Biowar for Dummies

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [IP] Biowar for Dummies
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 10:21:41 -0500
From: Seth Finkelstein <sethf () sethf com>
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>, ip () v2 listbox com
References: <43FB25B8.6030503 () farber net>

> We might not have long to wait. Every hands-on gene hacker I polled
> during my project estimated they could synthesize smallpox in a
> month or two. I remember that game from my engineering days, so I
> mentally scale their estimates using the old software manager's
> formula: Double the length, then move up to the next increment of
> time. That gives us two to four years - assuming no one has already
> started working.

        Beta-testing your start-up killer virus has got to be a
headache, though. How do you know you've got it right? Seems
like there's a very high probability of finding out the hard way.
"Suicide Infector" sounds like something that wouldn't work very well.

        Not all terrorism goes off as planned:

http://www.upstatefilms.org/weather/guardobserver.html

"On 6 March 1970, days after Dohrn's earnest declaration of war,
members of a Weatherman cell in New York accidentally detonated a
makeshift nail-bomb intended for a non-commissioned officers' ball at
Fort Dix, New Jersey. The explosion ripped the front off a red-brick
townhouse in Greenwich Village where the group had been hiding out,
killing three members of the group instantly (the blast was so
devastating that one of the would-be bombers, Diana Oughton, the
daughter of a prominent Republican banker, could be identified only
from the prints on her severed finger)."

-- 
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  http://sethf.com
Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/
Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php

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