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A secret skunkworks approach could facilitate genetic inventions that don't get passed into the general knowledge base. It would be difficult making discoveries

A secret skunkworks approach could facilitate genetic inventions that don't get passed into the general knowledge base. It would be difficult making discoveries that all of the other biologists working in society miss, but is remotely plausible.

eesmith 3y ago
Yeah, no. That does not seem plausible at all. Again, the technology would be able to cure cancer. Do you really think all those employees - who know that their friends and family could be cured of their cancer - would be willing to keep mum of the cure?
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  It depends on how isolated they are kept from each other's work. It's not as if we don't already have decent cancer therapeutic technologies in the pipeline.
  - eesmith 3y ago
    We do not have broad-spectrum anti-cancer therapeutics, much less ones which are based on self-reproducing communicable organisms that target the cancer's DNA. If I'm wrong, what are you thinking of?
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      Therapeutics which prompt the endogenous immune system to recognize the cancer cells as something to attack. I believe this is the basis of mRNA cancer therapeutics? I believe they are targeted for individual cancers and possibly individual people, but given the speed in which they can be made this doesn't seem like a major future hurdle. Throw one into a gene therapy vector and it could conceivably reproduce itself (though that seems like a bad idea for a cancer therapeutic anyway).
      - eesmith 3y ago
        "I believe" and "conceivably" do not make good evidence that something is in the pipeline. mRNA cancer therapeutics do not target nuclear DNA. They do not enter the nucleus and they produce proteins to trigger an immune response against the targeted disease, not against the DNA of the targeted disease.
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        You're misinterpreting my initial objection. Skunkworkers would care less about the personal ramifications of keeping technology which could be used to cure cancer secret if there are already viable full-cure treatments for all of the cancers they or their family members may plausibly come down with.
        eesmith 3y ago
        Again, technology isn't in a vacuum. You really can't predict what medicine will be like in 100 years. If there are already viable full-cure treatments for all those cancers then why aren't there viable full-cure treatments for this sort of bioweapon? Feeling ill? Sequence all the organisms in your blood, spot the unexpected ones, develop a vaccine/phage against it, and poof - all better. Sure, you can construct movie plot scenarios to do anything. In a movie, our hero can use a lighter to ignite the leaking fuel trail from a jet plane taking off and cause it to blow Up. That doesn't mean it's likely or even feasible.
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        > If there are already viable full-cure treatments for all those cancers then why aren't there viable full-cure treatments for this sort of bioweapon? Plenty of possibilities. A cancer is ultimately a mutated genome in a viable cell gone awry. Even with contagious cancers (like the one killing the Tasmanian Devils) you're still ultimately dealing with an infectious eukaryotic cell of basically the same species type as the organism, and our mammalian immune systems are already used to targeting our own cells gone awry. Viruses, satellite viruses, prokaryotes, other eukaryotes, edited out, and whatever I'm forgetting will require a diversity of approaches (unless someone invents pico-scale teleportation).
- jacquesm 3y ago
  > Again, the technology would be able to cure cancer. That's your strawman. But I can - easily, at that - imagine a POC that would be specific enough to kill a single human with a very high degree of success given some meta data about them and a sample of their DNA. I'm for obvious reasons not going to expand on that here because we have too many idiots in this world but the fact that you can't imagine such things doesn't mean that others can not.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    It would be easier to just novichok the person.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Maybe. Not always. Heads of state tend to be very well protected against such attacks for instance.
  - eesmith 3y ago
    So what? Movie plot scenarios do not need to reflect reality. I can easily imagine hopping on the next Pan Am rocket service to Luna City. I can easily imagine using a space laser to kill that same human. I can easily imagine taking a bridge from Key West to Cuba. I can easily imagine taking a pill to regrow an amputated leg. Just because you can easily imagine a POC doesn't mean it's doable in our lifetimes. What are you going to target in the DNA? Is it a single short sequence or multiple markers across the genome? How does the bioweapon sequence that DNA to find it? How does that then trigger the appropriate biological response? How do you prevent mutations? What infectious organism will you use? How do you know the target isn't already immune to that infection? Even if you expand on one or two of these in convincing detail (congrats on your future Nobel Prize, by the way), that's still not enough for the idiots in the world to make a usable weapon. And so many easier ways to kill someone exist.

eesmith 3y ago

Yeah, no. That does not seem plausible at all. Again, the technology would be able to cure cancer. Do you really think all those employees - who know that their friends and family could be cured of their cancer - would be willing to keep mum of the cure?

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
It depends on how isolated they are kept from each other's work. It's not as if we don't already have decent cancer therapeutic technologies in the pipeline.
- eesmith 3y ago
  We do not have broad-spectrum anti-cancer therapeutics, much less ones which are based on self-reproducing communicable organisms that target the cancer's DNA. If I'm wrong, what are you thinking of?
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    Therapeutics which prompt the endogenous immune system to recognize the cancer cells as something to attack. I believe this is the basis of mRNA cancer therapeutics? I believe they are targeted for individual cancers and possibly individual people, but given the speed in which they can be made this doesn't seem like a major future hurdle. Throw one into a gene therapy vector and it could conceivably reproduce itself (though that seems like a bad idea for a cancer therapeutic anyway).
    - eesmith 3y ago
      "I believe" and "conceivably" do not make good evidence that something is in the pipeline. mRNA cancer therapeutics do not target nuclear DNA. They do not enter the nucleus and they produce proteins to trigger an immune response against the targeted disease, not against the DNA of the targeted disease.
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        You're misinterpreting my initial objection. Skunkworkers would care less about the personal ramifications of keeping technology which could be used to cure cancer secret if there are already viable full-cure treatments for all of the cancers they or their family members may plausibly come down with.
        eesmith 3y ago
        Again, technology isn't in a vacuum. You really can't predict what medicine will be like in 100 years. If there are already viable full-cure treatments for all those cancers then why aren't there viable full-cure treatments for this sort of bioweapon? Feeling ill? Sequence all the organisms in your blood, spot the unexpected ones, develop a vaccine/phage against it, and poof - all better. Sure, you can construct movie plot scenarios to do anything. In a movie, our hero can use a lighter to ignite the leaking fuel trail from a jet plane taking off and cause it to blow Up. That doesn't mean it's likely or even feasible.
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        > If there are already viable full-cure treatments for all those cancers then why aren't there viable full-cure treatments for this sort of bioweapon? Plenty of possibilities. A cancer is ultimately a mutated genome in a viable cell gone awry. Even with contagious cancers (like the one killing the Tasmanian Devils) you're still ultimately dealing with an infectious eukaryotic cell of basically the same species type as the organism, and our mammalian immune systems are already used to targeting our own cells gone awry. Viruses, satellite viruses, prokaryotes, other eukaryotes, edited out, and whatever I'm forgetting will require a diversity of approaches (unless someone invents pico-scale teleportation).
jacquesm 3y ago
> Again, the technology would be able to cure cancer. That's your strawman. But I can - easily, at that - imagine a POC that would be specific enough to kill a single human with a very high degree of success given some meta data about them and a sample of their DNA. I'm for obvious reasons not going to expand on that here because we have too many idiots in this world but the fact that you can't imagine such things doesn't mean that others can not.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  It would be easier to just novichok the person.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Maybe. Not always. Heads of state tend to be very well protected against such attacks for instance.
- eesmith 3y ago
  So what? Movie plot scenarios do not need to reflect reality. I can easily imagine hopping on the next Pan Am rocket service to Luna City. I can easily imagine using a space laser to kill that same human. I can easily imagine taking a bridge from Key West to Cuba. I can easily imagine taking a pill to regrow an amputated leg. Just because you can easily imagine a POC doesn't mean it's doable in our lifetimes. What are you going to target in the DNA? Is it a single short sequence or multiple markers across the genome? How does the bioweapon sequence that DNA to find it? How does that then trigger the appropriate biological response? How do you prevent mutations? What infectious organism will you use? How do you know the target isn't already immune to that infection? Even if you expand on one or two of these in convincing detail (congrats on your future Nobel Prize, by the way), that's still not enough for the idiots in the world to make a usable weapon. And so many easier ways to kill someone exist.