Comment by prophetjohn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by prophetjohn | Hacker News Reader

I think there's more to gain than lose by publishing these results. First of all, the research states that ~50% of people infected with the virus would die, not that humanity would be reduced by 50%, necessarily. It's unclear if this is an implication and I think, as a result, it's a bit of a misleading title.

Also, say the title is not misleading and they publish the results and some crazy dictator gets his hands on it. First, he has to be crazy enough to want to develop a virus that has a 50% chance of killing him. Then he has to find scientists that are willing to develop the virus that has a 50% chance of killing them and their family and friends, etc. The likelihood of all these things transpiring seems relatively low.

On the other hand, this research seems to indicate that it's not wholly unlikely that this kind of virus mutation could transpire organically, in which case this "recipe" being public knowledge would be instrumental in fighting the disease. Even if it doesn't arise organically (crazy terrorist convinces crazy scientists) the public knowledge of it would still reduce the 50% death rate.

And I also feel that the kind of sentiments that lead people to claim that this research should never have been performed in the first place are misguided. This kind of tinkering and hacking around is likely what would lead to the next big cure, etc. Never stop scientists from learning new things.

>Also, say the title is not misleading and they publish the results and some crazy dictator gets his hands on it.

The difference between bioweapons and nuclear weapons is the former don't require the resources of a state. It could just as easily be done by a few grad students. Maybe even a single grad student.

There was an article that went over exactly this in Discover magazine a month or two ago. Summary is that it's harder than you might think. To quote:

  "You would need more than a garage; you would need a great
  garage and a lot of money. And it's not trivial. You need
  the oligonucleotides to stitch genes together, and as far
  as I know, most companies will check the order if the
  sequence represents that of a dangerous virus."

http://discovermagazine.com/2011/oct/21-dawn-of-the-biohacke...

Soo if a university group can do it, then it's too difficult for North Korea to do?

The university group can do it because it can pay $500k to our biotech industry for pre-researched and in-production batches of chemicals, equipment, and other supplies. North Korea doesn't have that biotechnology industry to start with and would be starting over from a cottage industry.

I doubt it would be very difficult to social-engineer your way into being able to buy those materials if you had the money.

i dont know where you're from, but your universities are RICH!

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/may/16/cambridge-to...)

> Professor David Tidmarsh, vice-chancellor of Birmingham City University, says [. . .] the university is investing £180m in new buildings, facilities and equipment.

> At Oxford, average spend per student fell to £11,232 in 2009-10 from £11,410 the year before. The university spends substantially more than other institutions. Cambridge spent £8,612 in 2009-10, a rise from £8,118 the year before.*

Rough guide to student numbers (pdf) (http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/global/wwwoxacuk/localsites/gazett...)

You mean the kind of facilities you'd find in a university lab?

Have a look at what groups like Aum Shinrikyo are thought to have achieved. I have no doubt that if they were still active they'd have little problem doing this.

Producing biological agents is trivial. Weaponizing them is a far, far, far more daunting task. See here for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_warfare#Offensive

> it's not wholly unlikely that this kind of virus mutation could transpire organically ...

Interestingly that might give some crazy dictator or lone crazy scientist an incentive to perhaps develop and release it in some particular region of the world. If it looks like a natural mutation then it will be harder to find the culprit.

I guess it depends on if the 50% of humanity claim is accurate and then whether or not it's an evenly distributed 50%. If it's just one half of the world, then this might be feasible, but if every person has a 50% chance of dying from this illness, then the dictator and his scientists would have to be crazy enough to put themselves at a 50% risk of death.

50% is an understatement according to wikipedia [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mortality_from_H5N1 ].

As an aside there's something about the article saying that it required 10 generations of breeding that makes me think that this development is alarmingly low hanging fruit. Could this article be enough for someone to figure out how to recreate the strain?

I wouldn't give too much weight to that graph. To date, the biggest challenge with H5N1 is reporting. Primary outbreaks have occurred in parts of the world where the monitoring and reporting networks are sadly inadequate. It is likely that if you had full reporting on all infections, and not just those that resulted in mass fatalities, that the actual mortality would be less. Also (see my other comment), it is typical for a virus's mortality to be roughly inversely proportional to its infectivity.

Edit: I should add, however, that the H5N1 threat is very real and very troubling. Not end-of-the-world troubling, but set-humanity-back-a-handful-of-decades troubling to be sure...

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