Captain Tripps for real?

For those who have not read the book "The Stand" by Stephen King, Captain Tripps was the name given by the survivors to a genetically modified strain of influenza that escaped and killed about 99% of the human race.

It would seem that art does imitate life...

Flu could be next terror weapon, warn scientists
July 1 2003





Forget anthrax and smallpox, influenza could easily be turned into the next weapon of mass destruction, scientists said today.

They sounded their warning as researchers come close to completing the blueprint for the virus of the 1918 'flu epidemic that killed up to 40 million people globally.

"Taken together with the fact that influenza virus is readily accessible and may be causing more deaths than previously suspected, the possibility for genetic engineering and aerosol transmission suggests an enormous potential for bioterrorism," the University of Texas scientists said.

Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, the team led by Dr Mohammed Madjid noted that last century a series of 'flu epidemics from Spain to Russia and Hong Kong had killed millions of people as the virus naturally mutated.

They pointed out that sequencing of the genome of the 1918 Spanish 'flu epidemic was nearly complete, opening the door to unscrupulous scientists to build an even more potent virus.


"Recently, the possibility of synthesising an infectious agent solely by following instructions from a written sequence has moved from theory to practice," they wrote.

The scientists also noted that while infection generally took place through personal contact, the disease was also easily transmissible through tiny droplets in the air.

www.smh.com.au...

Thats a very (!) interesting article Dragonrider. I find it quite disturbing though. What comes to mind for me is that all this knowledge being put to 'destructive' purposes. This is more abuse of the perverbial "WMD" issue. We can't go running around saying 'who cant' but at the same time, behind 'closed doors' we are doing the opposite.

Another aspect that really scares me the most is this: Say one day, these experiments go out of hand, on our own country, our own people? Now thats scary....and 'accidents' do happen.....probability dictates that it will. What then......we just say "Whoops!" We need to stop this type of work and concentrate on constructive things verses destructive things.


regards
seekerof

[Edited on 1-7-2003 by Seekerof]

We need to stop this type of work and concentrate on constructive things verses destructive things.

I agree, we need to stop figuring out excuses to harm each other!

If you consider, human conscienceness, you will see that first we invent, and what we invented we will then use to kill with.