Hacker News Reader

Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

> Designing new viruses or bacteria for a neo-plauge is less likely

Humankind has been genetically engineering organisms for most of our existence. Corn originally looked like grass. Chickens were lean, tough, and could fly. Dogs have been transformed from generalist survivors into purpose-built machines breed for beauty, farm work, and everything in between. The avocado, of all things, is a fantastic example of how capable we are at creating something which shouldn't really exist.

Doing the same with bacteria isn't that much harder, if you've got time and a few basic tools. Our manipulation of the genes directly only makes the process faster.

View on HN

True, but the viruses and bacteria, once out of Dr. Doom's lab, will evolve themselves. A virus that kills all the hosts is not a good virus. It has to be just the right amount of deadly and contagious to survive. Look at ebola, that is super nasty stuff, but it kills so quickly that it is hard to make it widespread. I'm not gonna say it is impossible, but it is a lot harder to do that you'd think. Living things tend to want to stay that way, and viruses tend to want to replicate. Kills all the hosts is not a good way of doing that.

Not really true. A virus that kills the host too quickly is not going to spread. A virus that kills the host quickly but not before it spreads, IS going to spread. There's no saying what a virus 'wants'; they just happen, and they do what they do. If Ebola became airborne, then most of us would die, then Ebola would die (from lack of hosts), and that's just a pity for Ebola. But there's nothing that stops such a scenario from happening, least of all what Ebola 'wants'.

To expound on this point, to a virus or bacteria, a human is just as good as a monkey or dog or jellyfish. It's a place to replicate and live. Similar with viruses as technically they are not alive. All these Dr. Doom kinda things have to compete with the common cold, the e. coli, and all the other things that live on the earth and in your guts. That is not an easy environment to survive in.

Can you expand on the avocado stuff, or do you have a source? Sounds pretty interesting.

The avocado stuff its not really true. The avocado shouldn't exist, because the animal that propagated its seeds went extinct a long time ago (if the term "Megafauna" comes to your mind when you think about that, you are not misguided), but wasn't created by humans, in the same way that corn or wheat are, because the avocado survived even when there were no humans around to propagate its seeds.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-the-avocado-s...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com