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US Federal Ban on Making Lethal Viruses Is Lifted

394 points by fern12 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
DigitalJack 9y ago
An informative series from pbs narrated by Jeff goldblum on YouTube: search for "dna episode 1 of 5 the secret of life" It's a great high level overview of dna sequencing from the discovery of its shape through the completion of the human genome project in 2000. I'm having trouble pasting a link, maybe someone could help me out.
- chuckmpierce 9y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7ET4bbkTm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7ET4bbkTm0
- DigitalJack 9y ago
  The downvotes seem weird to me. Maybe it felt off topic? Dr. Francis S. Collins is in several of the videos, and the third video is all about this particular controversy of dangerous experiments at the dawn of genetic engineering(for example one guy wanted to splice a cancer causing gene in e. coli bacterium). It seemed relevant to me. It is what the article is talking about afterall.
  - grzm 9y ago
    Hard to say. Maybe the lack of a link? I agree it otherwise looks it would be relevant.
roryisok 9y ago
Just when I think we can't possibly make any more amazingly stupid decisions on this planet, there we go again
- neo4sure 9y ago
  In this administration stupid is the norm. Haven't you noticed?
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    I'm anti-Trump as can be, but I'd suspect this moratorium was always intended to be temporary while the protocols to protect us from accidents were checked and revised if necessary. There's genuine merit to understanding what makes a virus vary in lethality and how to combat that. There's plenty of things to bash this administration on. I don't think this is one of them.
    - neo4sure 9y ago
      Maybe your right. Keeping up with all the things they throw out on a daily basis is tiresome, and I don't have time to research all of them.
      - basic-gongfu 9y ago
        Sounds more like you're trying to keep up with the bullshit avalanche from the prostitute media; you can't win that game, and your brain will turn to mush in the process. Journalism is dead, deal with it.
      - caseysoftware 9y ago
        You could read the first sentence of the article: "Federal officials on Tuesday ended a moratorium imposed three years ago on funding research that alters germs to make them more lethal." or a little further down: "In October 2014, all federal funding was halted on efforts to make three viruses more dangerous: the flu virus, and those causing Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)."
- strictnein 9y ago
  A smart decision would have been to read the article.
yegle 9y ago
The intention seems legit, despite the concern. Quote from the article: 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.
- grzm 9y ago
  Also, it's regulated and overseen by a review board: > "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." It does sound like there are concerns. I'm glad that people are keeping their eyes on it. I found this quote interesting as well, regarding publishing the results of such research: > “Physicists long ago learned to distinguish between what can be publicly available and what’s classified,” he added, referring to nuclear weapons research. “We want to keep some of this stuff on a need-to-know basis.”
  - pluc 9y ago
    The problem with the US keeping their eyes on it is that you can't trust them. All you need is a few lobbyists and rules and regulations seem to be just words. Hell, Net Neutrality had plenty of people "keeping their eyes on it" too.
    - grzm 9y ago
      You're right that that can be an issue, and one raised in the article. I intended that particular phrase (which admittedly could have been written better) to mean that others outside of the government are watching the process, such as those commenting in the article. Definitely room for improvement, but I don't think this is something that's being done lightly. This whole thing concerns me, but like with many such topics, it's often more complicated than what is summed up in the headline.
    - jknoepfler 9y ago
      I'm not sure why this is being downvoted, other than that it isn't precise. I'm general you can't trust regulators or legislators at the federal level.
smitherfield 9y ago
Now, I don't want to seem anti-science or anything, but this seems like a massive disaster just waiting to happen, in light of the incidents that led to this ban and also, even more to the point, the 2001 anthrax attacks.[1] Couldn't they at least restrict this research to labs far away from major population centers? The analogue with software development, I'd say, is when people periodically point out that nuclear power plant or ICBM control systems still run on 8-inch floppy disks!!1! and therefore allegedly need to be completely rewritten. That rationale likewise fails to meet my tempting fate threshold. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks
- jerf 9y ago
  It is a massive disaster waiting to happen. But the massiveness of that disaster, or its impendingness, has very little to do with some people in Washington DC mouthing words about how you shouldn't do that. This is definitely one of those cases where I feel like a lot of people are demonstrating some very magical thinking about the effectiveness of regulations, with all due respect to those involved. Does Kim Jong Un care that some people in Washington DC say that it's illegal to make lethal viruses? Does China? Russia? Iran? Europe? Anyone else in the world, really? Or a small criminal lab located in the United States? Or a criminal with access to a lab in the United States? It's not like there's literally people standing on top of every single gene sequencer in the world, or the US, stopping people from doing things. The regulations were not all that was standing between us and some deadly virus, because anyone who would make a deadly virus and release it, accidentally or otherwise, still has a very simple path to that goal: "Ignore the regulations the US has." This just gives the good guys a chance to possibly learn some things about that before someone else releases it.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    That's not the point of restricting research, though; the point of it is restricting research done by labs which are not bent on using biological weapons on human victims but allow them to fall into the wrong hands, or carelessly cause an incident with improper handling of the materials.
ogdoad 9y ago
Setting the stage for every biohazard movie ever made.
- ct0 9y ago
  I hope this is only approved in places where the average temperature is below zero and most common form of transportation as snowmobile.
  - 24gttghh 9y ago
    Even those places aren't a guarantee with global warming happening.
- Isamu 9y ago
  That's ok, Project Wildfire will be automatically activated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain
  - LandR 9y ago
    That was a great book right up until the last few pages. It just ended so abruptly!
  - lurr 9y ago
    Wouldn't activating wildfire have been a complete disaster in the book? It's been a long time since I read that. The part about the guy's seizures freaked me out for a while.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      "Wildfire" was the protocol for responding to the detection of the alien organism rather than the failsafe that wasn't.
      - lurr 9y ago
        oh, I thought wildfire was specifically the bombing that would have caused massive growth of the organism.
exelius 9y ago
Do you want the zombie apocalypse? Because this is how you get the zombie apocalypse.
- nutbutter 9y ago
  This also how you get ants.
staunch 9y ago
Trial and error isn't great for this kind of stuff but it works great for AI research. Let's create software that can do genetic engineering of viruses right the first time.
omegaworks 9y ago
This is a great thing to hear from an administration that allies itself with advocates of genocide...
- z0r 9y ago
  ???????
  - omegaworks 9y ago
    This country has a sordid history when it comes to using/testing bio weaponry against those it designates as "non-people." Beginning with blankets coated in syphilis weaponized against the native population to experiments on black airmen at Tuskegee. Trump referred to "very great people on both sides" of the Nazi rally in Charlottesville that led to the brutal murder of anti-hate protester Heather Heyer. He hesitated to denounce the endorsement of David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the KKK. He appointed Jefferson Sessions, rejected from a federal judgeship for his racism, to the top law enforcement position in the nation. Under his watch they dismantled anti-violence police oversight programs and narrowed anti-terrorism efforts to draw attention away from domestic white-supremacist groups. Stephen Bannon, brought into the White House as a senior advisor, helped coalesce support for Trump on the web, forming groups on forums like 4chan and Breitbart rife with eugenicist-apologia and genocide normalization strategies. This is all well documented, here's a great read on it: https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo-smuggled-white-nationalism https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart... It's necessary to be aware of history and sensitive to the parallels in the present day.
quotha 9y ago
WCGW
c3534l 9y ago
I don't trust people's due dilligence enough to be okay with this. Edit: remember when Ebola was never supposed to leave the CDC fascility and a nurse was exposed to it and left the hospital? That's what happens when there's the highest level of scrutinity and security.
chewbacha 9y ago
Sounds like we are multiplying the ways to cause species level extinction rather than reducing them. Kewl.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  As long as we progress, it will always be like that. Technology is, in a fundamental way, a force multiplicator. It gives you power to do more things that you could do with only your biological body and mind. That power can be used for destructive means too, so it follows that as we get more power, we open new, exciting ways to destroy ourselves.
convery 9y ago
Well, shit. That law was the only thing keeping the super-villains from going through with their plans..
Houshalter 9y ago
This was posted a few days ago. It's a talk about the dangers of man made viruses by Intel's chief medical officer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY 2 minutes in he talks about how a strain of flu escaped from a lab in 1977 and killed (and is still killing) millions of people.
swframe2 9y ago
My only concern is North Korea. They have a strong desire to match american machismo. They probably lack the funds to build novel biological weapons their own. They are extremely good at break into computer systems. Companies excel at ignoring their vulnerabilities until it is too late.
- always_good 9y ago
  Pretty weak concern considering Americans will sell it to you. I'd be more worried about the lack of scruples among people. Unfortunately that doesn't create as much of a boogeyman.
chrisper 9y ago
You know how when you watch movies and because you know so much about tech you can tell that most of the stuff done in movies regarding hacking etc is bullshit and not real. Now I have a lack in knowledge of biology at this level, but can someone maybe explain to me how all those disease mass extinction movies cannot be real? I feel like my lack of knowledge here causes my concerns when reading stuff like this article.
- crimsonalucard 9y ago
  Ebola is one such virus. In terms of evolution these viruses tend to burn out by killing the host. Evolutionary pressures push viruses towards symbiotic equilibrium. Thus in the worst case scenario there will be survivors who are immune or the virus or the virus will burn out until the only strain left does not harm humans. The later was the case with ebola.
  - makmanalp 9y ago
    It sure killed a LOT of people in the process though, so I wouldn't say that that's quite so reassuring.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      Counter-intuitively the speedy kill is actually what makes Ebola comparatively safe, if the victims would live longer they would infect far more others though even in death there is plenty of risk in handling the bodies during burial, especially in remote locations.
      - makmanalp 9y ago
        I understand that - I'm just pointing out that while Ebola perhaps isn't putting humans at extinction risk, it's still not good by any measure. We (I) don't want anything remotely like it lying around at anyone's disposal.
    - crimsonalucard 9y ago
Parcissons 9y ago
Another case of big goverment holding back small, hard working buisnesses like the umbrella cooperation.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
lamontcg 9y ago
We already know how this ends: http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/016/030/carllll.jpg http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/016/030/carll...
top_post 9y ago
So to bring a technology angle to this, there isn't anything remotely equivalent around this for Cybersecurity where it has some parallels. Everyone understands how bad a pandemic is - the risk of lives is obviously more important than data - however with the reliance of technology lives can be indirectly affected, such as the case of WannaCry shutting down hospitals and associated healthcare technology. Vulnerabilities researched and weaponized by the government, ended up in the public, and caused global damage. There is no oversight into how these are produced or their risks.
neves 9y ago
As a foreigner, for me it is not a good news from the only country that dropped nuclear bombs over innocent civilians.
neuro_imager 9y ago
I'm not entirely clear on the scenarios in which this type of research would be beneficial (I'm a physician): - AFAIK research on vaccines does not require altering an organism to make it more lethal. You would want to cover as broad a spectrum of serotypes/serovars of the existing organism as possible. I can see how someone might argue that you could pre-empt a more malignant variant but surely this is outweighed by the likelihood of creating systemic risk. - What exactly would we learn form creating new, highly virulent organisms that can't be learned using the same technology on non-virulent organisms? - It bothers me that this is a push to create more biological weapons from the military complex (especially terrifying considering the infantile intellects we currently have in congress).
nerpderp83 9y ago
As much as I dislike the subject, providing a monitorable outlet is better than a full prohibition. Prohibition denies important signals to things that will occur anyway.
blablabla123 9y ago
Noooooooo
sndean 9y ago
For more background, and since this article is surprisingly short: This is a better article: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/nih-lifts-3-year-ban-funding-risky-virus-studies https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/nih-lifts-3-year-ban... This ban that's being lifted stems from a few incidents, but really the driving force was Ron Fouchier's [0] gain-of-function study where his lab made a few mutations that enabled transmission of the bird flu (H5N1) virus between ferrets. All they had to do was make five mutations and it was suddenly more dangerous (here's the paper [1]). Ferrets may sound random, but they can become infected with human flu virus and show similar pathology to humans - they're a model for humans. I remember hearing Fouchier speak in Washington at a biodefense conference right after the study came out. He was (is?) pretty much a celebrity among scientists, but the policy folks had a different opinion... Pretty sure these things will escape from the lab at some point. I've personally handled some B. anthracis (causes anthrax) that was supposedly non-viable only to find out later that it was almost certainly still alive. (Not this case, but here's an example [2] mentioned in the article.) There would (hopefully) be more regulations on BSL3+ organisms like the viruses being discussed, because anthrax is relatively friendly, but like any other field, all it takes is one incompetent person. [0] https://www.erasmusmc.nl/MScMM/faculty/CVs/fouchier_cv?lang=en https://www.erasmusmc.nl/MScMM/faculty/CVs/fouchier_cv?lang=... [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4810786/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4810786/ [2] https://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/news-multimedia/lab-incident/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/news-multimedia/lab-incident/ind...
- crickshinks 9y ago
  >Pretty sure these things will escape from the lab at some point. Yes. That should be the assumption. No matter how good the safety procedures are, they are implemented by people. People not only make mistakes, they can be subborned, become suicidally depressed, resentful against the world in general, all sorts of things. It seems to me that the most important thing is to learn defence against the dark arts, not the dark arts themselves. i.e. vaccines/countermeasures, not bioweapons. Saying 'there must be no safer way to do the research' is begging the question, since research is about finding new ways of doing things and looking at things.
manicdee 9y ago
No safer way to do my research than using my robots to spray homeless people at my mall with meningococcal.
Tharkun 9y ago
Lethal viruses? No problem. Drugs? Abortion? Never! Weird how that works.
- snowpanda 9y ago
  Yes because black tar heroin produced in a basement comes with the following disclaimer: ".... and the work must produce knowledge — such as a vaccine — that would benefit humans". Stop making everything political, if this was done under a different administration you would have applauded it because of it being a scientific effort. Chances are this was decided by a panel and not the person you despise. Being a-political myself, it always amazes me how for BOTH parties, the political issues aren't even about the issue at hand anymore. It's about proving the other side wrong.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    That's politics in a nutshell. It's never about the actual issue at hand, it's always about getting on top of the other side.
yakt 9y ago
Great ! Now this is going to open new rooms for more mistakes and may lead to more deaths which can be blamed to some scientific failure. We humans collectively as one entity clearly have no discipline. The current set of laws are themselves in first place not providing any peace in the lives of most people. And we have no time to fix that issue and our impulsive anxiety issue is making some weak willed men to open up new roads to destruction. It may yield some benefit but it is not essential. I have 0 confidence in today's governments that they are capable of containing any damage caused by this law. If entire of humanity is going to become extinct then we can take a high risk effort. All the day every time we need not take life threatening risks. Opening up of this law means any minute now in best case scenario there is a 1% chance that there may be a deadly virus in the air u just breathed in. And based on history we humans are capable of leading ourselves into worst case scenarios and that puts the percentage of risk anywhere between 1% to 99%. Now even if something worst case happens i am sure the human species would not go extinct as the billionaires and few millionaires would have means to survive any death prone event only with nobody left to buy their products anymore. Kudos!

394 points by fern12 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

An informative series from pbs narrated by Jeff goldblum on YouTube: search for "dna episode 1 of 5 the secret of life" It's a great high level overview of dna sequencing from the discovery of its shape through the completion of the human genome project in 2000. I'm having trouble pasting a link, maybe someone could help me out.

chuckmpierce 9y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7ET4bbkTm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7ET4bbkTm0
DigitalJack 9y ago
The downvotes seem weird to me. Maybe it felt off topic? Dr. Francis S. Collins is in several of the videos, and the third video is all about this particular controversy of dangerous experiments at the dawn of genetic engineering(for example one guy wanted to splice a cancer causing gene in e. coli bacterium). It seemed relevant to me. It is what the article is talking about afterall.
- grzm 9y ago
  Hard to say. Maybe the lack of a link? I agree it otherwise looks it would be relevant.

roryisok 9y ago

Just when I think we can't possibly make any more amazingly stupid decisions on this planet, there we go again

neo4sure 9y ago
In this administration stupid is the norm. Haven't you noticed?
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  I'm anti-Trump as can be, but I'd suspect this moratorium was always intended to be temporary while the protocols to protect us from accidents were checked and revised if necessary. There's genuine merit to understanding what makes a virus vary in lethality and how to combat that. There's plenty of things to bash this administration on. I don't think this is one of them.
  - neo4sure 9y ago
    Maybe your right. Keeping up with all the things they throw out on a daily basis is tiresome, and I don't have time to research all of them.
    - basic-gongfu 9y ago
      Sounds more like you're trying to keep up with the bullshit avalanche from the prostitute media; you can't win that game, and your brain will turn to mush in the process. Journalism is dead, deal with it.
    - caseysoftware 9y ago
      You could read the first sentence of the article: "Federal officials on Tuesday ended a moratorium imposed three years ago on funding research that alters germs to make them more lethal." or a little further down: "In October 2014, all federal funding was halted on efforts to make three viruses more dangerous: the flu virus, and those causing Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)."
strictnein 9y ago
A smart decision would have been to read the article.

yegle 9y ago

The intention seems legit, despite the concern. Quote from the article: 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.

grzm 9y ago
Also, it's regulated and overseen by a review board: > "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." It does sound like there are concerns. I'm glad that people are keeping their eyes on it. I found this quote interesting as well, regarding publishing the results of such research: > “Physicists long ago learned to distinguish between what can be publicly available and what’s classified,” he added, referring to nuclear weapons research. “We want to keep some of this stuff on a need-to-know basis.”
- pluc 9y ago
  The problem with the US keeping their eyes on it is that you can't trust them. All you need is a few lobbyists and rules and regulations seem to be just words. Hell, Net Neutrality had plenty of people "keeping their eyes on it" too.
  - grzm 9y ago
    You're right that that can be an issue, and one raised in the article. I intended that particular phrase (which admittedly could have been written better) to mean that others outside of the government are watching the process, such as those commenting in the article. Definitely room for improvement, but I don't think this is something that's being done lightly. This whole thing concerns me, but like with many such topics, it's often more complicated than what is summed up in the headline.
  - jknoepfler 9y ago
    I'm not sure why this is being downvoted, other than that it isn't precise. I'm general you can't trust regulators or legislators at the federal level.

smitherfield 9y ago

Now, I don't want to seem anti-science or anything, but this seems like a massive disaster just waiting to happen, in light of the incidents that led to this ban and also, even more to the point, the 2001 anthrax attacks.[1] Couldn't they at least restrict this research to labs far away from major population centers? The analogue with software development, I'd say, is when people periodically point out that nuclear power plant or ICBM control systems still run on 8-inch floppy disks!!1! and therefore allegedly need to be completely rewritten. That rationale likewise fails to meet my tempting fate threshold. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks

jerf 9y ago
It is a massive disaster waiting to happen. But the massiveness of that disaster, or its impendingness, has very little to do with some people in Washington DC mouthing words about how you shouldn't do that. This is definitely one of those cases where I feel like a lot of people are demonstrating some very magical thinking about the effectiveness of regulations, with all due respect to those involved. Does Kim Jong Un care that some people in Washington DC say that it's illegal to make lethal viruses? Does China? Russia? Iran? Europe? Anyone else in the world, really? Or a small criminal lab located in the United States? Or a criminal with access to a lab in the United States? It's not like there's literally people standing on top of every single gene sequencer in the world, or the US, stopping people from doing things. The regulations were not all that was standing between us and some deadly virus, because anyone who would make a deadly virus and release it, accidentally or otherwise, still has a very simple path to that goal: "Ignore the regulations the US has." This just gives the good guys a chance to possibly learn some things about that before someone else releases it.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  That's not the point of restricting research, though; the point of it is restricting research done by labs which are not bent on using biological weapons on human victims but allow them to fall into the wrong hands, or carelessly cause an incident with improper handling of the materials.

ogdoad 9y ago

Setting the stage for every biohazard movie ever made.

ct0 9y ago
I hope this is only approved in places where the average temperature is below zero and most common form of transportation as snowmobile.
- 24gttghh 9y ago
  Even those places aren't a guarantee with global warming happening.
Isamu 9y ago
That's ok, Project Wildfire will be automatically activated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain
- LandR 9y ago
  That was a great book right up until the last few pages. It just ended so abruptly!
- lurr 9y ago
  Wouldn't activating wildfire have been a complete disaster in the book? It's been a long time since I read that. The part about the guy's seizures freaked me out for a while.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    "Wildfire" was the protocol for responding to the detection of the alien organism rather than the failsafe that wasn't.
    - lurr 9y ago
      oh, I thought wildfire was specifically the bombing that would have caused massive growth of the organism.

exelius 9y ago

Do you want the zombie apocalypse? Because this is how you get the zombie apocalypse.

nutbutter 9y ago
This also how you get ants.

staunch 9y ago

Trial and error isn't great for this kind of stuff but it works great for AI research. Let's create software that can do genetic engineering of viruses right the first time.

omegaworks 9y ago

This is a great thing to hear from an administration that allies itself with advocates of genocide...

z0r 9y ago
???????
- omegaworks 9y ago
  This country has a sordid history when it comes to using/testing bio weaponry against those it designates as "non-people." Beginning with blankets coated in syphilis weaponized against the native population to experiments on black airmen at Tuskegee. Trump referred to "very great people on both sides" of the Nazi rally in Charlottesville that led to the brutal murder of anti-hate protester Heather Heyer. He hesitated to denounce the endorsement of David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the KKK. He appointed Jefferson Sessions, rejected from a federal judgeship for his racism, to the top law enforcement position in the nation. Under his watch they dismantled anti-violence police oversight programs and narrowed anti-terrorism efforts to draw attention away from domestic white-supremacist groups. Stephen Bannon, brought into the White House as a senior advisor, helped coalesce support for Trump on the web, forming groups on forums like 4chan and Breitbart rife with eugenicist-apologia and genocide normalization strategies. This is all well documented, here's a great read on it: https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo-smuggled-white-nationalism https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart... It's necessary to be aware of history and sensitive to the parallels in the present day.

quotha 9y ago

WCGW

c3534l 9y ago

I don't trust people's due dilligence enough to be okay with this. Edit: remember when Ebola was never supposed to leave the CDC fascility and a nurse was exposed to it and left the hospital? That's what happens when there's the highest level of scrutinity and security.

chewbacha 9y ago

Sounds like we are multiplying the ways to cause species level extinction rather than reducing them. Kewl.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
As long as we progress, it will always be like that. Technology is, in a fundamental way, a force multiplicator. It gives you power to do more things that you could do with only your biological body and mind. That power can be used for destructive means too, so it follows that as we get more power, we open new, exciting ways to destroy ourselves.

convery 9y ago

Well, shit. That law was the only thing keeping the super-villains from going through with their plans..

Houshalter 9y ago

This was posted a few days ago. It's a talk about the dangers of man made viruses by Intel's chief medical officer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY 2 minutes in he talks about how a strain of flu escaped from a lab in 1977 and killed (and is still killing) millions of people.

swframe2 9y ago

My only concern is North Korea. They have a strong desire to match american machismo. They probably lack the funds to build novel biological weapons their own. They are extremely good at break into computer systems. Companies excel at ignoring their vulnerabilities until it is too late.

always_good 9y ago
Pretty weak concern considering Americans will sell it to you. I'd be more worried about the lack of scruples among people. Unfortunately that doesn't create as much of a boogeyman.

chrisper 9y ago

You know how when you watch movies and because you know so much about tech you can tell that most of the stuff done in movies regarding hacking etc is bullshit and not real. Now I have a lack in knowledge of biology at this level, but can someone maybe explain to me how all those disease mass extinction movies cannot be real? I feel like my lack of knowledge here causes my concerns when reading stuff like this article.

crimsonalucard 9y ago
Ebola is one such virus. In terms of evolution these viruses tend to burn out by killing the host. Evolutionary pressures push viruses towards symbiotic equilibrium. Thus in the worst case scenario there will be survivors who are immune or the virus or the virus will burn out until the only strain left does not harm humans. The later was the case with ebola.
- makmanalp 9y ago
  It sure killed a LOT of people in the process though, so I wouldn't say that that's quite so reassuring.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Counter-intuitively the speedy kill is actually what makes Ebola comparatively safe, if the victims would live longer they would infect far more others though even in death there is plenty of risk in handling the bodies during burial, especially in remote locations.
    - makmanalp 9y ago
      I understand that - I'm just pointing out that while Ebola perhaps isn't putting humans at extinction risk, it's still not good by any measure. We (I) don't want anything remotely like it lying around at anyone's disposal.
  - crimsonalucard 9y ago

Parcissons 9y ago

Another case of big goverment holding back small, hard working buisnesses like the umbrella cooperation.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

lamontcg 9y ago

We already know how this ends: http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/016/030/carllll.jpg http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/016/030/carll...

top_post 9y ago

So to bring a technology angle to this, there isn't anything remotely equivalent around this for Cybersecurity where it has some parallels. Everyone understands how bad a pandemic is - the risk of lives is obviously more important than data - however with the reliance of technology lives can be indirectly affected, such as the case of WannaCry shutting down hospitals and associated healthcare technology. Vulnerabilities researched and weaponized by the government, ended up in the public, and caused global damage. There is no oversight into how these are produced or their risks.

neves 9y ago

As a foreigner, for me it is not a good news from the only country that dropped nuclear bombs over innocent civilians.

neuro_imager 9y ago

I'm not entirely clear on the scenarios in which this type of research would be beneficial (I'm a physician): - AFAIK research on vaccines does not require altering an organism to make it more lethal. You would want to cover as broad a spectrum of serotypes/serovars of the existing organism as possible. I can see how someone might argue that you could pre-empt a more malignant variant but surely this is outweighed by the likelihood of creating systemic risk. - What exactly would we learn form creating new, highly virulent organisms that can't be learned using the same technology on non-virulent organisms? - It bothers me that this is a push to create more biological weapons from the military complex (especially terrifying considering the infantile intellects we currently have in congress).

nerpderp83 9y ago

As much as I dislike the subject, providing a monitorable outlet is better than a full prohibition. Prohibition denies important signals to things that will occur anyway.

blablabla123 9y ago

Noooooooo

sndean 9y ago

For more background, and since this article is surprisingly short: This is a better article: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/nih-lifts-3-year-ban-funding-risky-virus-studies https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/nih-lifts-3-year-ban... This ban that's being lifted stems from a few incidents, but really the driving force was Ron Fouchier's [0] gain-of-function study where his lab made a few mutations that enabled transmission of the bird flu (H5N1) virus between ferrets. All they had to do was make five mutations and it was suddenly more dangerous (here's the paper [1]). Ferrets may sound random, but they can become infected with human flu virus and show similar pathology to humans - they're a model for humans. I remember hearing Fouchier speak in Washington at a biodefense conference right after the study came out. He was (is?) pretty much a celebrity among scientists, but the policy folks had a different opinion... Pretty sure these things will escape from the lab at some point. I've personally handled some B. anthracis (causes anthrax) that was supposedly non-viable only to find out later that it was almost certainly still alive. (Not this case, but here's an example [2] mentioned in the article.) There would (hopefully) be more regulations on BSL3+ organisms like the viruses being discussed, because anthrax is relatively friendly, but like any other field, all it takes is one incompetent person. [0] https://www.erasmusmc.nl/MScMM/faculty/CVs/fouchier_cv?lang=en https://www.erasmusmc.nl/MScMM/faculty/CVs/fouchier_cv?lang=... [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4810786/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4810786/ [2] https://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/news-multimedia/lab-incident/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/news-multimedia/lab-incident/ind...

crickshinks 9y ago
>Pretty sure these things will escape from the lab at some point. Yes. That should be the assumption. No matter how good the safety procedures are, they are implemented by people. People not only make mistakes, they can be subborned, become suicidally depressed, resentful against the world in general, all sorts of things. It seems to me that the most important thing is to learn defence against the dark arts, not the dark arts themselves. i.e. vaccines/countermeasures, not bioweapons. Saying 'there must be no safer way to do the research' is begging the question, since research is about finding new ways of doing things and looking at things.

manicdee 9y ago

No safer way to do my research than using my robots to spray homeless people at my mall with meningococcal.

Tharkun 9y ago

Lethal viruses? No problem. Drugs? Abortion? Never! Weird how that works.

snowpanda 9y ago
Yes because black tar heroin produced in a basement comes with the following disclaimer: ".... and the work must produce knowledge — such as a vaccine — that would benefit humans". Stop making everything political, if this was done under a different administration you would have applauded it because of it being a scientific effort. Chances are this was decided by a panel and not the person you despise. Being a-political myself, it always amazes me how for BOTH parties, the political issues aren't even about the issue at hand anymore. It's about proving the other side wrong.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  That's politics in a nutshell. It's never about the actual issue at hand, it's always about getting on top of the other side.

yakt 9y ago

Great ! Now this is going to open new rooms for more mistakes and may lead to more deaths which can be blamed to some scientific failure. We humans collectively as one entity clearly have no discipline. The current set of laws are themselves in first place not providing any peace in the lives of most people. And we have no time to fix that issue and our impulsive anxiety issue is making some weak willed men to open up new roads to destruction. It may yield some benefit but it is not essential. I have 0 confidence in today's governments that they are capable of containing any damage caused by this law. If entire of humanity is going to become extinct then we can take a high risk effort. All the day every time we need not take life threatening risks. Opening up of this law means any minute now in best case scenario there is a 1% chance that there may be a deadly virus in the air u just breathed in. And based on history we humans are capable of leading ourselves into worst case scenarios and that puts the percentage of risk anywhere between 1% to 99%. Now even if something worst case happens i am sure the human species would not go extinct as the billionaires and few millionaires would have means to survive any death prone event only with nobody left to buy their products anymore. Kudos!