On Mon, 7 Aug 2000, John Clark wrote:
> I haven't heard any protests from the anti genetics people, I guess they're too
> busy protecting the world from killer tomatoes, but I got to tell you this scares
> the hell out of me. I'm sure they took elaborate precautions to prevent this thing from
> getting out, but holly shit! Imagine a virus that's airborn and as contagious as the
Bacteria used in experiments such as this are often pretty crippled
strains, lacking the ability to manufacture one or more essential
nutrients not found in nature, but provided in culture. I don't know what
is done with viruses, but I imagine something similar.
*However*, I see no reason why someone up to no good couldn't repeat this
experiment with a wild virus and make something *very* nasty, other than
the high probabilty he would kill himself before he kills a whole lot of
other people.
There are rumors that then Soviet scientists did pretty much the above not
with a cold virus, but with weaponized smallpox. I had discounted this as
pretty unlikely, but now I'm not so sure...
steve
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:35:41 MDT