3 ms·
On the one hand, this constitutes a weapon of mass destruction and should never be created by civilians in a lab. On the other... if it is this easy to do, so
by rjurney 15y ago
On the one hand, this constitutes a weapon of mass destruction and should never be created by civilians in a lab.
On the other... if it is this easy to do, so that two virology teams can do it... then it needs to be done, somewhere. Is open academia that place?
I would imagine that knowing what genes need to mutate, that we could test for them to early detect an outbreak. Also, we could target anti-virals or other treatments against those segments.
Scary stuff.
- UnFleshedOne 15y agoThose things would only get more frequent and easier as the science progresses. I think the best shot to avoid a major disaster is to progress the science far and fast enough so that the consequences are not that severe. For example getting to a point where an "universal" antiviral agent (with an easy to update/modify "database" of targets) is possible.