Ken (not on list)

> I am continually amazed by what I percieve as a widespread belief that
> natural always equates to good and artificial often equates to bad.

        > rest of post at end

Agree. But not sure whether that is agreeing or disagreeing with something I
said :-)

I am trying to be, while not in the middle, at least be wandering the battle
ground and not far out on one side. I am PRO GE in the general sense but
also pro common sense.

I am well aware (as you might expect) of the bad things that are
specifically human infecting. What I have been commenting on is the ability
or normality of "greeblies" to infect cross species or bring in new genetic
material via pathways previously unused, at least recently. Nature appears
to have erected largish barriers on almost all such pathways.  We are in the
process of leaping high over the barriers and depositing genetic material in
locations that nature has chosen not to allow its own processes to get at.
It is hard to see how undesirable and unpredictable results would not be
expected.

The lessons "learned" by long term infectors are matched by the lessons
"learned" by our bodies against them. Usually. Arms Races, when found, tend
to be relatively balanced, else the race would be over. Hopefully it's not
our race.

Smallpox lost by being too dangerous. Or so we hope - it may yet be back.

Interestingly - AIDS is PROBABLY natural (some suggest a germ warfare lab)
but probably resulted from massive human contact with green monkey viscera.
Ebola appears not to have had the interfering human hand involved, yet.
(Some suggest it as a prime germ warfare candisdate but I suspect that it is
a little too hair-triggered for that). BSE probably rose from feeding
Scrapie infected sheep central nervous system (CNS) material to cows. New
variant human CJD "probably" arose from feeding cow CNS material to people.
BUT cross species prion diseases appear to have occurred from cows in 1947
in USA when many mink farms were wiped out about a year after receiving feed
from a  central feed plant that rendered "downer" cows. (Note that this
seems to be another prion disease in cows and NOT BSE/CJD). So it appears
that we may have had about 30 years warning of cross species prion disease
transfer caused by rendering animals and using them as feed. Cross species
prion transfer in the wild was already known. If we ever get (or cause to
arise) a prion disease that attacks non CNS area in its final form (ie in
body tissues etc) we are in deep trouble. Prion infectiousness is high,
small physical infector size (<virus and << cell) makes containment
"interesting" and destruction by normal means just doesn't work. The only
known cure for a person with CJD is to incinerate them at 1000 C . Not that
such little things are liable to stop us though ...



        Russell


> Nature (i.e. natural processes) has long proven that it is very good at
> producing "bad" things and the likelihood is that it will continue to do
so.
> Obvious examples include the pathogens of old (B plague, poxes (various),
> influenza, polio, diptheria), and (probably) more recent ones (AIDS,
Ebola,
> CJD and other prion nasties, etc.)  Then there are diseases of direct
> genetic or cellular origin where patahogens are (probably) not involved.
> There are probably other categories too which I can't think of right now
> (some might even want to add obesity and diabetes to the list).
>
> All of these are undeniably natural.
>
> If nature is so good at coming up with these "baddies", then given that it
> is generally agreed that it does so very slowly through whatever
mechanisms,
> is it not reasonable to assume that humankind will do much better (in
terms
> of baddies created per unit time) by actively exploiting essentially the
> same mechanisms on a large scale ?
>
> In a nutshell  - if nature can produce such baddies are we perhaps
deluding
> ourselves that we won't ?
>
> While I wouldn't want to see GE held back unnecessarily I think many in
> authority need to be made more aware of the possibility of the unexpected,
> and put in place proper safeguards which are actually taken seriously.  At
> the moment many are only paying lip-service and some are deliberately
> obstructive.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ken Mardle
>
> Applied Digital Research Ltd.  Tel    : +64 9 415-2514
> P.O. Box 6480                  Fax    : +64 9 415-3514
> Wellesley St                   Mobile : +64 25 879-648
> Auckland                       E-mail : kenmar@adr.co.nz
> NEW ZEALAND                    WWW    : http://www.acqura.com
>
>
>

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