First Synthetic Virus - Polio

[Gmike]

Scientists have assembled the first synthetic virus.
The researchers built the infectious agent from scratch using the genome sequence for polio
To construct the virus, the researchers say they followed a recipe they downloaded from the internet and used gene sequences from a mail-order supplier.
Having constructed the virus, which appears to be identical to its natural counterpart, the researchers, from the University of New York at Stony Brook, injected it into mice to demonstrate that it was active.
The animals were paralysed and then died.
"The reason we did it was to prove that it can be done and it now is a reality," said Dr Eckard Wimmer, leader of the biomedical research team and co-author of the study published in the journal Science.

[theblue8]

Um, why? Because you could? Is that what we're going to do to AIDS a long time from now? Recreate it because we can?

Why not focus on bringing back the dead so we can expedite the zombie apocalypse?

[driedjello]

one of the few cases where it's easier to create than destroy?

[Duckmanlivesagain]

Originally Posted by theblue8

Um, why? Because you could? Is that what we're going to do to AIDS a long time from now? Recreate it because we can?

Why not focus on bringing back the dead so we can expedite the zombie apocalypse?

The same technology that does this, can make a virus that infects cancerous tumours or viruses that infect deadly bacteria.

May seem madness, but we need to keep small pox around and we need to do stuff like this order to combat disease.

And then when we've done that we take thousands and thousands of dogs, mice, cats and rabbits in a building and infect them and count how many die.

[theblue8]

Originally Posted by Duckmanlivesagain

The same technology that does this, can make a virus that infects cancerous tumours or viruses that infect deadly bacteria.

May seem madness, but we need to keep small pox around and we need to do stuff like this order to combat disease.

And then when we've done that we take thousands and thousands of dogs, mice, cats and rabbits in a building and infect them and count how many die.

I chalk it up to not knowing any better. That, I guess, is the limit of the age we live in. When I think about it in a different perspective, as you have either intentionally or unintentionally introduced, I can't help but think that these "random" or intentional "trials", if you will, may just end up benefiting us in the long-run... in some way.

Is that a pink elephant?

[Duckmanlivesagain]

Originally Posted by theblue8

I chalk it up to not knowing any better. That, I guess, is the limit of the age we live in. When I think about it in a different perspective, as you have either intentionally or unintentionally introduced, I can't help but think that these "random" or intentional "trials", if you will, may just end up benefiting us in the long-run... in some way.

Is that a pink elephant?

might end up making a super incurable super contagious virus that kills us all.

Oh and it's really scientifically important to infect them by jabbing them in the eye with an rusty infected syringe

But we gotta give it a shot