Scientists create deadly strain of influenza virus, apocalypse averted... for now

[Incodcito]

:sigh: I don't get how anyone can be optimistic of the future. The increased progression of technology will allow more and more people to have access to the "Apocalypse" button. Eventually it will be pressed.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

one could manufacture a vaccine to that strain as easily as any others.

Doesn't it take some time to produce a vaccine for a new influenza virus? I.e. if someone manufactured a version with a so far unknown surface structure or whatever such properties are called and then released it, I imagine quit some time would pass until we would actually get to massively distribute a vaccine.

 

[Skwink]

Thanks a lot, Netherlands.

 

[Zelig]

:sigh: I don't get how anyone can be optimistic of the future. The increased progression of technology will allow more and more people to have access to the "Apocalypse" button. Eventually it will be pressed.

We just need to expand faster than the reach of the apocalypse.

 

[Incodcito]

We just need to expand faster than the reach of the apocalypse.

Good luck with that. Me thinks there is a great amount of time between now and the advent of significant space colonization. Plenty of time for us to cause our own extinction or the destruction of civilization.

 

[Polycrates]

So if anyone's interested, I looked this guy up on pubmed, and while the relevant paper doesn't seem to have been published yet, his group's previous paper, involving making a drug-resistant version of swine flu, is quite interesting. Hopefully it shows why you do these studies - find out how a disease can break through barriers to its proliferation, so that when that actually happens in the real world we're that much better able to respond. In this case, incidences of swine flu can be monitored for this mutation, and the mutant strain can more likely be nipped in the bud.

The other thing to note with both these studies is that they're not wacky way-out-there heavily-manufactured viruses, but the sort of thing that mother nature herself is likely to produce on her own if left to her own devices. They're both merely a few point mutations of already-existing viruses, of exactly the sort that can easily happen in the real world (the partially-resistant strain - isolated from a patient - that they "enhanced" in the linked study already had a bunch of point mutations in comparison to the wild type strain). This is not making brand-new ways to kill ourselves, this is just trying to stay one step ahead of mother nature's attempts to kill us. Seems to me that the chances of these viruses occurring naturally in the wild anyway are far greater than the chances of them escaping from this lab, so it's a risk I would say is worth taking.

Incidentally, their materials and methods section confirms that yes, for good or ill it really is super easy to make these viruses. So easy that any well-equipped lab in your average evil-underground-volcano-island-lair-of-doom could well and truly have manufactured them or something equally nasty without the aid of this paper, if they were so inclined and weren't too big on the whole biosafety thing. Still waaaaay beyond any terrorist group though, and would really still have to be state-sponsored or supervillain-sponsored. And I'm honestly not convinced that a state actor could manufacture that sort of thing without it being noticed, nor that it would really be as effective a diplomatic tool as nukes already are.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

Doesn't it take some time to produce a vaccine for a new influenza virus? I.e. if someone manufactured a version with a so far unknown surface structure or whatever such properties are called and then released it, I imagine quit some time would pass until we would actually get to massively distribute a vaccine.

It would have to be a known surface antigen to manufacture a vaccine. It would take time to manufacture enough vaccine to innoculate most of the population, but that is only because manufacture of anything in large quantities takes time.

 

[Crezth]

I am not saying anything like that. Why do people always jump to conclusions? I am about the last one who would want to stop legitimate research. My concern here is that any civilian research centre is basically capable of producing what I presume is a viable extremely dangerous virus. Think about the consequences of that.

But is this really the case? I mean, I don't understand what you're proposing. Again, it's not like the Powers That Be don't already have means of bringing about apocalypse.

This really is CFC OT at its finest Jesus Christ people... just... no, I am speechless.

I realize you think you're being pounced on. It's because you are - I apologize. I'm just trying to understand where you're coming from and the tone of this thread seems like you're saying "hey guys we should put science on a leash." I'm saying it's already leashed quite well, thankyouverymuch.

EDIT: Also a thread title like "apocalypse averted... for now" is totally loaded speech.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

It would have to be a known surface antigen to manufacture a vaccine.

There is always a time and place to get to know a new one. And now imagine how long that will take while people are dieing and the economy crumples.
That's a very dire scenario to be sure, but I suspect it is not that hard to make such a surface antigen mutate if one can create such a killer virus in the first place.

@Polycrates
What is so crazy about a sufficient equipped lab and sufficiently educated biologists privately creating such a virus? Is the necessary equipment so hard/expensive to come by? Or do you think the actual knowledge of doing it will remain too well contained within non-private institutions?

But is this really the case? I mean, I don't understand what you're proposing. Again, it's not like the Powers That Be don't already have means of bringing about apocalypse.

As I already pointed out: Viral "apocalypse" is a lot cheaper and easier to create than atomic "apocalypse" and a lot harder to control.

For instance atomic weapons require highly enriched uranium/plutonium to be build. Which to be produced needs tons of know-how, money and by default very noticeable facilities. You can try to steal it of course, but that will be very tough, too, as it is undoubtedly well protected.

What does this killer virus require as fundamental material? Ah that's right. Some sick Asian chicken.

 

[Polycrates]

@Polycrates
What is so crazy about a sufficient equipped lab and sufficiently educated biologists privately creating such a virus? Is the necessary equipment so hard/expensive to come by? Or do you think the actual knowledge of doing it will remain too well contained within non-private institutions?

But how are they going to privately create it?
The equipment absolutely required is pretty limited really - high-speed centrifuge, PCR thermocycler, laminar flow hood, CO2 incubator, a bunsen burner, a good freezer and access to a sequencer (probably the hardest bit). Likewise the materials - bog standard cell lines, a bacterial plasmid that I'm guessing is pretty standard (still might raise some red flags, I'm not sure), standard but expensive mutagenesis kit with its fancy bacteria, a bunch of appropriate primers, and the standard set of reagents and kits etc that you need for run-of-the-mill DNA work. Oh, and a sick person/sick chook/the appropriate DNA. Knowledge-wise, there's no particularly specialised knowledge involved in the production, and most of the steps are pretty routine molecular biology. Knowing how to work with it safely would be the most specialised knowledge involved, I'd reckon. Not particularly fancy stuff by any means, but still the sort of stuff you can only acquire if you're a proper lab that's authorised by whatever appropriate regulatory bodies. So you'd be known about by the national biosafety authorities and so be subject to the appropriate regulations for whatever your lab is authorised to work on and be under scrutiny.

That amount of stuff wouldn't get you anywhere near the biosafety level required for actually working with that sort of virus legitimately, and obviously doesn't include the animal testing part, both of which require that you have an obscenely high level of biosafety precautions and that you are watched like a hawk by regulators. Which essentially means that you're in a high-security government-associated facility, and you'd need either an incredibly large and co-ordinated conspiracy or direct official approval to pull it off. I don't know if any rogue nations have these sort of facilities doing this sort of work (I doubt it), but if they do I'm sure they attract a whole lot of interest from international bodies as well.

So that really just leaves the option of doing the virus stuff under the table in a non-viral lab and hoping to avoid the regulators and colleagues. I guess if you had an actual legitimate lab that just happened to be full of jihadis who all decided to create a humanity-threatening-virus with no real personal safety precautions, and not a single sane person in the lab then maybe?

 

[innonimatu]

I guess if you had an actual legitimate lab that just happened to be full of jihadis who all decided to create a humanity-threatening-virus with no real personal safety precautions, and not a single sane person in the lab then maybe?

I'm not one to worry too much about the latest "doomsday scare", but I'm not that sanguine about this one. I can see creating labs for this becoming possible: there are many labs already with only rudimentary (locally-evolved) stock controls, and the equipment, though expensive, is getting replaced rotated pretty fast - what happens to the old equipment?

As for people, you get a share of crazies in every field. The difficult part is a group of them associating and working with the same common goal. But it seems to me that this will eventually be something a single person could pull off. And such a crazy would presumably not be too concerned about his own safety...

The good think is that the likelihood of successful testing and refinement of any deadly and very contagious virus before he managed to kill himself is next to none. I hope.

 

[mechaerik]

I think Kozmos lives in Madagascar.

 

[Polycrates]

I'm not one to worry too much about the latest "doomsday scare", but I'm not that sanguine about this one. I can see creating labs for this becoming possible: there are many labs already with only rudimentary (locally-evolved) stock controls, and the equipment, though expensive, is getting replaced rotated pretty fast - what happens to the old equipment?

As for people, you get a share of crazies in every field. The difficult part is a group of them associating and working with the same common goal. But it seems to me that this will eventually be something a single person could pull off. And such a crazy would presumably not be too concerned about his own safety...

The good think is that the likelihood of successful testing and refinement of any deadly and very contagious virus before he managed to kill himself is next to none. I hope.

Yeah there's nothing particularly unobtainable on its own (except the sequencer) but the sheer number of bits of equipment and especially consumables you would need are just going to make it practically impossible to set up an underground lab on the sly, it seems to me.

But yeah, more likely someone doing it under the table at an existing facility. I mean I'm no virologist, but I make quite a lot of viruses and I reckon I'd be able to make that virus on my own with stuff I have ready access to; given 6-12 months, an infected chook and a newfound faith in a particularly insane brand of islam or whatever (dear any secret services reading this thread: I do not actually plan to do this). I'd get found out, of course, especially trying to get the primers and get all the sequencing done (you really need to send away for sequencing), and I'd probably end up infecting everyone around with the wildtype virus on day one because we don't have the appropriate biosafety level (this would also ring a few alarm bells), but hey I'm not really much on the whole criminal masterminding thing. I dunno though, I reckon it would be hard to get away with it without a pretty significant conspiracy of people either actively helping or keeping mum; who are not only all scientists in the same institute but also intensely nuts in exactly the same really rare sort of way. I'm just not sure that's really plausible, but I dunno. Again, probably not as plausible as mother nature cooking it up of her own accord in her own laboratory.

Of course, trying to stop these Dutch guys in the OP doing their thing in their ultra-secure facility would have no bearing whatsoever on this particular scenario, except to give a better understanding of how to go about cleaning up the mess.

 

[Crezth]

As I already pointed out: Viral "apocalypse" is a lot cheaper and easier to create than atomic "apocalypse" and a lot harder to control.

For instance atomic weapons require highly enriched uranium/plutonium to be build. Which to be produced needs tons of know-how, money and by default very noticeable facilities. You can try to steal it of course, but that will be very tough, too, as it is undoubtedly well protected.

What does this killer virus require as fundamental material? Ah that's right. Some sick Asian chicken.

Wouldn't this be a moot point, in all practicality, because those atomic weapons already exist and in number?

 

[Winner]

I think Kozmos lives in Madagascar.

Spoiler :

The lab I'm currently working at works with seasonal flu. Just. Normal. Seasonal. Flu. And there's already tons of locks and key card authorizations required. And getting into the animal testing wing is another level of security.

Like someone said, not your high school biology laboratory.

And one more thing: the BSLs also specify the security protocols involved, not just safety guidelines. You really do have no idea what you are talking about.

What's your problem? Because I am sick of your attitude. I never said or implied anything that would need any "correcting" by you.

EDIT: Also a thread title like "apocalypse averted... for now" is totally loaded speech.

First rule of making threads on CFC: start with a catchy title. I guess you didn't notice, but the whole OP is meant to be slightly ironic and provocative. Otherwise I'd get one response and the thread would be over.

So I kinda brought this on myself, I must admit

---

BTW, I didn't answer my own question concerning what I am going to do to survive the pandemic: I have a decent stockpile of hospital-grade disinfectants (I use mass transit practically every day, so I have it to wash my hands when I get home) and respirators, so when it starts, I won't leave my flat without rubber gloves, a respirator, and protective goggles. I'll set up a place in the entrance hall where I'll disinfect the hell of myself after arrival and change into new clothes.

Hopefully it will only last for a few months.

 

[El_Machinae]

It's actually pretty scary. I also work in biology, and I'd have to say that it would be actually rather easy for me to manufacture a custom virus. I'm nowhere near well trained enough to know how to make a disease-causing one, it's well outside my field, but I could easily get access to the required technology. You'd just need to be high enough in your field where you can order supplies without other people double-checking your sequences, or notice that you're ordering a bit more supplies than you should be (and we commonly use more supplies than we should be for our 'main' project, because you run as many pet projects as you can think of around your main experiments).

The true solution is progress. If you make the world more restrictive, you still have a world where a determined person can unleash a plague. The more medical progress we have (which means that the more individual people help boost our knowledge or research resources), the easier it will be to counter-act whatever terror is unleashed.

The idea that the future is increasingly scary IS rather true. I've heard one person state that it's a lot like balancing spinning plates. Balancing one plate (nuclear weapons) didn't lead to disaster, and actually ain't too hard once you get used to it. But that plate is still spinning, and we're going to add another one, home-grown pandemics. Now you've got two plates, not one. And we're potentially going to get more and more plates into the air, spinning.

 

[Winner]

Humanity: inventing new and novel ways to kill people since 200,000 B.C.

 

[El_Machinae]

True, but our ability to cause potentially irreversible cataclysm is growing.

 

[Winner]

True, but our ability to cause potentially irreversible cataclysm is growing.

Yes, I am in total agreement. Progress generally means harnessing more energy, and more energy means greater potential destruction.

What is moderately scary is the inherent dual use of biotechnology. In nuclear industry, it is relatively easy to make sure someone isn't building a bomb (although it's sometimes problematic to persuade people who don't want to be persuaded, see the Iran controversy).

It's much harder to control the spread and use of biotechnology, which is clearly the booming industry that will shape the decades to come. In other words, I think we're entering a dangerous phase in which our ability to produce deadly stuff in biolabs is outstripping our ability to control what's happening and ensure it's used for good purposes.

 

[El_Machinae]

Well, it's really a matter of detection and response. During H5N1, a lot of people responded well, and we saw a pretty big drop in the seasonal flu transmission during that period )). We didn't respond ideally, but education is awfully prophylactic. Detection is an information technology, which means that foresight on our part can build a lot of power for us.