Posted on 06/11/2014 10:55:30 AM PDT by chessplayer
Scientists have created a life-threatening virus that closely resembles the 1918 Spanish flu strain that killed an estimated 50m people in an experiment labelled as "crazy" by opponents.
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison used a technique called reverse genetics to build the virus from fragments of wild bird flu strains. They then mutated the virus to make it airborne to spread more easily from one animal to another.
"The work they are doing is absolutely crazy. The whole thing is exceedingly dangerous," said Lord May, the former President of the Royal Society and one time chief science adviser to the UK government. "Yes, there is a danger, but it's not arising form the viruses out there in the animals, it's arising from the labs of grossly ambitious people."
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
The goal of the environmentalists is to reduce the human population of the earth by 90-95%.
We are so screwed.
“The Hot Zone” (true story)
“The Ebola virus kills nine out of ten of its victims so quickly and gruesomely that even biohazard experts are terrified. It is airborne, it is extremely contagious, and in the winter of 1989, it seemed about to burn through the suburbs of Washington D.C.”
“At Fort Detrick’s USAMRIID, an Army research facility outside the nation’s capital, a SWAT team of soldiers and scientists wearing biohazard space suits was organized to stop the outbreak of the exotic “hot” virus. The grim operation went on in secret for eighteen days, under unprecedented, dangerous conditions.”
“The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story in depth, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their outbreaks in the human race. From a remote African cave hot with Ebola virus, to an airplane over Africa that is carrying a sick passenger who dissolves into a human virus bomb, to the confines of a Biosafety Level 4 military lab where scientists risk their lives studying lethal substances that could kill them quickly and horribly, The Hot Zone describes situations that a few years ago would have been taken for science fiction. As the tropical wildernesses of the world are destroyed, previously unknown viruses that have lived undetected in the rain forest for eons are entering human populations. The appearance of AIDS is part of a larger pattern, and the implications for the future of the human species are terrifying.”
“The first chapter of The Hot Zone is one of the most horrifying things I’ve read in my whole life–and then it gets worse. That’s what I keep marveling over: it keeps getting worse.”
–Stephen King
http://richardpreston.net/preston-books/hot-zone
And we play with these damn things in labs to make them even more lethal.
“That wasn’t any act of God. That was an act of pure human f##kery.” - Larry Underwood, The Stand.
Exactly.
I usually disagree with the Guardian.
Not this time.
Not so nutty Ping.
Well this sure as heck is one sign that the Uni is getting way too much funding.
“It is not far-fetched to imagine some possible technology such that, first, virtually all sufficiently advanced civilizations eventually discover it, and second, its discovery leads almost universally to existential disaster.”
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1848
About why there may be no ET’s exploring the galaxy in spaceships. They may have destroyed themselves, accidentally or otherwise, before they could.
Didn’t these people learn ANYTHING from Michael Crichton’s novels???
Don't worry, Gwyneth Paltrow's character gets killed off early :)
Like the effort to generate black holes,
this WILL eventually succeed.
Yup. Trying to create black holes in labs. Just before the Trinity nook test, the scientists weren’t 100% certain it wouldn’t ignite the atmosphere and destroy the entire planet. But the went ahead with it anyway.
It wasn't long ago that a group of adult Muhammedan students of biological science were caught at a northeast reservoir in the middle of the night.
Anyone remember the fact that the socialists in our country (Aliskyites, Weather Underground, et al) want 20-25 million fewer of us? I think that was back in the 1970s... with inflation, I’m sure the number is higher now...
And it could be that scientists are doing it simply because they can.
It's one thing when a military has the capability.
It's a whole different story when we start thinking about the ramifications of a mentally-disturbed university PhD student potentially having the ability to create something that might kill millions if released.
Or a small group of Muslim students who suddenly decide to go jihadi.
And how many carriers could be in the latest wave of young illegal aliens who are now confined in close quarters and infecting the CBP agents?
Our doom consists in our getting what we damn well insisted on.
The lesson here is ... what? That the tropical wildernesses of the world should be destroyed even more rapidly to eliminate the biological reservoirs of ultra nasty diseases?
Or they could fly planes into buildings and thereby goad our government into building a police state that deprives us of our rights.
Or they could place containers of nerve gas disguised as oxy-acetlyne tanks in the New York subway system and open them up during the morning rush hour.
Or they could burn billions of tons of coal and increase the temperature of the earth.
Or they could even flouridate our water supply and pollute our precious bodily fluids.
I grew up with the perpetual threat of a rain of Soviet thermonuclear weapons falling from the sky without warning. My brothers and I even guessed how many megatons they had targeted for our home city.
Concerned? Sure. This merits watching. But some boogeymen are real and some are made up. Either way, I was done with being scared a long time ago.
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