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Aswad -> RE: Doomsday virus (2/17/2012 6:37:50 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Iamsemisweet
I wonder what the security is like in the lab. Among other things
Biosafety level 4 protocols.
Seperate entry and exit zones with decontamination. Airtight suits with positive internal pressure. Airtight building with negative internal pressure. Multiple one-way airlocks that require both inside and outside security to agree to open the doors, and hardwired to prevent both doors from being open at the same time. High energy organicidal lamps that inflict third degree burns if you're not in your suit. Nanometer sized filters for the air supply. Large security zone to limit physical access, and the military is usually allowed to deal with any threats to such a facility (in NATO countries, they can secure such a facility by any means found necessary if it is believed to be at risk or already compromised).
That sort of thing.
It isn't lost on them just how crucial it is to maintain absolute integrity in such a facility. They want to go home to their families at the end of the day, and they want their families to remain alive. Hence, they will store every pathogen we encounter, and study all of them, in some of the most secure facilities humanity can make, with some of the most stringent security protocols humanity can make. The precautions used are derived directly from the work on creating biological weapons of mass destruction, with a similarly serious mindset.
Level 4 isn't for playing with the common cold or the seasonal flu.
It's for pathogens with no known treatment or vaccine, usually airborne, usually very contagious, all with a high mortality rate (typically in the 80 to 100% range). Things like viral hemorrhagic fevers, which are class A biowarfare agents. Or things like smallpox, the only human pathogen to have been intentionally made extinct worldwide, by intense and coordinated efforts over three decades. Contagious nightmares we all hope never to see unleashed on civilization, of which even a tiny outbreak may merit martial law.
That's what these places are designed to make safe to work with.
A formidable task, and one taken very seriously.
Theoretically, one could have a higher rated facility than the ones currently in place, but unless someone comes up with a highly contagious, cross species pathogen with a long incubation period and very high lethality, that is persistently airborne and has sufficient viability after crossing open ocean, such a major investment is unlikely to happen. One also doesn't really have much incentive to make such a pathogen, anyway, and it would be incredibly hard, so what we've presently got is essentially good enough.
Moving on to the topic...
What they're supposed to evaluate, is whether there may be something to gain. If there isn't, then even an infinitesmal risk is unacceptable. If there may be something to gain, the risk is probably acceptable (in the sense of "comparable to other, already accepted or unavoidable risks of equal severity"). Humanity hasn't got a whole lot of people that can actually evaluate this in a meaningful way, and those we do have, will. Thankfully, the general public won't be allowed to distract them from this demanding work.
That said, it isn't unreasonable to set abstract criterion that have to be adhered to, defined in terms that are estimable. For instance, there is a finite and estimable risk of an extinction level impact event. So long as one stays below that level of risk, for anything that has potential gain, it's hard to argue that it's a risk that is ill advised. Such a criterion doesn't require specific knowledge of the field to set forth, and it can thus be applied in the concrete by those who do have such knowledge. This is something the general public, if it had a voice in politics, could set forth in the interest of reasonably informed consent as bystanders. And then still stay out of the debates on how that translates into a given field.
Any facebook petitions to end the research are less than useful input.
Try asking them to present facts for the lay person, instead.
Without that, a petition is uninformed opinion.
Health,
al-Aswad.
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