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Comment by ramesh31 | Hacker News Reader

I think we have to accept at this point that pandora's box has been opened with our ability to now directly synthesize genetic material and modify organisms. It wont be long before anarchic hackers can start doing this just to troll the world. There's sort of a parallel with computing, where viruses were never really a problem until everyone had access to the technology. I can see a future where we all need to get regular "security upgrades" installed to our immune systems in the form of an mRNA cocktail tailored to the latest bio threats that have been released.

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>I can see a future where we all need to get regular "security upgrades" installed to our immune systems in the form of an mRNA cocktail tailored to the latest bio threats that have been released.

I think it's inevitable, along with a medical infrastructure that tailors therapies to individual genome. The world is going to become a very dangerous place to the portion of our population that can't afford the latest updates.

if the FDA switches to approving drug development/manufacturing processes, rather than the final products themselves, mRNA vaccines could be made on-demand, quickly enough to do this.

for instance, CAR-T immunotherapy is such a process. no patient's dose is the same, since it involves removing T-lymphocytes from the patient, genetically modifying them in a bespoke way, and putting them back in. if the process itself weren't approved, you'd need to run clinical trials on every individual dose.

pipeline approvals are probably at least a decade away, though it'd be very smart if the government would get it all ready in case we need it.

As an added bonus, if you're having a slow quarter or two, you can arrange for new demand for your products to suddenly spring up in some random corner of the world.

yes honestly I'm surprised that so much attention is devoted to lab leaks and state actors who at least have a self-preservation instinct compared to explicit bioterrorism by groups with an ideological death wish.

Not sure we're super far away from the moment where these technologies become cheap and simple enough to cause mayhem. Ever since the sarin gas attack in tokyo in the 90s I've honestly wondered how this isn't already a much bigger issue.

I think it's because it's vanishingly rare that someone actually wants to see the world burn to the extent that they're willing to spend years of personal effort to that end to enact a plan that will kill them and everyone they know and love.

If it ever becomes possible to achieve personal or political gain through the development of bioweapons I suspect we are in extremely deep trouble.

The worst (best?) possible odds of someone landing in the middle of the "socially isolated/sociopath + suicidal" and "smart enough to use newly simplified genetic technology" venn diagram is 1 in 8 billion-ish. I'd put money on there being more than that if I thought I would survive to collect.

I was (pleasantly!) surprised that nobody from ISIS traveled to Africa during the Ebola epidemic to infect themself, then flew back to NYC to hang out in Times Square. Doesn't require much brains, just the willingness to commit suicide and the motivation to kill a bunch of people, both of which ISIS had in spades.

People blinded by hate tend to not be the most creative thinkers. The either/or right/wrong mindset does not lend itself to creativity.

if you invent the pathogen along with its vaccine, you can vaccinate yourself and the group you care about, while killing off the undesirables. you could also make genocidal weapons by designing a virus that recognizes a certain genetic sequence and inserts itself only there (or the converse, use that as a safety by inserting a gene for an inhibitory protein.)

monstrous things are achievable with a bit of engineering.

As a note, please do not try this at home. There would be a large amount of selective pressure for the virus to change the genetic sequence it recognizes / is inhibited by, and suddenly you've got a virus that can infect the "wrong" people. Likewise a vaccine puts significant selective pressure towards immune escape.

(!) In fact, don't try this anywhere! Genocidal bioweapons are bad news.

>I think it's because it's vanishingly rare that someone actually wants to see the world burn to the extent that they're willing to spend years of personal effort to that end to enact a plan that will kill them and everyone they know and love.

The point is that's what has kept us safe so far. But when the complexity of bioterrorism gets to the level of script kiddies, there's plenty of people that are intelligent enough and driven to do it with nothing to lose. The difference with nuclear or chemical attacks is that those both require massive industrial capacity and complex delivery mechanisms. Think of the mayhem when a single hacker can modify a flu virus to infect the entire world.

It's easy in the US, just get an AR-15 and cause mayhem in a mall with little to no training.

so ud be walking on your footbridge to work and your eyes start to roll. nothing to fear. you are just being updated :)

we don't have to crazy and make them Over-the-air updates. unless, the udpates are only going to be applied in sleep mode.

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