From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sun Aug 18 2002 - 12:11:59 MDT
On Sun, 18 Aug 2002, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> I'd like to see this system successfully tested against anthrax, smallpox,
> or AIDS before I relied on it as a defense against future existential risks.
There was a Science paper earlier this year about an anthrax toxin anti-toxin.
That was done by one group at Harvard. It turns out that part of the antrax
toxin(s) requires multiple subunits to assemble into the transporter that
gets some of the other toxins into the cell. A malformed subunit disrupts
the whole complex sufficintly that it can't function.
I would assume that people are moving it towards clinical trials.
Some other toxins, like those used by bacteria and I think amphibians
have a similar multi-subunit complexes that could be disrupted by
throwing a bad apple into the bunch.
With regard to AIDS I believe that there is work actively going on
to find molecules that bind to the CCR4 receptor to prevent the
AIDS virus from binding to it.
So there are different strategies that could be pursued depending
on the nature of the agent. Not that there aren't ways around these
but the engineering becomes much more complex and resource consuming.
Fortunately for us, with respect to terrorists, there are a lot more
of us trained with the necessary skills than there are of them.
So if we apply ourselves sufficiently to preparing for the worst
it may never happen. The caveat to this is that states can muster
the resources to launch fairly large bioweapons programs. Russia,
Iraq and South Africa have clearly demonstrated that.
Robert
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