Re: back yard gene hacking?

Wasn't it Carey Sublette who wrote:
>
>The difficulty is in large part due to disease virulence being an
extremely
>specialized ecological niche.

Diseases tend evolve away from high virulence because killing the host 
also means death for the disease organisms. Incapacitating the host 
reduces the number of contacts, thereby reducing the ability of the 
disease to propagate.

High virulence tends to occur in situations where the disease organism 
has evolved in a different host population. That could be a different 
species or an isolated population of the same species. The original host 
population gradually evolves resistance to the disease, and the disease 
evolves to increase the strength of its attack on the host. High 
virulence occurs when the disease jumps to a different population which 
has not evolved such resistance.

-- 
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure