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>There are plenty of super viruses and bacteria in nature. Neither HIV nor MRSA came from biohacking. As I have said before, anything we create would be like ju

>There are plenty of super viruses and bacteria in nature. Neither HIV nor MRSA came from biohacking. As I have said before, anything we create would be like just one more bullet in a machine gun shootout. Sure it could be the one that gets you, but then again, there's an infinity of stuff out there that can also get you. It sounds like you're saying that each supervirus mankind creates marginally increases the chance that a Bad Thing will happen. Isn't marginally increasing the chance that a Bad Thing will happen also Bad? Also, how close do you think that HIV and MRSA are to the upper bound on supervirus potency?

tigerthink 17y ago
Have you read this book? http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Zone-Terrifying-True-Story/dp/0385495226/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252116171&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Zone-Terrifying-True-Story/dp/0385...
- asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
  Ebola kills far too quickly to ever become a pandemic. For a pandemic a virus needs to kill you slowly so you can spread it a lot. Like the 1918 flu.
asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
MRSA is pretty close to sending us back in time, a time before penicillin, it wasn't a good time, but obviously we survived. We got super lucky with HIV because you have to exchange bodily fluids to catch it. If it ever becomes as easy to catch as the common cold, we're screwed. And while the marginal danger may increase with research, the marginal utility will also increase, in fact it will increase faster. We'll discover more cures then diseases. And yes, regulation is a blunt weapon which stops not only the bad, but also the good.
- tigerthink 17y ago
  >We got super lucky with HIV because you have to exchange bodily fluids to catch it. If it ever becomes as easy to catch as the common cold, we're screwed. If some asshole creates a contagious HIV, then discovering cures faster than diseases will hardly save us. You get diminishing utility from curing diseases anyway. Say you discover cures for half the world's currently incurable diseases at random. My guess is that our life expectancy would increase by less than a decade. People are still going to age. And I'm not sure the threat of a contagious HIV would ever go away. It'd be hard finding a cure for a disease that wasn't even created yet. My guess is that there's already too much momentum behind this sort of research for us to halt it. Do you think requiring background checks for purchasers of biotech supplies would make the field more or less attractive to a hypothetical evil mastermind?
  - asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
    Requiring background checks is like requiring any bureaucratic red tape, it annoys the good and does not stop the bad. But I completely and totally disagree with your implication that more research will only marginal increase life spans, and that we can't find cures for yet undiscovered diseases. That's like saying in 1989 that in 2009 all the progress in the computer industry both hardware and software would only give us marginally better VisiCalc. To me at least it is OBVIOUS more biotech research will radicaly change the world not just slightly improve things. And the asshole most likely to create a more easily transmissible HIV is mother nature.
    - tigerthink 17y ago
      >But I completely and totally disagree with your implication that more research will only marginal increase life spans Unless the research is directed at curing aging, aging will always cause people to get more and more susceptible to disease as they get older. >and that we can't find cures for yet undiscovered diseases. What I was saying there was that you can't find a cure for a disease you haven't discovered yet. Do you disagree? >And the asshole most likely to create a more easily transmissible HIV is mother nature. There are six billion humans on Earth and the population is growing. All we need for disaster is one person who's intelligent, driven, and wants to destroy the human race. I agree that person would be very atypical. I disagree that we can be confident no one will ever fit that profile.
      - asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
        What I was saying there was that you can't find a cure for a disease you haven't discovered yet. Do you disagree? Absolutely. Many drugs targeting one disease have been found to cure others. The list includes cancer drugs, antibiotics, antiviral compounds, etc. And that's just drugs, what about the research itself, isn't it obvious it has implications well beyond any one single thing. And isn't that the case for every kind of research, not just medical? To me this seems obvious. All we need for disaster is one person who's intelligent, driven, and wants to destroy the human race. Again, we already have that, it's called mother nature. HIV, Ebola, 1918 flu, current flu, etc, all natural. Here's where I see the problem with your argument, it assumes great asymmetry. Here's what I mean by asymmetry, I think you imply that if we have the technology to create super viruses on demand that does not mean we'll have anywhere near equivalent knowledge and technology to fight them. I happen to consider that an extraordinary claim. To me the symmetry of knowledge is self evident. Almost as soon as we invent the nuclear bomb, we also invest nuclear power. Almost as soon as we can gene splice, we have gene therapy for humans which has already been successful applied. If we have the ability to create super viruses on demand, then we also have the ability to create drugs for them, to detect them, to stop transmission, and most obviously to create vaccines for them. If you can manufacture the virus, it would be one hell of a cosmic improbability that you are also NOT able to manufacture a vaccine for it. Alternatively if we don't have the knowledge to make viruses and vaccines on demand, that won't stop mother nature from her never ending quest to kills us all.

tigerthink 17y ago

Have you read this book? http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Zone-Terrifying-True-Story/dp/0385495226/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252116171&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Zone-Terrifying-True-Story/dp/0385...

asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
Ebola kills far too quickly to ever become a pandemic. For a pandemic a virus needs to kill you slowly so you can spread it a lot. Like the 1918 flu.

asdlfj2sd33 17y ago

MRSA is pretty close to sending us back in time, a time before penicillin, it wasn't a good time, but obviously we survived. We got super lucky with HIV because you have to exchange bodily fluids to catch it. If it ever becomes as easy to catch as the common cold, we're screwed. And while the marginal danger may increase with research, the marginal utility will also increase, in fact it will increase faster. We'll discover more cures then diseases. And yes, regulation is a blunt weapon which stops not only the bad, but also the good.

tigerthink 17y ago
>We got super lucky with HIV because you have to exchange bodily fluids to catch it. If it ever becomes as easy to catch as the common cold, we're screwed. If some asshole creates a contagious HIV, then discovering cures faster than diseases will hardly save us. You get diminishing utility from curing diseases anyway. Say you discover cures for half the world's currently incurable diseases at random. My guess is that our life expectancy would increase by less than a decade. People are still going to age. And I'm not sure the threat of a contagious HIV would ever go away. It'd be hard finding a cure for a disease that wasn't even created yet. My guess is that there's already too much momentum behind this sort of research for us to halt it. Do you think requiring background checks for purchasers of biotech supplies would make the field more or less attractive to a hypothetical evil mastermind?
- asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
  Requiring background checks is like requiring any bureaucratic red tape, it annoys the good and does not stop the bad. But I completely and totally disagree with your implication that more research will only marginal increase life spans, and that we can't find cures for yet undiscovered diseases. That's like saying in 1989 that in 2009 all the progress in the computer industry both hardware and software would only give us marginally better VisiCalc. To me at least it is OBVIOUS more biotech research will radicaly change the world not just slightly improve things. And the asshole most likely to create a more easily transmissible HIV is mother nature.
  - tigerthink 17y ago
    >But I completely and totally disagree with your implication that more research will only marginal increase life spans Unless the research is directed at curing aging, aging will always cause people to get more and more susceptible to disease as they get older. >and that we can't find cures for yet undiscovered diseases. What I was saying there was that you can't find a cure for a disease you haven't discovered yet. Do you disagree? >And the asshole most likely to create a more easily transmissible HIV is mother nature. There are six billion humans on Earth and the population is growing. All we need for disaster is one person who's intelligent, driven, and wants to destroy the human race. I agree that person would be very atypical. I disagree that we can be confident no one will ever fit that profile.
    - asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
      What I was saying there was that you can't find a cure for a disease you haven't discovered yet. Do you disagree? Absolutely. Many drugs targeting one disease have been found to cure others. The list includes cancer drugs, antibiotics, antiviral compounds, etc. And that's just drugs, what about the research itself, isn't it obvious it has implications well beyond any one single thing. And isn't that the case for every kind of research, not just medical? To me this seems obvious. All we need for disaster is one person who's intelligent, driven, and wants to destroy the human race. Again, we already have that, it's called mother nature. HIV, Ebola, 1918 flu, current flu, etc, all natural. Here's where I see the problem with your argument, it assumes great asymmetry. Here's what I mean by asymmetry, I think you imply that if we have the technology to create super viruses on demand that does not mean we'll have anywhere near equivalent knowledge and technology to fight them. I happen to consider that an extraordinary claim. To me the symmetry of knowledge is self evident. Almost as soon as we invent the nuclear bomb, we also invest nuclear power. Almost as soon as we can gene splice, we have gene therapy for humans which has already been successful applied. If we have the ability to create super viruses on demand, then we also have the ability to create drugs for them, to detect them, to stop transmission, and most obviously to create vaccines for them. If you can manufacture the virus, it would be one hell of a cosmic improbability that you are also NOT able to manufacture a vaccine for it. Alternatively if we don't have the knowledge to make viruses and vaccines on demand, that won't stop mother nature from her never ending quest to kills us all.