From: Eugene Leitl (Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Thu Oct 04 2001 - 13:05:03 MDT
On Thu, 4 Oct 2001, Extropian Agro Forestry Ventures Inc. wrote:
> If memory serves correct mushroom fungus is similarly able to "evolve"
> rapidly.
There are at least three things wrong with that sentence.
> Take one of the deadly mushroom species such as aminita or death camas
> and find a growth medium which cultures both mushrooms and bubonic plague
> add some simple cell fusion chems , ..... the possibilities are endless.
Most bacterial toxins do better than mycotoxins. Lethal dose (LD50, I
presume, probably oral) for amanitins is about 0.1 ug/kg body weight, 1-2
mg/kg body weight for phalloidin. While this is impressive for a mycotoxin
(For comparison, aflatoxin is 1750 ug/kg, ricin, a plant toxin, 2 ug/kg,
tetrodotoxin, a dinoflagellate toxin, 2 ng/kg), in comparision, C.
botulinum (natural product) subcutaneously is 30 pg/kg.
Also, the point is not the fastest possible termination of the host --
quite the opposite as a holistic approach to high infectivity at long
symptomless latency before the kill is crucial for a self-sustaining
hard-to-eradicate epidemic is needed as one of the aspects of a successful
biowarfare agent.
-- Eugen* Leitl leitl
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