4 ms·

You assume of course that this research leads to a vaccine that's 100% effective and distributed to the entire population of the planet. You miss the point tha

You assume of course that this research leads to a vaccine that's 100% effective and distributed to the entire population of the planet. You miss the point that some people can't have the flu vaccine because of auto immune disease susceptibility. Also X percent of the population will not get the vaccination for other reasons. So this is more like [Sophos|Symantec|Kaspersky] creating a super Windows virus then offering to print the source code in order to "further" research. Just like with nuclear technology, we can't put this genie back in the bottle. Just because we can do something, does that always mean we should?

ufo 15y ago
The difference is that in the biological case the virus comes up by itself without the need for too much human intervention or 'source code". We already know that more then one group already managed to come up with a killer strain by (basically) just exposing the virus to ferrets in a cage. A malicious virologist already knows enough to try to replicate the experiment in his own secret lab so censoring the information will just make it hard for the good researchers to do their job.
CWuestefeld 15y ago
You assume of course that this research leads to a vaccine that's 100% effective and distributed to the entire population of the planet. No, this is not correct. As I explained elsewhere in the thread where you made the same claim: A vaccine can effectively stop a virus with far fewer than 100% actually receiving the vaccination. First, depending on the type of vaccine, the immunity may be communicated to other people through contact. Other people in the household, work, school, etc. are contaminated with the attenuated virus (in such a vaccination, as with the Salk polio virus). Second, with a sufficient portion of the population immune, they act as firebreaks interfering with the transmission of the virus through the population. This is called "Herd Immunity" [1]. According to the linked article, for example, smallpox is effectively stopped with 83%-85% of the community vaccinated. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

ufo 15y ago

The difference is that in the biological case the virus comes up by itself without the need for too much human intervention or 'source code". We already know that more then one group already managed to come up with a killer strain by (basically) just exposing the virus to ferrets in a cage. A malicious virologist already knows enough to try to replicate the experiment in his own secret lab so censoring the information will just make it hard for the good researchers to do their job.

CWuestefeld 15y ago

You assume of course that this research leads to a vaccine that's 100% effective and distributed to the entire population of the planet. No, this is not correct. As I explained elsewhere in the thread where you made the same claim: A vaccine can effectively stop a virus with far fewer than 100% actually receiving the vaccination. First, depending on the type of vaccine, the immunity may be communicated to other people through contact. Other people in the household, work, school, etc. are contaminated with the attenuated virus (in such a vaccination, as with the Salk polio virus). Second, with a sufficient portion of the population immune, they act as firebreaks interfering with the transmission of the virus through the population. This is called "Herd Immunity" [1]. According to the linked article, for example, smallpox is effectively stopped with 83%-85% of the community vaccinated. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity