What could possibly go wrong?
Designer pathogens good, guns made with a deskjet bad.
If they don’t and someone else figures out how to, then what kind of timeline would their response be, what would it look like, how long would it take, what would be the efficacy of known solutions for current mutations against a novel or new mutation, who is best capable of responding to an outbreak, what is the cost for not studying if an outbreak occurs for a weaponized version or mutation that we didn’t study, etc, etc, etc,...
You mean scientist are “debating” something instead of coming to a quick consensus so it can be settled?
Been done already....
Bernadette: Oh, I take pacts very seriously. One time at my lab, a petri dish of genetically modified super-virus went missing. That day we made a pinky swear never to admit we crossed Ebola with the common cold.
Howard: Why would you cross Ebola with the common cold?
Bernadette: We never did. That would be a terrible, terrible thing.
"As a U.S. operation of 3,000 troops begins to turn the tide against the deadly virus in neighboring Liberia, calls have grown for it to shift resources towards ally Britain, which is leading the response in Sierra Leone. Rates …". Reuters · ByEmma Farge · 5 hours ago
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DUBLIN - Ireland is testing a dead person who recently returned from Africa for the Ebola virus, the Health Service Executive (HSE) of Ireland said on Thursday. Appropriate infection control procedures are being put in … Sudan Vision · 5 hours ago
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" Officials at a Montgomery County hospital say they treated a patient with possible Ebola symptoms this week, but determined the man did not have the virus. In order to provide a better environment for commenting, we have changed our commenting platform." WTOP · 2 hours ago
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We have scientists to thank for killer bees and leprosy carrying armadillos; now this.
you shouldn’t summon demons that can’t be banished.
Please make “The Stand” required reading for these scientists.
A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread
The problem is this: without knowing which mutations make a virus more pathogenic or more transmissible and by what mechanism they do this, it is impossible to know whether a virus circulating in the wild is mutating in such a way as to make it more pathogenic or transmissible.
Nature is the biggest experimenter there is. And Nature, unlike scientists, makes no effort to contain viruses.
I would rather know ahead of time if a virus is mutating in such a way as to make it more pathogenic or transmissible. I want to be forewarned in time to make preparations before it spreads too far to be contained.