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Bill Sloman
Guest
On Tuesday, 5 August 2014 14:40:34 UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:
James Arthur's claim to understand the subject fully is a trifle hollow.
You can't teach a virus anything. All it can do is mutate randomly.
You can select the results of the random mutations - of those mutation that aren't immediately fatal to the virus - and see what they do in a test animal.
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2011/12/fears-about-mutant-h5n1-hinge-ferrets-flu-model
> If the premise is that viruses easily mutate and share mutations, all the worse.
They already do that in the wild. What's "worse" about watching them do it in a controlled environment, where the eventual more lethal variant is confined and available for study?
> The goals--such as they are--could be achieved by other means, with less lethal models.
Do tell us how. Your "full understanding" should be up to explaining several of these "other means", if they existed.
> It's beyond irresponsible, and the rationalizations are pathetic. All to indulge some academic's morbid curiosity?
We know that the wild flu virus has produced a more lethal variant in the past. Being forewarned about about other potentially lethal mutations is a necessary preliminary to working out some kind of defensive response.
Speculating about the next Spanish flu may be morbid, but exploiting the possibility of finding out how it might become more lethal seems entirely rational.
> Crossing Ebola with the flu is equally useless, equally insane.
Since the ebola virus isn't wide-spread or particularly easily transmissible, it would seem to be a lot more insane. The problem with political satire is that no matter how demented the ideas you come up with for comic effect, real politicians regular turn out to be madder. I'd like to give you credit as a satirist, but I'm afraid you look more like a lampoon.
> Organisms win by out-evolving one another, a race we can't win if our scientists actively direct pathogens' evolution to kill us.
Here's where your claim of "full understanding" falls over again. We can't direct the evolution of pathogens. We can keep track of what they do on their own, and how they get on in small populations of ferrets, but it's strictly observation - we can't direct the process.
> There's no civilian point to making biological atomic weapons, and military research is illegal, outlawed by international treaty.
Who is making a weapon? The aim is to see what mother nature might do - and probably will do, when she gets around to it - so that we can have defenses in place before the wild type virus comes up with another more lethal variation.
> So, there's no point to it at all.
No point that you can understand - despite your claim of "full understanding".
> It's dangerous, for nothing.
Sure it's dangerous. We might see a dangerous virus, contained in the lab, before it appears in the wild, where it would be more a lot dangerous.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
James Arthur's claim to understand the subject fully is a trifle hollow.
You can't teach a virus anything. All it can do is mutate randomly.
You can select the results of the random mutations - of those mutation that aren't immediately fatal to the virus - and see what they do in a test animal.
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2011/12/fears-about-mutant-h5n1-hinge-ferrets-flu-model
> If the premise is that viruses easily mutate and share mutations, all the worse.
They already do that in the wild. What's "worse" about watching them do it in a controlled environment, where the eventual more lethal variant is confined and available for study?
> The goals--such as they are--could be achieved by other means, with less lethal models.
Do tell us how. Your "full understanding" should be up to explaining several of these "other means", if they existed.
> It's beyond irresponsible, and the rationalizations are pathetic. All to indulge some academic's morbid curiosity?
We know that the wild flu virus has produced a more lethal variant in the past. Being forewarned about about other potentially lethal mutations is a necessary preliminary to working out some kind of defensive response.
Speculating about the next Spanish flu may be morbid, but exploiting the possibility of finding out how it might become more lethal seems entirely rational.
> Crossing Ebola with the flu is equally useless, equally insane.
Since the ebola virus isn't wide-spread or particularly easily transmissible, it would seem to be a lot more insane. The problem with political satire is that no matter how demented the ideas you come up with for comic effect, real politicians regular turn out to be madder. I'd like to give you credit as a satirist, but I'm afraid you look more like a lampoon.
> Organisms win by out-evolving one another, a race we can't win if our scientists actively direct pathogens' evolution to kill us.
Here's where your claim of "full understanding" falls over again. We can't direct the evolution of pathogens. We can keep track of what they do on their own, and how they get on in small populations of ferrets, but it's strictly observation - we can't direct the process.
> There's no civilian point to making biological atomic weapons, and military research is illegal, outlawed by international treaty.
Who is making a weapon? The aim is to see what mother nature might do - and probably will do, when she gets around to it - so that we can have defenses in place before the wild type virus comes up with another more lethal variation.
> So, there's no point to it at all.
No point that you can understand - despite your claim of "full understanding".
> It's dangerous, for nothing.
Sure it's dangerous. We might see a dangerous virus, contained in the lab, before it appears in the wild, where it would be more a lot dangerous.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
