Russ Abbott wrote:
Let's assume that you discovered that human beings were built in such
a way that a certain kind of virus would wipe most of us out.
The killer 1918 Flu virus has been pieced together [1] and a synthetic
polio virus has been made too [2]. This will only get easier and I'm
sure the know-how will incrementally find its way into commercial
hardware/software systems. In the not so far off future I expect that
instantiating certain classes of synthetic proteins and assembling them
will involve not so much more as loading up a genome into a
sequence/protein editor, doing some simulations, and then doing a
build/run cycle. There are good reasons and strong market pressures to
have this technology be fast and reliable in order to develop therapies
for naturally-occurring bugs. Meanwhile, understanding what these
synthetic proteins actually could do will be difficult and expensive.
Unfortunately, sooner or later, this is a scenario that will tend to
invite organizations to the game that have `issues', but no issues at
all with the risk.
On the other hand, if you had informed people, perhaps the word would
have gotten out and triggered a biological arms race.
Yes.
[1] http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8103
[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2122619.stm
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