SARS a Bio-Weapon?

ballooba

http://www.rense.com/general37/bio.htm

Something that I had previously given thought to.

lordsippa

No it's not. Don't be silly.

PiE

Wouldn't be the first time claims like this were made. Of course, even if it were true nobody would ever take the blame/be caught for it.

Oh and the original link (http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1346560,00.html) looks (if not is) a lot more reliable than that page.

Amz

SARS is a corona (Sp>) virus it is made up of a single strand of RNA so therefore is able to mutate and take properties from both it's host and other sources, because it mutates this threfore those trying to find a means to detect the virus and find a "cure" for it are having to try and hit a moving target.

I personally don't believe it is an act of bioterrorism. I feel it is too sporadic and too unpredictable to be such a thing.

I have a feeling that the Special Olympics will be cancelled as a result of the outbreak as it is becomming more and more prevalant and the irish people will not want to expose themselves to anything that they may not necessarily have to deal with otherwise, As the point is being made comparing this situation to the Foot and Mouth "crisis", it would appear that the government is far more concerned with animal health and well being than human health and well being.

$ynergy

I find it highly unlikely that the virus is the result of deliberate genetic manipulation, the virus has taken the scientific community by surprise as they usually have some clue as to what new virus is on the rise by monitoring 3rd world countries. This allows them time to develop an inoculation or cure. This time however it seems to have evolved somewhere in china and the Chinese government choose not to release the full facts about the virus until now.

GuanYin

Oh God, I was waiting for this.
The minute I saw SARS reports I knew it would at some point be linkd to bioterrorism.

I'm off to plot my jihad on tabloid papers......

GuanYin

Incidently, why do people read stories in papers like

"Saddam Hussein has plastic surgery and is no living in England as the Queen"

and know its bull, and then in the same paper read about Sars coming from intergalactic bioterrorists (as in a another thread) and think "oh that must be true"

Jeez....Go read a Scientific American or something

PiE

Nobody said anything about bioterrorism.

Duffman

Hrm... I'm not sure too many terrorists intent on destroying the world have the resources to engineer RNA...

hehe, just watched a report where ppl were applying "antibacterial lotion" on the way into churches... It seems the virus is smarter than some...

Carbiens

ah, Tom Clancey's rainbow six (the book not the game)

if you havent read it i suggest with all this hype about SARS that you read it now.

Duffman

teehee... dude with the nick "Carbine" with a pic of a carbine as his sig recommending Tom Clancy novels... It just fits together nicely...

The Gopher

A valid point,but most probably untrue.
Why?Because a bio weapon that only kills 5% of those it infects is useless on the battlefield,which is what the chinese would be developing it for.
In theory it could be used by terrorists.Despite the low mortality rate it creates fear in a population where it is prevalent.But Al Quaeda have little reason to launch a virus in south asia.It would risk spreading to areas like Pakistan and Indonesia,which is deffo not in Al Quaedas interest.
And yet again may I congratulate the irish gov on another fcuk up.Sending a person with potential SARS back to a hostel,where people from all over the world are staying,risking them catching the disease and bringing it home with them.I think in the end it turned out negative,but if she really had t the results would be potentially catastrophic.After all,one woman managed to spread it to dozens of people in(i think)singapore.

PiE

Originally posted by Carbine
ah, Tom Clancey's rainbow six (the book not the game)

if you havent read it i suggest with all this hype about SARS that you read it now.

Never read the book (played the original game for nigh-on 3 years mind you)... but would the book have anything to do with a bioterrorism attack at an Olympic Games or something similar... say, the Special Olympics?

GuanYin

Originally posted by PiE
Nobody said anything about bioterrorism.

True, but.......

Originally posted by The Gopher
Why?Because a bio weapon that only kills 5% of those it infects is useless on the battlefield,which is what the chinese would be developing it for.

as stated, it would have been a very poor bioweapon, and if you believe the current opinion, bioweapon research was far past this about 20 years ago.....so I assumed they meant a terrorism linked weapon.

Originally posted by Duffman
Hrm... I'm not sure too many terrorists intent on destroying the world have the resources to engineer RNA...

Incidently, its alot easier to genetically modify pathogens than you might think. I did it for a 4th year undergrad project.

A postgrad in Australia upregulated IL4 in mousepox.
Have a read of this and then remember that it was a postgrad centred team.

bug

I'm a complete conspiracy theorist and would put forward my personal opinion that anything is possible.
I wouldn't personally underestimate what governments and researchers will or will not do.
I personally still believe that HIV was manufactured in an underground lab, its similarity to the black plague is incredible, even in the way it operates, ie changes shape so that anti-bodies cannot attack it. - I have my own theory about the HIV virus but I won't go into it here.

Sars could possibly be a similar experiment gone wrong. Would be a nice distraction from the Iraqi "war" wouldn't it.
Well as I said believe whatever you will, but never begin to think-, No they wouldn't do that!


Mulder hasn't a patch on me really:D

Sarky

SARS is only making people panic because it took folks by surprise, the governments haven't come up with anything, and the tabliods are running amok. If someone wanted to engineer a bioweapon, they should bugger off to Africa and see about making ebola a little less lethal.

patch

The last mainstream virus they couldn't cure was aids, luckily there are safegaurds we can take against it.
Maybe I'm talking sh1te, but SARS is an apparently airborn virus, which can't be stopped yet, perhaps ever, which kills people. What's 4% of the worlds population?

GuanYin

Originally posted by bug
I'm a complete conspiracy theorist and would put forward my personal opinion that anything is possible.
I wouldn't personally underestimate what governments and researchers will or will not do.

I take personal offence to that. Researchers may be naive, may be often blinded by their passion but they are definitely not immoral despots.

Originally posted by bug

I personally still believe that HIV was manufactured in an underground lab, its similarity to the black plague is incredible, even in the way it operates, ie changes shape so that anti-bodies cannot attack it. - I have my own theory about the HIV virus but I won't go into it here.

Ok, I think you've been watching too many x-files episodes.
It doesn't change shape, it changes protein/peptide expression on its outer coat. The reason this occurs is that the proff reading mechanism that other organisms have when the replicate, is very inefficient in HIV. This means it is more prone to mutation. Remember too, that it has a much shorter generation time than humans (ie. it replicates faster then we do).

Originally posted by bug

Sars could possibly be a similar experiment gone wrong. Would be a nice distraction from the Iraqi "war" wouldn't it.
Well as I said believe whatever you will, but never begin to think-, No they wouldn't do that!

Jesus, you are paranoid. If history has shown anything in the field of bio-weapons research, its that high grade biological weapons are a) extremely hard to make (you can make the agents ok, but getting them to stay alive a lab is hard, getting them to live in a weapon is just masochism) and b)extremely hard to control (Russias bio-weapon program was extensive in the 70-80s but they had quite a few breaches, there are no perfect systems, if they happened, Sky News would be there turning it into a reality TV show or something)

Originally posted by bug

Mulder hasn't a patch on me really:D

No he hasn't :P

bug

I take personal offence to that. Researchers may be naive, may be often blinded by their passion but they are definitely not immoral despots.

morality means something different to each researcher. Take for example Crick, he believes that using stem cells from foeti is ok, however others would differ strongly in opinion saying this is immoral.

It doesn't change shape, it changes protein/peptide expression on its outer coat.

I apologise I know little or nothing about the nature of its peptides.I am not a biologist. Does change in its outer coat have the effect that an antibody cannot attack it?

Jesus, you are paranoid. If history has shown anything in the field of bio-weapons research, its that high grade biological weapons are a) extremely hard to make (you can make the agents ok, but getting them to stay alive a lab is hard, getting them to live in a weapon is just masochism) and b)extremely hard to control (Russias bio-weapon program was extensive in the 70-80s but they had quite a few breaches, there are no perfect systems, if they happened, Sky News would be there turning it into a reality TV show or something)

I don't think I'm paranoid, I'm just not naive.
Getting them [bio-weapons] to stay alive in the lab is difficult, so in theory what better way to watch the spread and study the effects by releasing/injecting it into the general public.

GuanYin

Ok, just to start this off, I'm not aiming for a flame match here, in case anyones worried, but I do feel that common perception about science research and the reality of the matter are poles apart, mainly due to my own personal pet hate: tabloid science journalism.

Originally posted by bug
morality means something different to each researcher. Take for example Crick, he believes that using stem cells from foeti is ok, however others would differ strongly in opinion saying this is immoral.

I think this is a very skewed vision of research. Firstly money for research doesn't come easy. In fact its extremely hard to get.
There are next to no non-government labs working on "biological weapons". Most labs and lab researchers DO however work on research that will improve medicine, public health and the quality of the life people and animals lead.

In cases like stem cell research, people have moral objections mainly due to philisophical considerations, most will grudgingly admit the potential is there to cure many otherwise untreatable conditions.

In animal model research, most scientists find using animals troubling and the trend now is to avoid it where possible. I have seen one clinical research colleague quit research over this and I'm at a seminar today where a whole room openly agreed they had problems with it.

Now how can there be a suggestion that despite these common feelings, researchers would be happy to unleash a plague on innocent people?

Research scientists work long hours for crap money and little recognition in the community, compared to say, doctors. Yet the expertise that they have to go through and the work that they do, is just as viable. To suggest that their is an element there that would do what you are suggesting, is taking for granted just about every area of public health and personal health that we have.

Originally posted by bug
I apologise I know little or nothing about the nature of its peptides.I am not a biologist. Does change in its outer coat have the effect that an antibody cannot attack it?
[/B]

Well, yes but the idea that "antibodies can't attack HIV" is the cause of it overwhelming the immune system is so simplistic to be pretty much wrong in describing the way that it works.

Originally posted by bug
I don't think I'm paranoid, I'm just not naive.
Getting them [bio-weapons] to stay alive in the lab is difficult, so in theory what better way to watch the spread and study the effects by releasing/injecting it into the general public. [/B]

There is work in government agencies on infectious disease. Mostly for the sake of vaccine research. Most governments admitted to an abandoned any research into vaccines for weaponised agents due to the futility of it.

There may be terrorists doing it, or rogue states but to suggest its anyone else is to be, , naive, paranoid and limited in understanding of research institutions.

bug

I work in a research institution I look after more than 24, actually more than thirty including part-time researchers and yes I know how hard it is to get a grant.
I do understand your points and appreciate them but I'm afraid I don't agree with you.
Lets just agree to differ on this one.:)

GuanYin

Originally posted by bug
I work in a research institution I look after more than 24, actually more than thirty including part-time researchers and yes I know how hard it is to get a grant.
I do understand your points and appreciate them but I'm afraid I don't agree with you.
Lets just agree to differ on this one.:)

hehe, fair enough, but your on the list for my next round of clinic trials!

Amz

Darn! I missed this!

I personally don't believe this was a research "project" gone wrong and I think sykeirl has mad his argument very well!

I like a good conspiracy theory every now and again but I believe that this is just something that tabloids are exploiting to fill space and of course sell papers!

Can I be on the list too sykeirl??

GuanYin

Originally posted by Amz


Can I be on the list too sykeirl??

Definitely, we don't get many willing volunteers!

Mwuhahahaha!

Amz

What can I say?

I need the money...

plus a horrible disfigurment might take away from the eh....
horrible disfigurment!

hehehe!

GuanYin

Originally posted by Amz
What can I say?

I need the money...

plus a horrible disfigurment might take away from the eh....
horrible disfigurment!

hehehe!

Oh god, are we gonna have this dispute again....

You probably don't wanna see my post last post in "What would you get rid of..."

*grin*

Amz

Too late!!

I look about 12 in my college ID plus they seemed to stretch eveyones head hehe!

It will only serve to back up my argument