Talk:Lecture 8
Contents
Biological Epidemics
Chris Fleizach - Recently, scientists in the Maryland decoded the 1918 influenza genome that killed millions of Americans and published the results in Nature. In fact, there was a meeting with national security advisors and the editors to determine if the material should be published at all. In the end, they decided the benefits of open publication outweighed the bio-terrorism risk. Then Bill Joy and Ray Kurzweil came out with a blistering editorial about giving away all the necessary information to bioterrorists to unleash their own flu epidemic. So is it really easy to recreate viruses as long as you know the DNA sequence? This also addresses the same topic that many discussions have touched upon: should there be open access to research material? Richard Muller's article speculating Al Quaeda was behind the anthrax attacks seemed to point they had given up bio-terrorism in some sense. With the flu genome decoded, avian flu being hyped up, what does this mean for America in terms of focus?
