RNA-mediated terrorism

By: James V. Kohl | Published on: November 19, 2016

Obama Advisers Urge Action Against CRISPR Bioterror Threat

For the past two decades, the government has focused its biodefense efforts on a list of known pathogens—such as anthrax, smallpox, and Ebola—declared by the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Agriculture to have the “potential to pose a severe threat to public health and safety.” Government-funded research on these pathogens receives special scrutiny, and the National Institutes of Health limits researchers from conducting experiments that could make certain germs, like influenza, more dangerous.

Reported as: Strategy Session Urged

“If you can get access to the sequence data, that’s really all you need,” Todd Kuiken from North Carolina State University tells Tech Review.

  1. See: Jon Stewart interviews Greg Bear
  2. See: March 9, 2016 “Last month, one of the top intelligence officials in the United States warned that genome-editing technology is now a potential weapon of mass destruction.”
  3. Prepare to die sooner from virus-driven energy theft. No one is limiting the ability of anyone else to make certain germs, like influenza, more dangerous.

The major antigenic changes of the influenza virus are primarily caused by a single amino acid near the receptor binding site.
See also: Fast-spreading genetic mutations pose ecological risk

…as molecular biology research on gene drives has surged forward, it has outpaced our understanding of their ecological consequences…


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