Fwd: PBS: Downloadable Gun Parts, Personalized Bioterror: the Downside of Innovation

[Bryan Bishop]

hmm.. well it sounds like our views were misrepresented again. I don't think anyone is claiming that it is possible to stop new viruses from being created. So what did this reporter think he was doing ? Giving us another biology update? Yep, still biology guys.

Date: Thu, May 3, 2012 at 7:40 PM
Subject: [tt] PBS: Downloadable Gun Parts, Personalized Bioterror: the Downside of Innovation
To: Transhuman Tech <t...@postbiota.org>


Downloadable Gun Parts, Personalized Bioterror: the Downside of Innovation
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june12/makingsense_04-26.html
[Thanks to Sarah for this.]

REPORT    AIR DATE: April 26, 2012

SUMMARY

Through innovation and technology, California think tank Singularity
University aims to push the frontiers of progress. But what happens when
high-tech advances end up in the wrong hands? Economics correspondent Paul
Solman raises some disturbing questions as part of his ongoing reporting
series, Making Sen$e of financial news.


JEFFREY BROWN: And now part two in our series on using technology to
make the world a better place.

NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman recently attended a
conference there and reported on some of the mind-bending research
being explored.

Tonight, Paul looks at the downside of the high-tech revolution.
It's part of ongoing reporting Making Sense of financial news.

PAUL SOLMAN: At a recent conference filled with the wonders of new
technology, one presenter's vision of the future was downright
frightening.

MARC GOODMAN, Singularity University: There are two million unique
computer viruses that are generated every month.
"Today, we say 'there's an app for that.' Now imagine if these were
viruses each made for an individual cancer, and they were available
for free or 99 cents. That's where we're going."
- Andrew Hessel, Singularity University

PAUL SOLMAN: Marc Goodman is a former cop who ran the Los Angeles
Police Department's Internet Crimes Unit.

MARC GOODMAN: Never before in the history of humankind has it been
possible for one person to rob 100 million people.

PAUL SOLMAN: Nor has it been possible, says Goodman, for anyone to
hack into personal medical devices, like pacemakers or insulin pumps
connected to the Internet.

MARC GOODMAN: The thing that scares me the most after cyber-crime is
bio-crime. We're putting all these little computers in our bodies.
And what that means is, our bodies themselves are going to become
vulnerable to cyber-attack.

PAUL SOLMAN: A high-level consultant to the U.S. government and
Interpol, Goodman is the faculty skeptic at Singularity University,
the futuristic California think tank, who rains on his colleagues'
utopian parade of innovation. To him, high-octane high tech is a
double-edged sword.

MARC GOODMAN: I think all of this technology will develop in really
cool and interesting ways. But I can tell you, at the same time,
there are bad actors from both the crime and the terrorism
perspective that are using these technologies for ill.

PAUL SOLMAN: Now, there's already plenty of bad stuff, says Goodman,
like all those computer viruses. But today's hackers are becoming
increasingly daring.

MARC GOODMAN: The bad guys live inside your machine. They watch
everything you do. Any time you type in your bank account or credit
card information on to the machine, they're capturing it. They're
capturing your passwords.

PAUL SOLMAN: Moreover, computers are becoming increasingly embedded
in the hardware around us. The typical new car, says Goodman, has
250 computer chips. And in this Google prototype now legally riding
the roads of Nevada, even the driving is fully computerized.

MARC GOODMAN: So, you could put in bad GPS directions and have a car
drive off a bridge. Every day, we're plugging more and more of our
lives into the Internet, including bridges, tunnels, financial
systems, hospitals, police emergency dispatch 911 systems, military
systems, robotics systems. And there's a history of all of these
being hacked.

PAUL SOLMAN: The Stuxnet computer worm that disabled Iran's nuclear
program made headlines, but smaller targets are also vulnerable.

MARC GOODMAN: Diabetic pumps, cochlear implants, brain computer
interface. There are 60,000 pacemakers in the United States that
connect to the Internet, which means that the Internet connects to
your pacemaker. It's great when you're suffering from an arrhythmia
and your doctor can remotely shock you, but what happens if the kid
next door does that because it's fun and does it for the lulz.

PAUL SOLMAN: You mean LOL, laughing out loud?

MARC GOODMAN: Yeah. It sounds crazy, but we have had people hack
into, for example, the Epilepsy Foundation and change the computer
code on the screen, so it would blink really rapidly, so that they
would generate seizures on the part of epileptics, that type of
stuff.

PAUL SOLMAN: Somebody actually did that?

MARC GOODMAN: Somebody actually did that for what they call the
lulz, for the fun of it, for the laughs to see if they could do it.

PAUL SOLMAN: For almost every upside, a downside. Consider 3-D
printing, a new way of manufacturing, layer by layer, everything
from art to artificial organs. This is a 3-D printed model for a
prosthetic leg.

MARC GOODMAN: This is the lower receiver of an AR-15 semiautomatic
rifle. It's the only part of the gun that is controlled by ATF. All
the other parts, you can just buy. This is available for free
download on something called Thingiverse.

PAUL SOLMAN: And there's simply no way for the federal authorities
to trace it.

Again, the sword of technology cuts both ways. Marc Goodman's
colleagues at the conference, like Andrew Hessel, extolled biology's
coming ability to concoct cures for everything from the common cold
to cancer, cures downloadable as easily as the latest iPhone version
of "Angry Birds."

ANDREW HESSEL, Singularity University: Today, we say there's an app
for that. Now imagine if these were viruses each made for an
individual cancer, and they were available for free or 99 cents.
That's where we're going.

PAUL SOLMAN: The first step in that process may well be Synthia, the
first synthetic life-form created two years ago by Craig Venter.

CRAIG VENTER, CEO, Synthetic Genomics: This is a picture of the very
first synthetic cell, based entirely on synthetic DNA.

PAUL SOLMAN: For Venter, cracker of the human genome code,
exponential growth in computing is speeding up progress
exponentially.

CRAIG VENTER: Biology has always been controlled in science by who
had the DNA, who had the cells, who had the species. Now it's all
digital. Most labs, instead of getting the DNA from another lab,
download it digitally, and synthetically make the genes.

PAUL SOLMAN: And prices have plunged.

By the way, what is that moving there?

MAN: Oh, these are some harmless bacteria that somebody's growing
for a project.

PAUL SOLMAN: Lab equipment is cheaper, too. This CO2 incubator for
maintaining tissue cultures costs $15,000 brand-new.

Oh, little petri dishes.

MAN: Little petri dishes, yes.

PAUL SOLMAN: But bought used on eBay?

MAN: It was definitely well under $1,000.

PAUL SOLMAN: Put simply, basic genetic engineering is now within
reach of do-it-yourself amateurs.

ELLEN JORGENSEN, co-Founder, Genspace: The experiments that were
Nobel Prize-winning in the 1970s are now done in high schools.

PAUL SOLMAN: Ph.D. biologists Ellen Jorgensen and Oliver Medvedik
helped found Genspace, a DIY lab in downtown Brooklyn which draws
would-be genetic engineers from all walks of life, like lawyer Dan
Orr, who says he found his previous line of work unfulfilling.

MAN: I was working mainly helping large banks fix their foreclosure
programs.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, unfulfilling doesn't quite do justice to your
discomfort.

MAN: Probably not. I felt it would be better to work in something
that was better both for myself and for society.

PAUL SOLMAN: So Orr is now genetically altering bacteria to detect
mold. They will glow when they sense it. It makes his teacher, Ellen
Jorgensen, proud.

ELLEN JORGENSEN: You just can't really predict what where the
imagination of somebody creative will lead them, in terms of solving
a problem that's societal or scientific or environmental.

PAUL SOLMAN: Or maybe creating problems, says Marc Goodman, if the
bio-hacker is so inclined.

MARC GOODMAN: As it becomes democratized, I can go ahead and capture
your DNA and come up with a particular attack that's targeted
against you specifically.

PAUL SOLMAN: And all you have to do is shake my hand or something to
get some DNA.

MARC GOODMAN: And I would have to do is shake your hand, get the
coke can that you throw away, get the pen that you signed something
with.

PAUL SOLMAN: And then cook up the Paul Solman virus--one and done.

Indeed, Craig Venter told the conference he himself is worried about
off-the-shelf biotech.

CRAIG VENTER: While I think it's very cool at one hand we have all
this bio-hacking going on, I think it could also be the most
dangerous trend. You don't want your kids to be the first one on the
block to make Ebola virus.

PAUL SOLMAN: So how does Craig Venter respond to the charge that in
making life-forms from scratch, it is he who's created a monster?

CRAIG VENTER: What we've stressed from the beginning is having
biological control on these systems is an essential part of things.
We don't want new organisms to be added to the environment's
repertoire. We want it to be added to our industrial repertoire.

PAUL SOLMAN: But aren't you afraid some of this life could creep out
of the lab?

CRAIG VENTER: I'm not afraid, no. If things are done properly, that
won't happen.

PAUL SOLMAN: But a lot of things are done improperly.

CRAIG VENTER: Well, they're not actually. There's not been one
single accident from molecular biology in almost four decades.

PAUL SOLMAN: But Venter is not naive.

CRAIG VENTER: Every time there's a new technology, there's always
abusers. There's no question about it. And every new technology has
been a battle between making sure there's adequate countermeasures
for those that want to do harm to others.

PAUL SOLMAN: Genspace's Ellen Jorgensen agrees.

ELLEN JORGENSEN: I think what you have to place your faith in to a
certain degree is the people whose business it is to ensure that
we're safe.

So the bio-security experts, the people who work for Homeland
Security, the people that work for the FBI, I've worked with a lot
of these people and I have a great deal of respect for them. And I
think that that's probably our best defense against this sort of
stuff, because any technology is going to have dual use. You can
think of dual use for practically any technology that's ever been
invented.

PAUL SOLMAN: Dual use meaning bad and good?

ELLEN JORGENSEN: Yes.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, if it's a cat and mouse game, and the cat is the
law enforcement and the mice are the bad guys, who's going to win?

MARC GOODMAN: Who will win eventually is unclear. I can tell you the
mice are really far ahead right now. They're significantly ahead.
Criminal perpetrators are significantly outmaneuvering and
out-thinking law enforcement.

ELLEN JORGENSEN: Oh, I think that's nonsense. You're telling me that
there's a bad guy out there that has more resources than Craig
Venter? I highly doubt that.

PAUL SOLMAN: On the other hand, if some group is dead-set on doing
harm, they may not need more resources than Craig Venter, as
technology continues to progress at its breakneck, exponential pace.
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[Nathan McCorkle]

Its the same old message that people cried when digital computers were
invented, displacing human computers/calculators from their jobs...
but its a fair story in my opinion for people that haven't heard about
'biology' in 2012. I don't think the views of DIYbio were really
represented or misrepresented...

Venter said he's confident GMOs won't make it out of the lab, and
Ellen Jorgensen said no DIYer or bad guys have the capabilities of
Venter by any stretch. Marc Goodman seems to think 'bad guys' are
ahead, but I'd rather see real images, proof, of foreign 'dirty bio'
biobomb labs... I just don't think its so easy to go from rigging
missiles and IEDs to biohacking.

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Rochester Institute of Technology
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[Daniel C.]

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 10:14 PM, Nathan McCorkle <nmz...@gmail.com> wrote:
>  Venter said he's confident GMOs won't make it out of the lab, and
> Ellen Jorgensen said no DIYer or bad guys have the capabilities of
> Venter by any stretch. Marc Goodman seems to think 'bad guys' are
> ahead, but I'd rather see real images, proof, of foreign 'dirty bio'
> biobomb labs... I just don't think its so easy to go from rigging
> missiles and IEDs to biohacking.

The US military did a lot of research into chemical and biological
weapons. Their conclusion was that biological weapons are too
unreliable and/or ineffective to actually use. Granted, part of the
military's requirements probably include the ability to control the
affected population (a goal that a terrorist might not share) but I
still think it's a good sign. If the US military can't make it work,
the chance that a bioterrorist will have success seems pretty slim.

-Dan

[Nathan McCorkle]

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 11:44 PM, Daniel C. <dcroo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The US military did a lot of research into chemical and biological
> weapons.  Their conclusion was that biological weapons are too
> unreliable and/or ineffective to actually use.  Granted, part of the
> military's requirements probably include the ability to control the
> affected population (a goal that a terrorist might not share) but I
> still think it's a good sign.  If the US military can't make it work,
> the chance that a bioterrorist will have success seems pretty slim.
>

I thought we don't have bioweapons because we agreed to some
international treaty(ies)

[Simon Quellen Field]

A pessimist might think we agreed to the treaties because we weren't

giving up anything that would work. We haven't given up nuclear weapons.

As an optimist, I think we also have treaties about land mines.

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[Daniel C.]

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 11:50 PM, Nathan McCorkle <nmz...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I thought we don't have bioweapons because we agreed to some
> international treaty(ies)

I kind of agree with Simon on this one. Then again, we also signed a
treaty banning certain chemical weapons - not because they're not
functional, but because they are simply too horrific to fall within
the bounds of Jus in Bello. Regardless, my understanding about
biological weapons is that they just aren't effective.

That said, it does have to be acknowledged that "not effective" means
different things to a military than it does to a terrorist.

-Dan

[Cathal Garvey]

That whole article just screamed this comic at me:
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/02/09

The quality of news reporting is circling the drain as incumbent
"journalism" circles the drain. All the talent seems to be leaving for
greener pastures, leaving scaremongers and idiots like this guy.

www.indiebiotech.com
twitter.com/onetruecathal
joindiaspora.com/u/cathalgarvey
PGP Public Key: http://bit.ly/CathalGKey

[mad_casual]

MARC GOODMAN is pretty clearly a shady character himself. Anyone who says, "Never before in the history of humankind has it been

possible for one person to rob 100 million people." either doesn't understand the technology or human history. I wonder if he was a part of the police Force in LA that has been under reform for the brutality that lead up to the riots? For a former law enforcement officer, he certainly oozes with the presumption of guilt. Who are the 'mice' or the 'bad guys' and what laws are they breaking? I don't worry about hackerz tripping my pacemaker for lulz as much as I worry about an American President 'legally' tripping an American Citizen's pacemaker without a trial, judge, or jury.

I'm beginning to dislike the 'dual use' boogeyman; it's being co-opted to proliferate FUD. Steak knives are dual use. Lead pipes are dual use. Matter of fact, I have trouble coming up with a technology that is 'single use'. If there is a 'single use' technology and its single use is to kill people, I'd be more worried about that than any dual use technology. The only technologies that come close are electric chairs, guillotines, laser guided munitions, and/or thermonuclear weapons.

[Cathal Garvey]

Whoa whoa waitaminute. Nukes are totally dual use. You can use them with nuclear pulse propulsion to get to alpha centauri in less than 50 years. :)

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[Nathan McCorkle]

On May 4, 2012 10:57 AM, "mad_casual" <ademl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> MARC GOODMAN is pretty clearly a shady character himself. Anyone who says, "Never before in the history of humankind has it been
> possible for one person to rob 100 million people."

Other than the internet, what has historically enabled a single person to rob 100 million people??? His comment makes sense to me

either doesn't understand the technology or human history. I wonder if he was a part of the police Force in LA that has been under reform for the brutality that lead up to the riots? For a former law enforcement officer, he certainly oozes with the presumption of guilt. Who are the 'mice' or the 'bad guys' and what laws are they breaking? I don't

Bad guys don't necessarily break laws, especially if they're off U.S. soil ... its the intent that matters

worry about hackerz tripping my pacemaker for lulz as much as I worry about an American President 'legally' tripping an American Citizen's pacemaker without a trial, judge, or jury.
>
> I'm beginning to dislike the 'dual use' boogeyman; it's being co-opted to proliferate FUD. Steak knives are dual use. Lead pipes are dual use. Matter of fact, I have trouble coming up with a technology that is 'single use'. If there is a 'single use' technology and its single use is to kill people, I'd be more worried about that than any dual use technology. The only technologies that come close are electric chairs, guillotines, laser guided munitions, and/or thermonuclear weapons.

Electric chairs could be cheap surplus electrophoresis rigs, giluillotines make great cigar and watermelon choppers, Homer Simpson showed us that a shotgun can be used to apply makeup for females, or shoot lightbulbs instead of flipping the switch

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[Cory Geesaman]

Or for high-yield fracking :)

[Jason Bobe]

On Friday, May 4, 2012 12:15:52 PM UTC-4, Nathan McCorkle wrote:

On May 4, 2012 10:57 AM, "mad_casual" <ademl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> MARC GOODMAN is pretty clearly a shady character himself. Anyone who says, "Never before in the history of humankind has it been
> possible for one person to rob 100 million people."

Other than the internet, what has historically enabled a single person to rob 100 million people??? His comment makes sense to me

Makes sense to me too.  I met Marc recently and saw him give a talk about "future crimes".  It was quite interesting.  He began by talking about how the internet made robbery far more scaleable.  "In the old days", you might rob a single person in a dark alley.  With trains, you might be able to rob the whole train under the right circumstances.  But, that is about the maximum scaleability for that crime.  You couldn't really walk into a sports stadium of 60,000 people and say "stick'em up".  Until the internet made it possible for a single individual to reach millions of people (electronically via online bank accounts, phishing, etc).

Anyway, I find the "he is clearly idiot" line of argumentation rather juvenile and annoying.  Best to point out the flaws in reasoning and debate those.

Jason

  

[Daniel C.]

On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 10:57 AM, mad_casual <ademl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> For a former law enforcement officer, he certainly oozes with
> the presumption of guilt.

"For a law enforcement officer"? Have you ever known a cop?
Presumption of guilt is their M.O. I've had a few friends who are
police officers - their line of work makes them deeply cynical and
suspicious of everyone. I once was told by a cop that he was
*absolutely certain* that a kid had weed based solely on the kind of
car he was driving. I am not surprised at all that a law enforcement
officer would take the attitude that Goodman did.

This is not to say that L.E. officers are bad people - they're simply
a product of their line of work. They spend their entire workday
dealing with criminals; it should hardly be a surprise that this would
color their perspective.

-Dan

[Forrest Flanagan]

his ideas do not flow logically. If I were a composition teacher with a red pen, his article would look like a butcher block.

For example, a questionable factoid about computer viruses makes no sense next to an Andrew Hessel quote about future cancer therapy. The quote is also taken far enough out of context that it makes it seem that AH is talking about generating custom viruses for less than a buck that give people cancer.

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[leaking pen]

Hmm, an invention that allows one person to rob 100 million. OOO, i know!  A BANK!

  

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[Giovanni Lostumbo]

not only money, but distractions, like kittens on a treadmill youtube videos getting 100 million views.

To unsubscribe from this group, send email to diybio+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Giovanni Lostumbo]

i think that's true, similar to the Convention on Cluster Munitions treaty (adopted in 2008) although Libya used cluster munitions when it went into "scorched earth" mode in 2011. Some countries tend to follow treaties, until they feel like they don't have to, or want. "Non-binding".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi9hHDooAX4

[Cathal Garvey]

Not to mention Israel's usage of white phosphorous, Korean armed sentry robots, Transnational ME insurgents' fondness for crowd-bombing, USA drone and torture programs, and Kenyan rape-as-weapon.

Armies kill. It's what they are trained to do. And because they are controlled by graduates of their own killing-training, as institutions they have a tendency toward utilitarian methods.

To worry about civilians is to miss the well-funded, legally untouchable killer elephant in the room.

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[Jason Bobe]

On Friday, May 4, 2012 4:15:21 PM UTC-4, alexander hollins wrote:

Hmm, an invention that allows one person to rob 100 million. OOO, i know!  A BANK!

 

noted :)

[Giovanni Lostumbo]

noted.

>diybio+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Giovanni Lostumbo]

the video i linked to did acknowledge some of that.

[Jason Bobe]

On Thursday, May 3, 2012 8:57:10 PM UTC-4, Bryan Bishop wrote:

CRAIG VENTER: Well, they're not actually. There's not been one
single accident from molecular biology in almost four decades.

I think this is one of those points that often gets lost in debates about genetic engineering, i.e. the fact that biologists have been practicing it for decades with extraordinary safety.  I'm not sure anyone ever been killed by a GMO?  

Is public fear rooted in the idea that synthetic biology is categorically different from genetic engineering (i.e. what we've been doing for decades already)?

There are many other technologies that we use on a daily basis that are comparatively lethal (automobiles, pharmaceuticals, etc) and generally accepted.

Jason

[Jonathan Cline]

On Thursday, May 3, 2012 5:57:10 PM UTC-7, Bryan Bishop wrote:

hmm.. well it sounds like our views were misrepresented again. I don't think anyone is claiming that it is possible to stop new viruses from being created. So what did this reporter think he was doing ?

Let's hope someday soon there is a virus which makes journalists smarter.
Presumably a smart journalist does not need to attempt sensationalism to gain points.

By the way, everyone remember:  the cake is a lie.


## Jonathan Cline
## jcl...@ieee.org
## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223
########################
 

[Bryan Bishop]

On Sat, May 5, 2012 at 12:02 PM, Jonathan Cline <jnc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Presumably a smart journalist does not need to attempt sensationalism to gain points.

Maybe we should just start pre-writing the articles for them. But there's not much to gain from that?

[Jonathan Cline]

On 5/5/12 10:27 AM, Bryan Bishop wrote:

On Sat, May 5, 2012 at 12:02 PM, Jonathan Cline <jnc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Presumably a smart journalist does not need to attempt sensationalism to gain points.

Maybe we should just start pre-writing the articles for them. But there's not much to gain from that?

Definitely the best way to proceed.  Ignore the noisy signals and amplify the desired source signal.  In other words, write source articles for the media (aka press releases), and generate beneficial sound bites which journalists love to include - meanwhile, refuse to give any other statements.  This is what marketing depts attempt to do in industry (most are not great at it).  Apple has excelled at ignoring the media (refusing to comment to journalists - because comments are typically twisted and slanted by journalists) and instead they generate their own news. 

Keep in mind that one of the primary purposes of outreach is to inform the public, aka get normal people talking about GMO and perhaps contributing.   This group is a form of outreach, and contributes to the buzz which causes normal people to start talking and perhaps contributing.  So don't get so worked up about bad press.  In most cases it doesn't matter what the public talks about (mad/evil scientists, genius breakthroughs, etc) as long as they are talking about science.    So, for example, create press about creating a zombie e. coli.   If the negative-minded readers/journalists have nothing to talk about (and they won't talk about the good technology, because they want to be negative!), they'll invent a negative story -- so generate something for them to talk about instead, and it fills their negative-appetite temporarily -- meanwhile demonstrating their immature attitude.

Why journalists haven't pounced on the NASA story, I have no idea!  NASA wants to teraform Mars with ancient, re-incarnated martian bacteria, which requires resurrecting unknown microbes on Earth first.  Talk about Little Boy and Fat Man!   Yet the journalists are chasing down a few incredibly smart kids working in their kitchen labs?  Wow, strange priorities.


FYI the FBI's cake is still a lie.

[Giovanni Lostumbo]

teraform= Dr. Snaut in 1972 Solaris:
"Dr. Snaut: We don't want to conquer space at all. We want to expand Earth endlessly. We don't want other worlds; we want a mirror." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069293/quotes

[Jeswin]

On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 10:57 AM, mad_casual <ademl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> MARC GOODMAN is pretty clearly a shady character himself. Anyone who says,
> "Never before in the history of humankind has it been
> possible for one person to rob 100 million people." either doesn't

Ponzi schemes but maybe not 100 million people. How about using taxes
for bridges-to-nowhere or the "war on drugs, poverty, etc"?

[Jonathan Cline]

On Saturday, May 5, 2012 9:43:54 AM UTC-7, Jason Bobe wrote:

Is public fear rooted in the idea that synthetic biology is categorically different from genetic engineering (i.e. what we've been doing for decades already)?

Public fear of synthetic biology has more to do with the word "synthetic".  Reference the focus groups done about 3 yrs ago where general, uneducated public described the feeling of the word as "fake, sterile, artificial, not natural".  If the word were softer, i.e. "synthesis biology", the public might be perfectly happy with it.  (Similar to public outrage against unhealthy beef products only occurring recently due to semantics of 'pink slime'.)  If the phrase were "genesis biology" I'd imagine the bible thumpers would burn pitchforks outside our labs - purely based on emotional reaction to the words.  Fear is an emotional reaction after all.

 

There are many other technologies that we use on a daily basis that are comparatively lethal (automobiles, pharmaceuticals, etc) and generally accepted.

Those technologies are not possibly contagious.  Or "against god's will."

[Meredith L. Patterson]

On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 3:33 AM, Jonathan Cline <jnc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> There are many other technologies that we use on a daily basis that are
>> comparatively lethal (automobiles, pharmaceuticals, etc) and generally
>> accepted.
>
> Those technologies are not possibly contagious.  Or "against god's will."

Several fringe Christian denominations reject pharmaceuticals (and
medical intervention in general), preferring prayer instead. This
probably has something to do with why they're so small in number.

Somewhat relatedly, Dan Kaminsky tweeted a really nice analysis of the
recent H1N1 paper:
http://www.metafilter.com/115573/The-Avian-Flu-Transparency-vs-Public-Safety#4326172.
I particularly like this remark: "So if you were a bio-terrorist, and
all you cared about was making the virus deadly, and didn't care
anything about how it works, then all you'd have to do is buy some
ferrets and a sick chicken."

--mlp

[mad_casual]

On Friday, May 4, 2012 11:15:52 AM UTC-5, Nathan McCorkle wrote:

On May 4, 2012 10:57 AM, "mad_casual" <ademl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> MARC GOODMAN is pretty clearly a shady character himself. Anyone who says, "Never before in the history of humankind has it been
> possible for one person to rob 100 million people."

Other than the internet, what has historically enabled a single person to rob 100 million people??? His comment makes sense to me

Which "one person" robbed 100 million? I wouldn't profess to be in the know about how this sort of thing gets done, but everything I've read suggests you either need a criminal network or some other covert (intelligence) agency to be even modestly successful at approaching the '100 million robbed' title. Between hardware knowledge, coding, and access, I'm 99.9999% sure "one person" didn't pull off stuxnet. I can point to several "one persons" in history who have killed tens if not hundreds of millions. Enron, Madoff robbed how many? Ponzi schemes existed long before Charles Ponzi was arrested. The internet didn't enable people to rob others en masse. It does make the victims easier to find and count. And if the technology that allows 100 million people to be robbed by "one person" prevents the death of tens of millions of lives, I have a hard time faulting the technology. 

either doesn't understand the technology or human history. I wonder if he was a part of the police Force in LA that has been under reform for the brutality that lead up to the riots? For a former law enforcement officer, he certainly oozes with the presumption of guilt. Who are the 'mice' or the 'bad guys' and what laws are they breaking? I don't

Bad guys don't necessarily break laws, especially if they're off U.S. soil ... its the intent that matters

Your comment suggests, to me, that it makes sense for the US to pursue people internationally that aren't doing anything illegal. Once again, IMO, better to focus efforts on the people whom you can actually prove have broken some laws that are actually on the books somewhere rather than rending people's personal liberties and actively stifling innovation in the pursuit of Professor Moriartys who might be breaking social mores, hypothetically, somewhere.

 

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[Nathan McCorkle]

On May 6, 2012 8:08 AM, "mad_casual" <ademl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Friday, May 4, 2012 11:15:52 AM UTC-5, Nathan McCorkle wrote:
>>
>>
>> On May 4, 2012 10:57 AM, "mad_casual" <ademl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > MARC GOODMAN is pretty clearly a shady character himself. Anyone who says, "Never before in the history of humankind has it been
>> > possible for one person to rob 100 million people."
>>
>> Other than the internet, what has historically enabled a single person to rob 100 million people??? His comment makes sense to me
>
> Which "one person" robbed 100 million? I wouldn't profess to be in

I'm not sure, but robbing in this sense could just meabln CPU cycles, so any malware or stupid virus counts IMO

the know about how this sort of thing gets done, but everything I've read suggests you either need a criminal network or some other covert (intelligence) agency to be even modestly successful at approaching the '100 million robbed' title. Between hardware knowledge, coding, and access, I'm 99.9999% sure "one person" didn't pull off stuxnet. I can point

stuxnet doesn't count IMO, since it was targeted vandalism of mainly one facility/entity... vandalism could equal stealing in time sense again

to several "one persons" in history who have killed tens if not hundreds of millions. Enron,

Enron is a corporation, no?

Madoff robbed how many? Ponzi schemes existed long before Charles Ponzi was arrested. The internet didn't enable people to rob others en masse. It does make the victims easier to find and count. And if the technology that allows 100 million people to be robbed by "one person" prevents the death of tens of millions of lives, I have a hard time faulting the technology.

How does internet prevent deaths of 10s of millions?

>>
>> either doesn't understand the technology or human history. I wonder if he was a part of the police Force in LA that has been under reform for the brutality that lead up to the riots? For a former law enforcement officer, he certainly oozes with the presumption of guilt. Who are the 'mice' or the 'bad guys' and what laws are they breaking? I don't
>>
>> Bad guys don't necessarily break laws, especially if they're off U.S. soil ... its the intent that matters
>
> Your comment suggests, to me, that it makes sense for the US to pursue people internationally that aren't doing anything illegal. Once

What I meant is there aren't laws against makibg GMO plasmids that can kill, but when you go and put that into the city water system its then illegal... all along g the intent was ill though.

I also meant that some countries are lawless in the hands of terrorist regimes, so legality in that case us tossed our the window. And yes I think terrorism is a force that needs to find a non-violent way to effect change.

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[Forrest Flanagan]

Public fear of synthetic biology has more to do with the word "synthetic".  Reference the focus groups done about 3 yrs ago where general, uneducated public described the feeling of the word as "fake, sterile, artificial, not natural".

The automobile industry figured this one out decades ago. "Corinthian Genomics" y'all.

 

[Avery louie]

I am amused that people think that personalized medicine is too expensive/unreasonable, but making a supervirus is a walk in the park.

--A

On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 3:04 PM, Forrest Flanagan <soleno...@gmail.com> wrote:

Public fear of synthetic biology has more to do with the word "synthetic".  Reference the focus groups done about 3 yrs ago where general, uneducated public described the feeling of the word as "fake, sterile, artificial, not natural".

The automobile industry figured this one out decades ago. "Corinthian Genomics" y'all.

 

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[Jonathan Cline]

On Saturday, May 5, 2012 9:43:54 AM UTC-7, Jason Bobe wrote:

I think this is one of those points that often gets lost in debates about genetic engineering, i.e. the fact that biologists have been practicing it for decades with extraordinary safety.  I'm not sure anyone ever been killed by a GMO?  

Cancer kills slowly. 
GM plants are not under control, it's not possible to avoid them, and it's not known if they're unhealthy. 
How would the results of future GMO's differ from the result (the escape) of GM plants?

"""
We document the presence of two escaped, transgenic genotypes, as well as non-GE canola, and provide evidence of novel combinations of transgenic forms in the wild. Our results demonstrate that feral populations are large and widespread. Moreover, flowering times of escaped populations, as well as the fertile condition of the majority of collections suggest that these populations are established and persistent outside of cultivation.
...

Results

The escape of GE B. napus in North Dakota is extensive (Fig. 1). Brassica napus was present at 45% (288/634) of the road survey sampling sites. Of those, 80% (231/288) expressed at least one transgene: 41% (117/288) were positive for only CP4 EPSPS (glyphosate resistance); 39% (112/288) were positive for only PAT (glufosinate resistance); and 0.7% (2/288) expressed both forms of herbicide resistance, a phenotype not produced by seed companies (Table 1). Densities of B. napus plants at collection sites ranged from 0 to 30 plants m⁻² with an average of 0.3 plants m⁻². Among the archived specimens, 86.8% were sexually mature varying in developmental stage from flower bud to mature fruit with seeds. At the time of roadside sampling, in-field canola was non-flowering having matured to the 4-leaf to pre-bolting stage (JPL pers. obs.). This striking difference in flowering phenology suggests that flowering canola in roadside habitats may have originated from the previous generation's seed bank rather than from seed spill during the current growing season."""

The Establishment of Genetically Engineered Canola Populations in the U.S.

Schafer MG, Ross AA, Londo JP, Burdick CA, Lee EH, et al. (2011) The Establishment of Genetically Engineered Canola Populations in the U.S.. PLoS ONE 6(10): e25736. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0025736

[mad_casual]

On Friday, May 4, 2012 2:41:04 PM UTC-5, Dan wrote:

This is not to say that L.E. officers are bad people - they're simply
a product of their line of work.  They spend their entire workday
dealing with criminals; it should hardly be a surprise that this would
color their perspective.

I know and have known several officers, between the gym and the range, it's hard not to know at least one. I know they aren't inherently bad people, because I also know that many of them know the difference between ensuring public safety and treating everyone as a criminal. Like I said, I wonder if Goodman was a part of a culture (LAPD) that has conditioned him in the presumption of guilt (and potentially even worse bad habits of police work). There's nothing wrong with suspecting someone, there is something wrong with imposing your will on them because you *think* something might be wrong.

[Jason Bobe]

On Sunday, May 6, 2012 6:04:55 PM UTC-4, Avery wrote:

I am amused that people think that personalized medicine is too expensive/unreasonable, but making a supervirus is a walk in the park.

Yeah, I agree.  This line of reasoning seems common and somewhat odd.  

In this case though, I think the line of reasoning is a little different: assume that at some point in the future, we have cheap, personalized, and therapeutic (oncolytic in this case) viruses; then we would also have cheap, personalized, and harmful/criminal/terroristic (?) viruses as well.  Marc's bailiwick is around "future crimes" after all.

Jason

[Jason Bobe]

And, there certainly is a lot (and will continue to be) a lot of worry about designer pathogens.  Reading this morning in The Atlantic, Nick Bostrom identifies this future threat as one of the most worrisome:

What technology, or potential technology, worries you the most?

Bostrom: Well, I can mention a few. In the nearer term I think various developments in biotechnology and synthetic biology are quite disconcerting. We are gaining the ability to create designer pathogens and there are these blueprints of various disease organisms that are in the public domain---you can download the gene sequence for smallpox or the 1918 flu virus from the Internet. So far the ordinary person will only have a digital representation of it on their computer screen, but we're also developing better and better DNA synthesis machines, which are machines that can take one of these digital blueprints as an input, and then print out the actual RNA string or DNA string. Soon they will become powerful enough that they can actually print out these kinds of viruses. So already there you have a kind of predictable risk, and then once you can start modifying these organisms in certain kinds of ways, there is a whole additional frontier of danger that you can foresee. 

Link

[EJ]

I know our own Dr. Oliver Medvedik is "the Man" (bad joke) but you at least could've put his name down! The second "Man" is one of Genspace's new members, Dan Orr. They filmed us at Genspace for half a day, and tried several times to get us to estimate what the probability was that "someone" was out there doing bioterrorism stuff in a closet lab or DIY setting. Finally I lost my patience and said that they should ask the experts in bioterror, not me, since nobody in the DIY community was interested in doing it- and if they were, then they were part of the bioterror community and not the DIYbio community. That's the part of the interview that made the final cut below.

We were especially amused by
1) using Oliver's tour of Genspace as the basis for talking about how easy it is to get equipment for cheap on eBay
2) using footage of Sung Won Lim putting samples in our centrifuge as they talked about somewhere a terrorist might be lurking
3) using footage of our high school student interns making spheroplasts from Arabidopsis plants when they talked about someone brewing up a homemade virus