Scientist creates new flu virus that can kill all of humanity

[trumad]

Working at a lab with a relatively low level-two biosafety rating, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Yoshihiro Kawaoka has created a strain of flu that can completely escape the human immune system. The new genetically-engineered virus is based on H1N1, which killed around 500,000 people just five years ago.

Most people today have a level of immunity to the H1N1 flu, which is now regarded as a relatively low threat. Kawaoka genetically manipulated H1N1 so it can "escape" our neutralising antibodies. This would make the human immune system—and population—unable to resist an outbreak.

<snip>
The venue for the research was the Institute for Influenza Virus Research in Madison. The institute has a level three agriculture biosafety rating, one level beneath institutes that carry out Ebola research. However, Kawaoka's work was carried out at a level two biosafety lab. The University claims there was no risk of escape from the lab. For reference, the recent Anthrax contamination scare at Atlanta's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had a level-three biosafety rating.
http://sploid.gizmodo.com/scientist-creates-new-flu-virus-that-can-kill-all-of-hu-1599174385?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

[onehandle]

1. Fine. Get it over with. nt

[BootinUp]

30. + 1/2

[Katashi_itto]

89. I agree.

[uppityperson]

2. Just because you can, does not mean you should. eom

[woodsprite]

3. Stupid ass! Probably'll sell it to the military.

IMO, scientists who do this kind of stuff have no ethics -- or common sense.

[Turbineguy]

4. He should come up with a catchy name for it.

Like "Republican Party".

[miyazaki]

49. Someone already has, H1Z1, a new up and coming zombie survival game.

[socialist_n_TN]

90. Ever read "The Stand"?........

Sounds like Capn Trips to me.

[MohRokTah]

5. Did he name it Captain Trips?

You realize this sets up the final war between Boulder and Las Vegas now.

[Va Lefty]

8. "The Stand" moves to the Non-fiction section of your local library

"the center does not hold."

[Puzzledtraveller]

9. Tube Neck in some parts.

[deathrind]

12. Excellent book, horrible movie...

I have never forgotten the line. "He left her a dollar tip crawling with death"

Or

"Pokerized"

[ProdigalJunkMail]

72. Better turn off your pumps, Hap. n/t

[Dr Hobbitstein]

33. Baby can you dig your man?

He's a righteous man...

[socialist_n_TN]

91. Yeah, this was my first thought too....

I posted before I read the entire thread.

[ZombieHorde]

6. Haha, suckas! nt

[theHandpuppet]

7. And he wanted to create this WHY??

[MohRokTah]

10. Pandemic study.

i believe the true purpose is to determine methods of treating such a disease to stop a pandemic.

[Armstead]

13. I'd think there are enough existing viruses around to experiment with

[jeff47]

47. Including this one.

It was already "out in the wild". Then it mutated in 2009 to create the H1N1 strain.

This article is terribly written by people who don't understand a single thing about biology.

[Warren DeMontague]

59. Thank you.

At least there's one person in the thread who isn't going "fuck the truth, the bullshit doomsday hyperbole is WAY MORE FUN! 'The Stand'! 'Captain Trips'!"

[leftyohiolib]

21. exactly WHY!

[ismnotwasm]

11. They been reading "The Stand"?

Because this of course,is more dumbassery.

[MindPilot]

19. Or watching "The Last Ship" n/t

[Warren DeMontague]

39. You've got the "dumbassery" part right.

But it's on the part of the ill-informed yahoos who write the hyperbolic internet pieces with bullshit taglines like "that can kill all of humanity".

Also, Stephen King spins a good yarn (sometimes) but he's not exactly a microbiologist.

[Neoma]

58. I had the exact same thought.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

14. Well, that would take care of anthropogenic climate change...

We will all go together when we go...

[riqster]

28. The rest of the lyrics don't really work in this context.

[Coventina]

29. Every Hottentot and every Eskimo....

[notadmblnd]

15. Isn't biological warfare universally illegal?

I see no useful purpose for science needing or even wanting to create something like this. Somebody, please explain to me how this could ever possibly be a good thing?

[gcomeau]

20. They use them to study ways to beat them.

Anything they can cook up in the lab, try to remember, nature can come up with also.


Waiting for nature to come up with it first and *then* trying to figure out how to beat it would be... not a good idea.


See: Spanish Flu pandemic (approximately 50-100 million dead in a matter of 2 years).

[Kennah]

62. Oh, it's not a war. It's a police action.

[FSogol]

16. What could possibly go wrong?

[calimary]

24. Yeah, no shit.

[ohheckyeah]

36. Damn it -

You beat me to it.

[louis-t]

17. I don't EVER want to hear about how it

"accidentally" escaped the lab like anthrax, plague virus, or killer bees.

[leftyohiolib]

22. you will that is something everyone will want a piece of

[VanillaRhapsody]

31. killer bees?

[louis-t]

64. Escaped from confinement in S. America

in the '40s or '50s. 'Africanized' bees slowly moved north over the decades. Looking for a link. I saw a fascinating documentary once about the lengths scientists have gone to trying to dilute the aggressiveness of the bees. Here's a link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africanized_bee

[VanillaRhapsody]

65. they werent invented...they were African that got loose

In non indigenous environment...thats true for lots of species...not exactly the same thing...

[louis-t]

66. Mmmm, they were hybrids.

If you read down far enough it says they were, sort of.

[VanillaRhapsody]

67. anytime you interbreed you get a hybrid....

my dog is a hybrid...

[louis-t]

69. These were interbred for a purpose.

They took a species out of its natural habitat, bred it with Euro bees, then accidentally let it loose on the world. That was my point in comparing it to something that was invented and could accidentally get loose.

[VanillaRhapsody]

70. So were mules.....

not buying....

[louis-t]

73. Didn't ask you to...

What's your point? Just being argumentative?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

18. Are these the same brilliant scientists still clinging to the Small Pox viruses?

All for the good of humanity and sacred research, of course. Both of the remaining batches are in the hands of the USA and Russia. Both well known for their devotion to humanity and the well being of the people.

[jeff47]

52. Nope.

The CDC has the US samples, the Russian equivalent has the Russian samples.

All for the good of humanity and sacred research, of course.

It's a lot easier to treat an epidemic if you already have a sample of the relevant virus.

Also, there are two known samples of smallpox left. But as described here:

In 1980, when smallpox was eradicated, the World Health Organization asked countries worldwide to either destroy their smallpox samples or send them securely to the two laboratories in the USA and Russia. There is no compelling evidence that all countries did this, even though they all said they did. There may still be a rogue nation, leader or group that has access to smallpox samples. The USA and Russia say that we have to be prepared for a re-emergence of the disease through deliberate misuse of the virus.

And that's still intentional samples. There could still be some out there that will be found unintentionally. ("Hey, what's in this old trunk? Huh, blankets. Ooo, this one's pretty&quot

As for this current situation, Gizmodo did an awful job reporting what actually occurred. The virus under discussion is not affected by the antibodies to H1N1. But that doesn't mean it evades all antibodies. If this virus got out, humans would develop new antibodies to fight it. Just like we develop new antibodies every flu season.

Why'd they do it? Because H1N1 came from a flu virus that wasn't all that infectious. So they wanted to figure out what made H1N1 more infectious.

[Aerows]

23. I think I saw this movie

It ended well.

[progressoid]

25. Well, it's about time.

[Warren DeMontague]

26. This is an incredibly inane headline- deliberately stupid or shameless clickbait, or both.

"that can kill all of humanity"- SHIT! THAT SOUNDS BAD, MAN!!! WHADDA WE GONNA DO?!? GAME OVER, MAN! GAME OVER!

"Damn you, stupid scientists with your eggheaded foolishness, bolting and zippering corpse heads onto your 10 foot tall reanimated monsters!! Nice going!"

However.. If one actually takes the time to read the article and get past the hyperbolic bullshit:

Most of the world today has developed some level of immunity to the 2009 pandemic flu virus, which means that it can now be treated as less dangerous “seasonal flu”. However, The Independent understands that Professor Kawaoka intentionally set out to see if it was possible to convert it to a pre-pandemic state in order to analyse the genetic changes involved.

Understand?

Now I'm not blanket defending the research OR suggesting it shouldn't have been carried out in a level 3, 4, or 5 facility instead of a level 2 one- but if HOLY SHIT THIS THING IS GOING TO KILL ALL OF HUMANITY it probably would have done so in 2009, when it likewise had the equivalent, spooky, "ability to evade the human immune system" that Mr. Kawaoka has restored to it in his research.

Got that? It was a new strain in 2009, and yes, it made a lot of people very sick and killed many people. But it did not "kill all of humanity" even though it was able to "evade the human immune system" because, again, it was a new strain which people didn't have immunity to. The reason we have a new flu shot every year, is because people don't have immunity to certain aspects of the current flu virus.

And the fact is, flu viruses are constantly changing and mutating, and creating these new strains in the wild, which is how we got the 1917 Spanish Flu epidemic. There are reasons for scientists (damn you, eggheads!!!!) to do research on these things, aside from just having a preternatural desire to fuck around with the end of the world, and those reasons involve understanding how the flu virus changes so that hopefully we can develop things like a universal flu vaccine as opposed to one we need a new one of every year.

But you know, science and medical articles on DU....... Always fun.

[winter is coming]

27. gizmodo putting clickbait out there? Say it isn't so! n/t

[sagat]

92. Reminds me of this

[Dwayne Hicks]

32. Sounds like 12 Monkeys.

[BootinUp]

42. Or Omega Man

Both are cool flicks.

[valerief]

34. No risk of escape. As safe as Fukushima and Daichi. Get ready, folks, for AIDS 2.0. nt

[Warren DeMontague]

38. Except, he returned it to the same state it was in in 2009, when it WAS out in the wild.

But, you know, why bother with actual facts when the important thing is WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!

[blkmusclmachine]

35. I still firmly suspect that HIV is a manufactured bio-warfare germ.

It wouldn't be the first time the U.S. consciously exposed a group of people to a deadly, unknown pathogen.

[Humanist_Activist]

61. I'm sorry, I'm going to have to find a way to note your username as someone who...

isn't capable of rational thought.

[Renew Deal]

40. It happens

[totodeinhere]

41. I think I already saw that TV show. n/t

[DeSwiss]

43. Aids could kill all of humanity.

- Except for those people who've developed an immunity. Whenever I see an ''over-the-top'' headline like that my first reaction is to shake my head at the hubris of mankind. We haven't really ''made'' anything. We keep using Mother Nature's lab results that she's been working for billions of years, then modifying them, and then claiming them as our own. What utter BULLSHIT.

K&R

A group of female prostitutes in Nairobi have become resistant to AIDS. An amazing discovery was made at a research clinic in Nairobi in the 1980s. While scientists were studying the outbreak of HIV and AIDS among the country's citizens, they came upon a group of female prostitutes. These women who should have been the most susceptible to HIV consistently tested negative for HIV over the years. It turned out that this small percent of women coming into the clinic, about 5%, had somehow developed an immunity to HIV. Their immune systems were able to recognize and then kill HIV. This was a remarkable discovery. Scientists ruled out the possibility of these women simply being extremely lucky by looking at the statistics. They found that most of the women had had between 500-2,000 unprotected sexual encounters with infected men. In fact, the scientists found that the longer a woman had been a prostitute, the less likely that she would be infected with HIV/AIDS.

MORE

MOTHER NATURE will always be smarter than we are.......

[heaven05]

44. well with movies like 'outbreak'

and that genre, no surprises. AID's and more were rumored to have been created in a lab somewhere, so ..........I'm 66 no great loss. This planet and definitely this country has sickened me with the violence and evil being perpetrated against human beings.. The people 'in charge' have plans for all of us. I bet. Really, I don't give a damn what these people have in store for us. Unless someone 'drops a dime', we won't know till we're dropping in the streets.

[jtuck004]

45. Not really worried about the ones we hear about. The one that is concerning is being developed

in a room somewhere in the world, and, frankly, the first time you hear of it may be when people start falling over.

These will make bombs look like firecrackers

[jeff47]

46. Popular press should really, really not write about things they don't understand

What they actually did:
Genetic study on the H1N1 virus to figure out what changed to make it an epidemic. They figured out what changed, and it causes the new virus to not react to H1N1 antibodies.

What this will not do:
"completely escape the human immune system".

It will not be caught by H1N1 antibodies, but the immune system is capable of making new antibodies that react to this strain.

[sulphurdunn]

48. What did Murphy say?

[MisterP]

50. they picked the wrong band for which to try and make their songs come true

[thelordofhell]

51. Among The Living.......Follow Me Or Die!!!

[tclambert]

53. Give me fever.

[AverageJoe90]

54. It's time to put an end to work like this......

At least in areas that aren't absolutely foolproof, anyway. In fact, this should have been done 20 years ago, if not longer.

Of course, exaggerations don't help; even the absolute worst possible virus could not possibly wipe out ALL of humanity.....although this is bad enough, TBH.

To clarify, I'm not saying we should stop bioresearch altogether.....but we DO need to take better precautions, though.

[WinkyDink]

75. "Hyperbole"? Hmmmm.....

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/scientist-makes-mutant-infectious-flu-virus-lab-n128936

Previous, similar experiments by Kawaoka and other flu researchers raised such an outcry that the U.S. government also asked all flu researchers to hold off on genetically changing flu viruses until ground rules could be agreed on. The worry was that the virus could escape and accidentally cause a pandemic or, worse, that terrorists could somehow get hold of the work and use it to make a biological weapon.
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Of course, Team Kawaoka disagreed.

[PCIntern]

55. "The Stand" by Stephen King

I rest my case.

[Humanist_Activist]

60. Is a work of fiction, do you have a point? n/t

[PCIntern]

63. Ummmm...gee...what in the great world could I have been thinking about...?

I just typed a random series of letters and that post just occurred...

Let's see: a novel about the apocalyptic release of a deadly virus created by the government. what could this possibly have to do with the reality of a creation of a deadly virus which could wipe out mankind as we know it?

No...nothing there.

I'm just so sorry for taking up so much of your precious time.

[Humanist_Activist]

77. The issue is that its a book from a guy who isn't a biologist...

writing about a possible plague. Comparisons are, at best, inaccurate and a huge exaggeration of the risk involved now with this modified H1N1 virus.

[PCIntern]

80. Did you read said book?

It is an extended allegory of man's destruction of himself by a serendipitous escape of a biologic warfare research agent.

[Humanist_Activist]

82. Yes a long time ago, also, Stephen King is not a biologist...

being a prolific and good author, I'm sure he consulted some biologists or possibly other scientists for the background on the story, but I'm sure he also allowed himself creative license as well.

In addition, this is not for biological warfare research, but to study flu viruses to try to figure out ways to stop pandemics.

[Warren DeMontague]

88. "the reality of a creation of a deadly virus which could wipe out mankind as we know it"

Aside from the headline in the gizmodo piece, what specific basis do you have to claim that this virus "could wipe out mankind as we know it"?

[Octafish]

68. That's a good point.

''Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Tommy_Carcetti]

71. He then cackled manically as lightning crashed behind him. nt

[Art_from_Ark]

93. Mmmmm bwa ha ha!

[WinkyDink]

74. He's done it before, with the Spanish influenza. I think, frankly, he's a sociopath who happens to

be a scientist.

[muntrv]

76. Sounds like "Resident Evil" and the Umbrella Corporation.

[tularetom]

79. Somehow that story made me think of this old cartoon

[countryjake]

81. The H1N1 practically killed one of my dear friends...

She was a young vibrant woman; we rushed her to the hospital, sat and held her hand for days, waiting for the lab to return the report of why she was dying. The hospital staff heroically did all that they could, eventually putting her in quarantine, induced coma, fighting blood clots, severe respiratory infections, distressed heart...she was hospitalized for three long months, then moved to a life care facility for six more months.

Now, almost five years later, she is partially immobile, dependent on a wheelchair, her life totally devastated by "the flu".

She'd faithfully gotten her flu shot that year; whenever we see her now, she never fails to bring up the question of why did it happen to her.

I, for one, am glad to see that sharp minds are intent upon discovering how these horrific viruses mutate.

[Humanist_Activist]

83. Exactly, for fuck's sake, a poster above calls the scientist in this article a sociopath...

if he was a sociopath, he wouldn't be studying the virus in the hopes of finding ways to prevent its spread, wouldn't he?

This thread is just filled with Conspiracy Theory and Anti-Science bullshit. Fucking Neo-Luddites.

[MFM008]

84. Because nothing could go wrong

Didnt this guy watch the Andromeda Strain? Really?



i got it already...