guy with a bunch of PhDs, whatever grant money he wants and his own lab at the CDC maybe. But would it surprise you to know that that's not even expert-level stuff? All it would take is a few thousand dollars to buy the right microscopes, bioreactors and other basic lab equipment and working knowledge of viral genetics and lab techniques that a reasonably intelligent person could learn from the Internet.

Even if you were to somehow engineer a virus that did, it would quickly evolve in the wild into something that didn't.

Not all viruses mutate quickly, and some mutations actually render the virus harmless to humans. Ebola Reston virus is a mutated form that is airborne in monkeys but unable to infect humans.

[Unbeliever]

We eradicated smallpox in the 1970s and to this day it exists in only two known repositories in the world. The global health community has been working on polio for some time and has made some inroads but still has some ways to go.

But the question is, do we have a right to deliberately cause the extinction of these viruses in the interest of humanity? What about non-viral means of infection, such as bacteria, fungi, protozoa or parasites?

Oh, yeah - might (in this case) makes right. Nature doesn't care about any supposed "rights" we may or may not wish to bestow upon ourselves. If we can make extinct such microbes as those of smallpox or rabies or polio, then our ability to do it gives us the "right" to do it. So-called "rights" exist only in our own (human) heads, not in nature.