Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/12/19/united-states-takes-one-step-c.html
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Yeah, but want doesn’t get…
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Good news is that we ALL die, even the TGOP.
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“I vould like to volunteer my services for this panel, ya?”
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Surprised nobody has pinned this on the Trump administration yet.
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"If someone finds a way to make the Ebola virus more dangerous, I don’t believe that should be available to anybody off the street who could use it for nefarious purposes.
Why do you hate freedom? This nation was built on free enterprise, not your so-called university degrees.
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I’m now convinced this administration’s goal is the total collapse of the United States.
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Of course it is. He’s been ridiculed for decades; we hurt his fee fees and now it’s payback time.
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I remember when an imminent zombie apocalypse seemed like a bad thing.
sigh… those were the salad days.
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If legislators are just looking fir areas of research to legalize, hows about we deschedule some more drugs before we jump right to descheduling bioogical weapons…yeah?
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The main argument here seems to be that this sounds like the start of a post apocalyptic horror film. While this is true, the same argument is often made against GMOs in spite of them being safe. It’s also the basic logic people use when deciding they don’t want to eat anything with a long chemical name, no matter how safe the product actually is.
Also, people used to play with mercury and radium.
What I’m saying is, this sounds bad, but I’m definitely part of the general public on this one, and the general public has a long history of both underestimating and overestimating dangers of research. I will say, however, that I object to the article’s statement that the value of the research is made to seem negligible. “Understand disease transmission” and “better vaccines” aren’t big or sexy sounding research, but it’s the sort of thing that could save countless lives, provided the people the research is for actually get the damn vaccines, and listen to the disease prevention advice.
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All I can think of is how the Confederacy won reconstruction after we won the war.
We won the Cold War, but is Russia going to have the last laugh?
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I’m hitting a paywall. Does anyone know exactly what the original restriction said(or have a link to the text)?
I’m thinking of cases like the yearly flu vaccine saga: part of the fun for researchers is having to take a best guess as to what strain(s) will be the unpleasant winners in the coming year long enough in advance to get vaccine production in order. I imagine that studying the “which ones are virulent and why?” would be easier if you could cook up demo variants for testing rather than exclusively relying on samples that originated in the wild; but I don’t know if that was ever against the rules to begin with.
I can’t, anymore, say I’d be surprised if this is alarmingly close to just being a Make Anthrax Great Again initiative; but I can think of some things where being allowed to produce more virulent variants would be handy.
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Don’t give the physicists too much credit here, either. I once read Fermi had to be talked out of publishing that graphite made a good neutron moderator - it was only not know that that let the allies shut down the Nazi nuclear weapons program by sabotaging the Norwegian heavy water plant. Not to mention it was Einstein (a pacifist) and Szilard who told FDR to start a nuclear weapons program. I don’t necessarily disagree with that choice, just pointing out that it isn’t like physicists keep dangerous information secret.
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The public doesn’t make the assessment, they just ingest the media.
If I were a general, I would be glad to develop a single generation virus for weakening an opposing military. It makes military sense.
But the greater the proliferation, the more the opportunity for accidents and access. It’s simple really.
But - and this is a general statement, not directed at you! - people don’t really seem to give a fuck. Even here on BB, I don’t see campaigns or efforts to help, for instance, the suffering children of Syria, etc, etc.
I had hoped 20 years ago the internet would educate everyone. Of course, it’s just making them more stupid and pliable.
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