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Lethal Virus from 1918 Genetically Reconstructed
The Sunshine Project ^
| 9 October 2003
Posted on 10/31/2003 12:10:53 PM PST by GluteusMax
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But there is little need for antiviral drugs against the 1918 strain if the 1918 strain had not been recreated in the first place "It simply does not make any scientific sense to create a new threat just to develop new countermeasures against it."No kidding. This is insanity.
To: GluteusMax
The world does not need biodefense programs to create a 'genetically engineered disease gap'." Ugh. Just flashed back to the 60s...
2
posted on
10/31/2003 12:18:05 PM PST
by
Eala
(FR Trad Anglican Directory: http://eala.freeservers.com/anglican - Proud member VIOC)
To: GluteusMax
Boy am I glad they're playing around with this...(/ sarcasm)
3
posted on
10/31/2003 12:20:11 PM PST
by
xrp
To: GluteusMax
"From an arms control perspective it appears to be particularly sensitive if a military research institution embarks on a project that aims at constructing more dangerous pathogens. "If Jeffery Taubenberger worked in a Chinese, Russian or Iranian laboratory, his work might well be seen as the 'smoking gun' of an offensive biowarfare program," says van Aken."The problem is:......
Who says that the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, (whowever) are NOT working on this as a weapons program? It may be hypocricy to work on this, but it could be used to create antibiotics to fight it. The truth is: bioweapons are not useful, because they will also kill your side, but we could also be looking at an "Army of the Twelve Monkeys" scenario. A suicidal terrorist would love to get his creepy hands on this stuff.
To: GluteusMax
Everyone seems to be assuming that no other government could possibly have resurrected the Spanish flu. North Korea and any number of other rogue states could have done this, and they would be less likely to talk about it than the US Army would.
In short, there could be a very good reason for pursuing this line of research.
5
posted on
10/31/2003 12:26:07 PM PST
by
Montfort
To: GluteusMax
I thought the purpose of a weapon was to kill your enemy, NOT yourself. The way that the flu spreads, this was be just as lethal to us as to the enemy.
6
posted on
10/31/2003 12:27:38 PM PST
by
jim_trent
To: GluteusMax
There is/was some thought that much of the virulence of the Spanish flu [which probably originated in Fort Riley, Kansas may have been due to a bacterium which accompanied it [perhaps Haemophilus influenzae].
To: jim_trent
Not if you had been vacinated for this paticular strain. So, they might be growing it to develop a vacine.
8
posted on
10/31/2003 12:30:29 PM PST
by
Leisler
To: GluteusMax
It is important to our national security to have the ability to deal with these diseases, should they be loosed on us. We can't invent a cure/vaccine/etc. without having the disease to study.
9
posted on
10/31/2003 12:31:37 PM PST
by
xm177e2
(Stalinists, Maoists, Ba'athists, Pacifists: Why are they always on the same side?)
To: jim_trent
The Army needs to stay away from this kind of work. The Russians were light years ahead of us and fortunately realized that they could develop something so deadly and uncontrollable that they stopped research and destroyed their samples. All it takes is for one accidentally infected researcher to take a deadly virus home with him and you can have something on your hands that makes the most unimagineable horror seem like kids stuff!
10
posted on
10/31/2003 12:32:34 PM PST
by
tripod
To: xrp
Boy am I glad they're playing around with this...(/ sarcasm)I can't see a plausible justification for actively seeking out surviving tissue samples (requiring several attempts to find viable virii) from lungs of corpses.
How gullible must one be to really believe Moslem terrorists could get access to records of dead Western soldiers who died from the 1918 Spanish flu, exhume them, successfully identify and find the RNA they were seeking and then pull off a successful genome mapping?
To: GluteusMax
This is insane. Shades of Jurassic Park...
12
posted on
10/31/2003 12:34:25 PM PST
by
Steely Glint
("Communists are just Democrats in a big hurry.")
To: GluteusMax
No kidding. This is insanity. I can't say that I agree. The quoted language--"It simply does not make any scientific sense to create a new threat just to develop new countermeasures against it"--is too cute. It assumes that noone else can accomplish the same thing as the researchers did. But if the researchers can do it, so can NK, China and Iran. Don't you think it would be a good idea to understand the genome of this killer for countermeasures?
To: Steely Glint
We actually ARE all gonna die.
14
posted on
10/31/2003 12:36:47 PM PST
by
Lazamataz
(PROUDLY POSTING WITHOUT READING THE ARTICLE SINCE 1999 !!!!)
To: GluteusMax
What's
not said in the article is that the "Sunshine Project" is a leftist group that would prefer to see us vulnerable to whatever bio-nasties our friends in Cuba, China,or the Middle East can come up with.
They were also opposed to the destruction of chemical weapon stocks, and tried to create a panic: apparently preferring to expose those around the arms depots to insanely higher risks; meanwhile, promoting "safety equipment" ( gas masks, sheets of polyvinyl, etc.) at inflated prices, via website links.
They know quite well you have to use live viruses to create vaccines, and they use the presence of these viruses to create panic.
It would not surprise me to learn they ( or some of their more ardent followers ) have been behind some of the "unusual incidents" in some of the biolabs.
15
posted on
10/31/2003 12:36:52 PM PST
by
genefromjersey
(So little time - so many FLAMES to light !!)
To: Steely Glint
This is insane. Shades of Jurassic Park... More like "The Stand" by Stephen King (or at least the beginning of it).
To: tripod
Powder..Patch..Ball FIRE!
All it takes is for one accidentally infected researcher to take a deadly virus home with him and you can have something on your hands that makes the most unimagineable horror seem like kids stuff
You should send Stephen King a email telling him about this..
He might write a book using it as the plot line!!!!!:+0
To: GluteusMax
m o o n, that spells deadly virus
18
posted on
10/31/2003 12:39:00 PM PST
by
week 71
To: Montfort
Everyone seems to be assuming that no other government could possibly have resurrected the Spanish flu. North Korea and any number of other rogue states could have done this, and they would be less likely to talk about it than the US Army would. In short, there could be a very good reason for pursuing this line of research.
The problem with that line of thinking is that a bioweapon is by design not the original virus. Researchers seek to identify what made the 1918 bug so deadly and then splice that sequence in and try it on mice. They do this till they get the "results" they are looking for. (Ghoulish) If a rogue state went after the especially virulent features of the 1918 variant to incorporate into a modern influenza strain, who says our conjecture on their choice would be correct? We may be immunized against something that doesn't exist in the enemy arsenal.
To: GluteusMax
Does the Army have any 'Muslim Chaplains' assigned to these labs?
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