"John Schilling" <schillin@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:n0alq31p8q1gkteg2cf91v9b67e7ive1ov@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Wed, 6 Feb 2008 14:07:19 +0000, Mike Williams
> <nospam@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>>Wasn't it who wrote:
>>>On Feb 5, 3:51 pm, Shawn Wilson <ikonoql...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>> On Feb 4, 2:30 pm, bealoid <sig...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>>>> > assume a well funded group, with staff and equipment. (For example,
>>>> > look
>>>> > at someone like Aum Shin Ryko cult managing to aerosolise Anthrax
>>>> > into air
>>>> > for 24 hours.)
>
>>>> > How hard is it for them to get a bunch of virus / bacteria / fungal
>>>> > spores
>>>> > and 'gene hack' them into something really vicious - spreads like
>>>> > measles,
>>>> > infects about 80% of people it contacts, kills 60% of infected
within
>>>> > 4
>>>> > weeks, leaves the rest immune from future attacks, but with severly
>>>> > compromised breathing (eg COPD) and with other weaknesses.
>
>>>> Not too hard at all, with the right resources. You don't even need
>>>> gene hacking, just get your hands on samples of the 'Spanish Flu'. Or
>>>> Smallpox. Or Plague (need fleas to spread that).
>
>>>Yes, what exactly are the "right resources" to get into the best
>>>guarded biolab in Russia and get away with it? Keeping in mind Tsar
>>>Vlad's area of expertise and likely priorities?
>
>>It might be possible to obtain Spanish Flu if you can find other Arctic
>>graves containing victims. Presumably the Longyearbyen Cemetery has been
>>made safe now, but since there were an estimated 50 million deaths,
>>there may well be other such graves, and they can't all have been found
>>and made safe.
>
> That was basically Aum Shinrikyo's method of getting hold of a virulent
> Anthrax strain, and it didn't work for them. There's *lots* of bugs in
> the wild, even if you look specifically in plague-stricken graveyards,
> and the ones which grow best in even a tailored culture medium are not
> the ones you're looking for.
>
> There's a whole lot of trial and error involved in that approach, with
> each trial a substantial expense and a non-trivial risk of discovery.
> Oh, and some of the errors will kill you.
Yes, it is not commonly realized regarding biological warfare: virulent
germs are extremely rare in nature. When one hears about microorganisms
with
warfare potential (plague, anthrax, tularemia, etc.) it sounds like you
just
need to get a sample of this stuff and you've got yourself a weapon. Not
so.
Nearly all the strains you will find will be useless or next to useless
for
this purpose. One of the major challenges for a national level weapons
program is finding cultures that have the required properties and
maintaining them (very important! cultures tend to adapt to lab
conditions,
not future intended hosts) .
The difficulty is in large part due to disease virulence being an
extremely
specialized ecological niche. Even with all the tools of modern molecular
biology and genomics science is currently quite ignorant about what
properties bestow virulence in any given organism, or how to enhance them.
Smallpox is possibly the only exception to this rule - but it is the
hardest
to get since it is extinct in nature.
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