From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Jan 17 2000 - 12:54:24 MST
"Robert J. Bradbury" wrote:
>
> Science at its finest. This gets my vote for the sexiest breakthrough
> so far in the new millennium. It's up there with the trojan horse
> strategy against HIV that was announced last year.
I'll say. The Pleconaril people deliberately picked out a very highly
optimized structure performing a core function, one that couldn't mutate
without breaking everything else, and targeted that specifically, using
a custom-designed molecule. Way, way, *way* cool, bordering on nanotechnology.
Some people were worrying that when the history books were written,
antibiotics might mark a brief halcyon vacation from disease, one that
only endured until all the diseases mutated to become multiply
resistant. Instead, it's looking like antibiotics will have marked a
holding action until the full power of science descended on disease and
crushed it like a bug.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/beyond.html
Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns Writing in Gender-neutral
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way
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