> > Anyone who does not know and acknowledge that the worst case > > possibilities of GE exceed the dangers from all out nuclear war doesn't > > understand what its all about. > > > Hi Russell, > > That's a thought-provoking (and scary) comment...but isn't the worst-case > final outcome of both scenarios one and the same? I'll be back on the wider issues (just going out). But a quick comment here . It seems PROBABLE that an all out nuclear war would not destroy all human life. Certainly a large proportion of people would die. Could be 10% to 95% say. Certainly the subsequent affects on all aspects of life would be immense. Both possible "nuclear winter" for decades, decimation of food supply, radiation sicknesses, mutations affecting new births, disease rampant and medicine scarce or worse and far more. But even if the world's human population stabilised at 5% of current (which seems rather low) = about 300 million, we could expect to see a "reasonably" fast return to old technological gains. Certainly not a nice world to live in, but liveable nonetheless. Even 1% survivors would be 60 million worldwide. Now consider just one of the worst case outcomes of GE. A disease, probably a retrovirus. Incubation period similar to HIV/AIDS. Equally undetected as HIV was as it infects people, until first symptoms make people start to look for it. As hard to pin down as AIDS - unstable and easily altered as AIDS is). Now give it the infectiousness of the common cold - able to be transmitted by aerosol (eg sneezing, coughing) and surface contact. Similar in infectiousness perhaps to SARS. Now give it an effectiveness similar to IDS once it becomes active but with a much smaller lethality period - say weeks after first symptoms. make it just a tiny bit more able to infect people than HIV - ie 100% against HIV's 99.something%. ((Note that even very bad diseases can be communicated without being evidence. eg Smallpox causes a mild infection similar to a light cold initially. It is not until a few weeks later that it starts to become evident. There is no reason why a disease could not be conveyed without any obvious symptoms.)) Now let it loose ANYWHERE on earth. After the first while where its hosts walked or drove around by car, it would then spread around the world at just below the speed of sound (that being the speed of jumbo Jets). After its first Jumbo Jet ride it would be spread worldwide in weeks - after 10 years or so it would be very very very well distributed around the world. NOW the symptomatic phase starts. remember, EVERYONE on earth has it. Almost everyone got it within weeks to months of each other. Symptoms will probably crop up all over at about the same time. People start to get sick and die within days to weeks, Hospitals are utterly overloaded. They can't even start to start to analyse what's happening before there are millions dead. Even if someone manages to find the cause, if it's a fraction of the difficulty of dealing with HIV/AIDS it's far far far too slow. Approximately if not exactly everyone on earth dies within a year. Potentially no other species whatsoever are affected. Add on scenario: This is the ultimate good scenario for the ultra radical animal rights activists who fervently wish to see all humans dead. How many of them are doing GE research ? :-) The military in at least one and probably many countries are investigating GE development. After thought. Using even semi AIDS like vectors in GE work seems a little unwise. The single most commonly used "promoter"* in GE work is the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus (CMV or CAMV), patented, as you may have guessed, by Monsanto. CMV is very similar to Hepatitis B and related to HIV. * A promoter is a 'product' with an ability to carry payloads across species barriers. The rareness in nature of really effective ones is demonstrated by the fact that CMV is still the promoter of choice for the large majority of GE work. So much so that tests for GE presence in crops is usually a test for the presence of CMV promoter. Back to the super virus above. Possible? - absolutely!. Probability of occurrence? - nobody honestly knows. How improbable should a technically possible event be before you gamble (literally) the life of every person on earth against it not happening? if you can't assess the probability, what should you do instead? More likely (but still of unknown probability) are diseases which simply cause a few million deaths, or depress immune system response, or cause new illnesses. Balanced against these are the great gains which are potentially there in about every biological field imaginable. How great a probable gain do you need to be attempting to achieve to justify potentially killing everyone? Russell McMahon -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.