5 ms·

Open source genomes of engineered super viruses combined with garage-grade nucleotide synthesizers will with more probability than anything else I can think of.

Open source genomes of engineered super viruses combined with garage-grade nucleotide synthesizers will with more probability than anything else I can think of. Or, heck, maybe the super virus escapes from a BSL4 lab on accident before the garage phase. :D (There's been precedent, and I'm not alluding to COVID.)

XorNot 3y ago
I love how the Longtermism people won't shut up about this without having one single clue what they're actually talking about. As though virus particles spontaneously pop into existence when you mix the right DNA strands together (a process that gets wildly expensive beyond a couple hundred basepairs and is destroyed if the proteins on your fingers get anywhere near it). That's notwithstanding the fact that you can't just turn a dial labelled "lethality" to produce a gene sequence.
- c_crank 3y ago
  The expense seems to have gone down enough in recent years that there are too many sketchy biolabs mixing a lot of base pairs together. Or doing other kinds of things to cross breed these bugs.
bulla 3y ago
What precedents?
- echelon 3y ago
  This is a good list on BSL incidents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Lots. I think one of the only arguments that needs to be made against things like gain-of-function research is this. [1] That's an incomprehensive list various announced biosecurity incidents. Just since 2000 we've had lab incidents, including leaks, with: anthrax, west nile virus, SARS, COVID (not implying China - there was a confirmed COVID leak in Taiwan), ebola, tuberculosis, dengue, smallpox, zika, polio, and more. And they're happening all throughout the world. That includes the US, China, Russia, Japan, Germany, Australia, UK, South Korea, Hungary, France, Taiwan, Netherlands, and more. Incidents specified as coming from BSL-4 labs include ebola and SARS, though the BSL level is not specified at all for most incidents. And I would take that is an extremely incomprehensive list given that many incidents are likely going to be tucked away or classified. There's playing with fire, and then there's this... which increasingly more feels like standing around a fire and seeing what happens if you start dumping kerosene into it, all in the name of firefighting - of course. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...
- Vecr 3y ago
  I don't think it was a modern BSL-4 standard lab, but smallpox escaped and killed someone in the UK. Now (at least in theory) only the US and Russia have samples in special government BSL-4 labs. Other countries could make it from sequence though. Edit: I can't reply, so I'll say that an extinct horsepox virus was recreated from sequence, the same procedure in theory should work on smallpox
  - Tangurena2 3y ago
    You can acquire viable smallpox samples from graves in permafrost regions. It would not surprise me if the UK incident was an archeologist.
  - bboygravity 3y ago
    Russia definitely doesn't have BSL-4 labs (because BSL-4 refers to an US-specific system). Sorry for being pedantic.
  - a_bonobo 3y ago
    >I don't think it was a modern BSL-4 standard lab, but smallpox escaped and killed someone in the UK. That was in 1978! I believe we didn't have biosafety levels back then in the UK. Edit: at least the BSL levels came 6 years later, but the UK has different names for those >Over the next two decades, growing CDC, NIH, and OSHA participation in ABSA annual meetings further solidified biosafety guidelines, culminating in the 1984 publication of the first edition of the text, Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories (BMBL). The BMBL guidelines laid out four levels of increasingly intensive safety practices, equipment, facilities, and engineering controls to be employed in the safe handling of microbial agents: Biosafety Levels 1, 2, 3, and 4 (BSL-1, -2, -3, and -4), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7099915/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7099915/
  - cyberax 3y ago
    Smallpox is 186 kilobases in size. It's pretty hard to synthesize from scratch. Not impossible, but hard. Then you'll still need to assemble the viable viral particles. This will probably require the creation of artificial chromosomes needed for the viral replication, and then innoculating human cell culture with them, alongside with the synthetic viral DNA. This is a level that requires years of work from a major biolab.

XorNot 3y ago

I love how the Longtermism people won't shut up about this without having one single clue what they're actually talking about. As though virus particles spontaneously pop into existence when you mix the right DNA strands together (a process that gets wildly expensive beyond a couple hundred basepairs and is destroyed if the proteins on your fingers get anywhere near it). That's notwithstanding the fact that you can't just turn a dial labelled "lethality" to produce a gene sequence.

c_crank 3y ago
The expense seems to have gone down enough in recent years that there are too many sketchy biolabs mixing a lot of base pairs together. Or doing other kinds of things to cross breed these bugs.

bulla 3y ago

What precedents?

echelon 3y ago
This is a good list on BSL incidents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...
somenameforme 3y ago
Lots. I think one of the only arguments that needs to be made against things like gain-of-function research is this. [1] That's an incomprehensive list various announced biosecurity incidents. Just since 2000 we've had lab incidents, including leaks, with: anthrax, west nile virus, SARS, COVID (not implying China - there was a confirmed COVID leak in Taiwan), ebola, tuberculosis, dengue, smallpox, zika, polio, and more. And they're happening all throughout the world. That includes the US, China, Russia, Japan, Germany, Australia, UK, South Korea, Hungary, France, Taiwan, Netherlands, and more. Incidents specified as coming from BSL-4 labs include ebola and SARS, though the BSL level is not specified at all for most incidents. And I would take that is an extremely incomprehensive list given that many incidents are likely going to be tucked away or classified. There's playing with fire, and then there's this... which increasingly more feels like standing around a fire and seeing what happens if you start dumping kerosene into it, all in the name of firefighting - of course. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...
Vecr 3y ago
I don't think it was a modern BSL-4 standard lab, but smallpox escaped and killed someone in the UK. Now (at least in theory) only the US and Russia have samples in special government BSL-4 labs. Other countries could make it from sequence though. Edit: I can't reply, so I'll say that an extinct horsepox virus was recreated from sequence, the same procedure in theory should work on smallpox
- Tangurena2 3y ago
  You can acquire viable smallpox samples from graves in permafrost regions. It would not surprise me if the UK incident was an archeologist.
- bboygravity 3y ago
  Russia definitely doesn't have BSL-4 labs (because BSL-4 refers to an US-specific system). Sorry for being pedantic.
- a_bonobo 3y ago
  >I don't think it was a modern BSL-4 standard lab, but smallpox escaped and killed someone in the UK. That was in 1978! I believe we didn't have biosafety levels back then in the UK. Edit: at least the BSL levels came 6 years later, but the UK has different names for those >Over the next two decades, growing CDC, NIH, and OSHA participation in ABSA annual meetings further solidified biosafety guidelines, culminating in the 1984 publication of the first edition of the text, Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories (BMBL). The BMBL guidelines laid out four levels of increasingly intensive safety practices, equipment, facilities, and engineering controls to be employed in the safe handling of microbial agents: Biosafety Levels 1, 2, 3, and 4 (BSL-1, -2, -3, and -4), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7099915/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7099915/
- cyberax 3y ago
  Smallpox is 186 kilobases in size. It's pretty hard to synthesize from scratch. Not impossible, but hard. Then you'll still need to assemble the viable viral particles. This will probably require the creation of artificial chromosomes needed for the viral replication, and then innoculating human cell culture with them, alongside with the synthetic viral DNA. This is a level that requires years of work from a major biolab.