| ▲ | qnleigh 2 days ago | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This specific study sounds relatively benign, but generative models for DNA sequences sounds like an incredibly dangerous technology to develop. If someone were to reproduce their study while including animal viruses in the training data, what would it be capable of? And what about after a few years of progress? Their phages have only 5400 base pairs, but the hepatitis virus has around 3000, and ebola only had ~19,000. That doesn't mean making a novel lethal virus is easy, but if anyone pulls it off, it would make Covid look like a picnic. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | lefty2 a day ago | parent | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Don't worry, if it escapes from the lab we can just blame it on the bats again | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | spwa4 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
We have 5 known antibiotics. There are "MRSA" bacteria (which is a property of bacterial species, not a name for a particular species (anymore)) which don't care or react to about 4 of them and the 5th one is showing slightly reduced effectiveness already. Why? Presumably because, of course, the new government rules imposed on doctors for antibiotics are about saving money and NOT about fighting resistance. The 5th antibiotic is ... not expensive in an absolute sense, but compared to the other 4 it's pretty expensive. The guideline from scientists is that if you decide to use it you need to nearly overdose the patient on it, despite that that is not necessary to cure them. Doing that is much more expensive (not that much more expensive really, it just looks impressive in % and presumably in excel sheets), but fights resistance. We're not doing that, and so we have ... probably not even a decade ... and then we have no treatment anymore against bacterial infection. And in a decade, we will still be surrounded by lethal bacteria. Look at your hand. It's overwhelmingly likely you can't see them but you're looking at lethal pneumococci, several species. This is a clean hand we're taking about. Even a freshly scrubbed hand of a surgeon will still have quite a few bacteria. Grab a handful of soil. You know, the kind plants grow in. Your hand now has botulinum-producing bacteria, as well as many other toxins, tuberculosis (definitely if you're anywhere near a farm), tetanus, and the list goes on and on), some of which we have no vaccine against at all, and many we don't vaccinate for because it's not practical. So the choice is between developing DNA sequences for viruses, or having a pandemic 100x worse than COVID every 30 years or so. There is no choice here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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