[HN Gopher] New technology aims to stop wildlife from spreading ...
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New technology aims to stop wildlife from spreading Ebola, rabies,
other viruses
Author : samizdis
Score : 52 points
Date : 2022-03-21 18:38 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nationalgeographic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nationalgeographic.com)
| scythe wrote:
| >Advocates for self-spreading vaccines say they could
| revolutionize public health by disrupting infectious disease
| spread among animals before a zoonotic spillover could occur--
| potentially preventing the next pandemic.
|
| This doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You have no (or at least
| not much) idea _which_ disease is going to spill over from
| animals into humans. Unless the plan is to eliminate all diseases
| -- which sounds dangerous -- this technology might be applied to
| contain known zoonotic diseases (rabies and Lyme seem
| particularly notable) but seems unlikely to stop new ones.
|
| >CMVs also infect a host for life, induce strong immune responses
| yet do not often cause severe disease.
|
| Aren't these... like... uh, lemme check...
|
| >A substantial portion of the immune system is involved in
| continuously controlling CMV, which drains the resources of the
| immune system.[41][42] Death rates from infectious disease
| accelerate with age,[43] and CMV infection correlates with
| reduced effectiveness of vaccination.[44] Persons with the
| highest levels of CMV antibodies have a much higher risk of death
| from all causes compared with persons having few or no
| antibodies.[45][46]
|
| ... _bad?_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_betaherpesvirus_5#Pathog...
| fsh wrote:
| The article is about animal CMVs, not human CMV.
|
| "Nuismer and Redwood both say it is highly unlikely that a CMV-
| based vaccine could ever jump species given the virus's
| biology. Although the evolutionary factors underlying CMV's
| species-specificity are not entirely known, there has never
| been a documented case in the wild or in a laboratory of a
| successful cross-species CMV infection."
| Zenst wrote:
| Certainly a good approach if done right, and been mindful with
| the whole looming birdflu virus and it's spread amongst birds
| that will lead to an increased risk of human tranfer and equally
| mutation that enable that cross-over more easily.
|
| However, a thought about how antibiotics got used in animals and
| in many respects we have to admit - abused in their usage leading
| to decrease in how effective they are. So with that history in
| mind, certainly be prudent to vist that whole aspect
| cure/exposure. Maybe that early intevention at source may be
| better and I suspect it may well be as shifting the zoological
| landscape of fighting a virus's at a stage prior to human
| exposure. But that may well just see over time, more robust
| virus's that rise up thru evolutionary exposure to any vacine we
| put into the wild.
|
| So many aspects to look at. Just the whole leasons from
| antibiotics into animals and how that went is something we need
| to be very mindful of in not repeating as the possibility of
| solving a problem in the short/middle term and creating a larger
| threat longer term is something that can not be rulled out.
|
| One thing that I hope they do look at is having some kill-switch
| method, be it anothe virus that attacks the one they release. A
| fail safe.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Paywall
| boomchinolo78 wrote:
| The main problem is the reductionist approach people try to apply
| to biology, trying to gloss over the combinatorial complexity of
| actual living organisms, their biochemistry and their genetics.
| chrononaut wrote:
| Reminds me of:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_worm#Worms_with_good_...
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| There are one million reasons why that's a no-no.
|
| Here is one: _the difference between medicine and poison is
| dosage_.
|
| Each individual requires its own dosage. This idea is talking
| about a forced universal. But nobody has the right to poison an
| individual, not to mention a minority, in the name of _the good
| for everybody_. It would be a false good forced with an
| illegitimate right. In other words, necessary fraud. And we didn
| 't even started about the side effects.
| fsh wrote:
| The article is about animals.
| yucky wrote:
| People are animals. Things spread from other animals to
| humans all the time.
| fsh wrote:
| This is addressed in the article.
| [deleted]
| yonaguska wrote:
| That's an interesting point that should have been considered
| with the covid vaccines. Previous infection should have had
| some bearing on the dosage one was compelled to take. As should
| adverse reactions to the first dose. A vaccine injured friend
| is still trying to get an exemption in the state of California
| for work. She wants to work in healthcare, and had a severe
| adverse reaction to the second shot, but no doctor will give
| her an exemption for fear of being investigated by medical
| boards.
| pm90 wrote:
| This is kinda wishful thinking. There's already a lot of things
| that we force all of humanity to be subject to without consent,
| including lethal contagions that may arise from _any part of
| the world_.
|
| A better solution would be to tightly regulate this sort of
| thing so that random research teams aren't allowed to just do
| this, but there are checks and balances, e.g. a plan
| coordinated by the UN/WHO or something.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Can you explain _who watches the watchmen_ problem isn 't
| wishful thinking or could possibly end well? i.e: not
| recurring to censorship and propaganda and social behavioral
| engineering?
| [deleted]
| transfire wrote:
| How about working on actual cures instead of vaccines.
|
| (Of course the problem is that cures are antithetical to
| Capitalism.)
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Have you heard of the expression "Prevention is better than
| cure"? I'd be interested to know how well you think it applies
| to vaccines.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| [deleted]
| nathanyz wrote:
| Waiting for conspiracy theorists to claim that the Omicron
| variant was the first test of this technology since it was fairly
| mild and spread so quickly giving most people who caught it some
| immunity against other COVID strains that are deadlier.
| [deleted]
| scythe wrote:
| Similar arguments were made months ago:
|
| https://twitter.com/stevensalzberg1/status/14792575379208355...
| nawgz wrote:
| I'm pretty unconvinced this thought is well-baked. It's more
| like, well, whoever thought it is baked. According to the CDC
| [0], Omicron had 9 deaths per 1000 cases, Delta 13, and
| original COVID 16. While I admit the hospitalization numbers
| are slightly more friendly for Omicron, it's clear no work was
| done to separate vaccination status in this data, and it'd take
| someone more dedicated than I to argue Omicron really exhibited
| markedly different characteristic than original COVID to a
| degree necessary to even make this plausible
|
| [0]:
| https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e4.htm?s_cid=mm...
| bhk wrote:
| Here's a more recent study:
|
| https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/234736/people-with-
| omicron-v...
|
| It says the risk of death with Omicron is 69% lower than with
| Delta. Among the unvaccinated, the risk is 80% lower than
| with Delta.
|
| These numbers jibe with the statistics on case rates and
| mortality that we've seen over the last three months, when
| Omicron has been dominant.
|
| I suspect the difference would be much more pronounced if we
| were to account for asymptomatic cases. Looking at wastewater
| measurements, which have been a good proxy for (and predictor
| of) case rates, we see far fewer confirmed cases, relative to
| virus levels, during the Omicron phase than we saw during
| prior variants. The ratio of deaths to wastewater virus
| levels is about 1/10th of what it was with Delta.
| nathanyz wrote:
| I'm with you. If conspiracy theories required well-baked
| thoughts, then we wouldn't have things like flat earthers.
| Not sure how well a thought logically makes sense is in any
| way relevant.
|
| What seems more important is how conveniently it can prove a
| point that the person already is trying to push forward.
| somenameforme wrote:
| There is one major bias in the sort of studies you just
| linked to that can't really be smarted away. When looking at
| things like a mortality rate, you need to somehow determine
| how many people are infected. Imagine there were some weird
| disease where it was completely asymptomatic in 99% of cases
| and fatal in 1%. The vast majority of contemporary COVID
| related studies would claim this disease would have an
| extremely high mortality rate, far higher than 1%.
|
| The reason is because diagnosis is almost never done
| randomly, but instead relies on different avenues like
| hospitalization data. So you tend to already be biasing
| yourself to severe outcomes because milder cases are not
| going to end up getting diagnosed. In omicron's case this
| effect has been extreme as things like sewage samples showed
| dramatically higher rates of of the disease than were being
| officially reported. In the study you mentioned it determined
| diagnosis using:
|
| "CDC used data from three surveillance systems to assess U.S.
| disease related to COVID-19 during December 1, 2020-January
| 15, 2022. COVID-19 aggregate cases and deaths reported to CDC
| by state and territorial health departmentsP were tabulated
| by report date.* ED visits with COVID-19 diagnosis codes were
| obtained from the National Syndromic Surveillance Program
| (NSSP).++ Hospital admissions and inpatient and ICU bed use
| among patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 were
| obtained from the Unified Hospital Data Surveillance System."
|
| So your numbers are biased to heavily rely on things like
| hospitalization data, which is going to make the numbers
| borderline useless for trying to evaluate the overall
| mortality rate. To be fair I'm not really attacking the study
| either. Like I said this is a problem that really can't be
| solved in any way other than an involuntary lottery with
| mandatory testing + reporting + profiling/classification,
| which is something I'd expect to see in China, but not the US
| - for better and for worse.
| human wrote:
| Checking-in.
| soperj wrote:
| username checks out.
| [deleted]
| nomdep wrote:
| And don't forget the fact that is a direct mutation of the
| early strain of the virus, instead of the other variations that
| mutated from the previous one.
|
| Maybe a coincidence, maybe not.
| teknopurge wrote:
| There is such a thing as a bad idea; this is a bad idea.
| otikik wrote:
| They should implement those new viruses in Rust, so they are type
| safe and mostly inmutable. Except for the unsafe parts
| alexfromapex wrote:
| It is my personal opinion that because of the extremely high
| potential for abuse, all delivery mechanisms should be designed
| to require the host's consent. I would also have to agree that
| bodily autonomy is a fundamental human right.
| babyshake wrote:
| Would it be possible for these contagious vaccines to require
| some secondary medication be taken to be activated? Ideally
| something with no active ingredients that could be sold OTC at
| pharmacies.
| im3w1l wrote:
| This technique could be used to make extremely frightening
| bioweapons - think a disease that has no symptoms as it
| spreads, allowing it to fly under the radar, until a certain
| condition is met at which point it kills everyone at the same
| time.
|
| Imo it must be considered extremely taboo. Moreso than _just_
| contagious vaccines.
| [deleted]
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > Ideally something with no active ingredients that could be
| sold OTC at pharmacies.
|
| Which _could then be_ added to tap water, soft drinks, added
| as a fortifying agent in flour and bread.
|
| That would surely be the response from conspiracy theorists,
| except of course that they would replace _could then be_ with
| _already is_.
| [deleted]
| jayd16 wrote:
| The article is about inoculating wildlife so host consent is a
| tall order there. I guess that would make this unfeasible in
| your view?
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Indeed I would have to apply the same thinking to wildlife. I
| think humankind needs to set some boundaries about altering
| the fabric of nature at all, until we are very certain of the
| implications and reach a consensus on the ethics.
| fsh wrote:
| That ship has sailed roughly 12000 years ago [1]. By mass,
| around 96% of mammals are either humans or lifestock [2].
| If you go on google earth and zoom into a random country
| anywhere on earth, chances are pretty good that you end up
| looking at a field. Our immune system is that of a hunter-
| gatherer. It hasn't evolved to handle close contact with
| animals, cities, and intercontinental travel. The result
| are the huge zoonotic pandemics of the last few millennia.
| Since there is nothing "natural" about them, maybe we have
| to mess with the fabric of nature in order to avoid the
| next one.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution
|
| [2] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > until we are very certain of the implications and reach a
| consensus on the ethics
|
| Humankind has neither the coordination nor the process to
| reach a consensus on almost anything, and certainly not on
| the ethics of changes to the natural world. And meanwhile,
| we continuously make such changes, whether intentionally,
| unintentionally, or on the boundary between the two that is
| "we're doing this and we know we're doing it but we lack
| the coordination to stop".
|
| We _should_ be able to make decisions on a scale of
| "should we eliminate all mosquitos in the world, would that
| be a net win or a net loss when taking all side effects
| into account". I expect that would in fact be a net win,
| even taking all side effects into account, because disease
| as a factor will outweigh other considerations. But in
| practice, I don't think we have the means of making such
| decisions in any coordinated fashion. And I don't think
| that means we should refuse to ever make such decisions at
| all.
|
| I think the proposal in the article is a risky one. The
| rewards may outweigh the risks. But right now we have no
| process to evaluate that. Writing articles and provoking
| public opinion is not a process, it's one small step in an
| otherwise non-existent process.
| _Microft wrote:
| From the article:
|
| "Most researchers agree that self-spreading vaccines could
| never be applied to human populations, because universal
| informed consent would never be achieved."
| giantg2 wrote:
| If the whole rationale is to stop diseases from jumping from
| animals to humans, then isn't it possible the contagious
| vaccine could do the same...
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > universal informed consent would never be achieved
|
| I wonder if these researchers are able to imagine a
| government mandating that all citizens must receive a
| vaccine.
| internet_user wrote:
| _all_ is subject to definitions.
|
| even if the vaccine is medically inappropriate, or even
| contraindicated for millions? the comatose on life support?
| mandates it for foreign travellers in transit who got stuck
| in your country? mandates for the foreign diplomatic staff?
| mandates for military, which has their own medical corps
| and medical decision-making?
|
| What is all?
| human wrote:
| Our laws need to be reviewed for this. I think the whole idea
| of adding fluoride to drinking water to improve dental health
| is a good and older example of this. If I will receive any form
| of therapeutic I should have to give my consent. We are
| starting to have stronger laws for personal data than for our
| bodily autonomy it seems.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| Just to add to the other comments, I recommend looking into
| the "why" fluoride is added to water. I'm currently on the go
| so I can't provide references, and I'm sorry that it is hard
| to find due to the prevalence of crazies writing blogs about
| fluoride, but the general summary is that is was a happy
| mistake of resource extraction effluent which had more
| benefit than harm at first, and has now been found to maybe
| even out instead of being slightly beneficial (depending on
| your values). The Canadian study linked in a sibling comment
| addresses that last bit.
|
| Iodine in table salt is probably a better example.
| AgentME wrote:
| Isn't fluoride in drinking water a massive public health
| success? Bringing that example up makes me wonder if our laws
| are right to enable more success stories like that. (Not
| staking any position on whether the OP story about contagious
| vaccines meets the necessary safety bar. It's conceivable to
| me that it could go either way.)
| verall wrote:
| What about iodine in salt?
| jinpa_zangpo wrote:
| "Sixteen case-control studies that assessed the development
| of low IQ in children who had been exposed to fluoride
| earlier in their life were included in this review. A
| qualitative review of the studies found a consistent and
| strong association between the exposure to fluoride and low
| IQ. ... Children who live in a fluorosis area have five times
| higher odds of developing low IQ than those who live in a
| nonfluorosis area or a slight fluorosis area."
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18695947/
| Timothy055 wrote:
| Fluorosis is a condition where there's so much flourine in
| the water that one's teeth start getting brownish yellow
| spots. That's not the level used in most water supplies.
| The study itself groups slight fluorosis areas with
| nonfluorosis as having no effect. US water supplies are
| usually managed to ensure no fluorosis even when the water
| is fluorinated.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_fluorosis
| verve_rat wrote:
| You know there are places in the world where fluoride is
| removed from the drinking water because the natural levels
| are to high, right?
|
| Fluoride is naturally occurring in water, some places add
| more, some places remove some to get to the desired level.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| The live attenuated oral polio vaccine is contagious and has
| already been widely used in many countries.
| jinpa_zangpo wrote:
| "The oral polio vaccine that's used primarily in low- and
| middle-income countries - it's been the workhorse of this
| global effort to eradicate polio. But it is a live vaccine.
| It's cheap. It's easy to administer.
|
| "However, this live vaccine is continued to be used worldwide.
| And while you're doing that, some of that vaccine has gotten
| out into the world. And it's mutated. It starts circulating
| again, just like regular polio. But early on, it's just - it's
| still a vaccine. It's not dangerous. And then slowly, it sort
| of regains strength. And they're finding they can actually
| genetically see this - that scientists can actually trace it
| back directly to the vaccine. And now these vaccine-linked
| cases are actually causing more cases of paralysis each year
| than actual traditional - what scientists call wild polio."
|
| https://www.npr.org/2019/11/16/780068006/how-the-oral-polio-...
| btown wrote:
| An important note from that article, lest the quote out of
| context feed any anti-vaccine fears:
|
| SIMON: Now, we should underscore, Jason, this is not the
| version of the vaccine that's given to youngsters in the
| United States.
|
| BEAUBIEN: Yeah.
|
| SIMON: Why are other countries still using it?
|
| BEAUBIEN: Right. So in the United States and in Europe and
| other countries like that, it - we're using an injectable
| vaccine, which is a dead vaccine. It is not a live virus, and
| it cannot cause polio. So that should not at all be a
| concern. The issue, however, is that it's an injection that
| has to be given. It's given four times between the ages of 2
| months and 7 years. So just administering it is difficult.
| And just frankly, there is not enough global stockpile of
| that vaccine to vaccinate all of the children around the
| world, you know, four times over the course of their
| childhood.
| jovial_cavalier wrote:
| "Hmm.. I don't like what nature is doing. I think I will fuck
| with it."
|
| What could possibly go wrong?
| [deleted]
| asperous wrote:
| Sad to see commenters here not reading the article and just
| reacting to the headline. The article is about contagious
| vaccines for animals for diseases that do not currently spread to
| humans.
| car_analogy wrote:
| Once the technology exists..
| brenns10 wrote:
| To be fair, the article is walled off behind a mailing list
| signup CTA. Those of us not interested in signing up can't read
| it anyway.
| striking wrote:
| If folks haven't read the article, why should they try and
| comment on it?
| tomrod wrote:
| .. That do not spread to humans _yet_ , surely?
| pohl wrote:
| The word "currently" serves the same function as "yet" here,
| doesn't it?
| _Microft wrote:
| The whole topic sounds very risky to me indeed but they
| seemed to have been very careful with their choice of virus:
|
| "Although the evolutionary factors underlying CMV's
| [cytomegalovirus] species-specificity are not entirely known,
| there has never been a documented case in the wild or in a
| laboratory of a successful cross-species CMV infection."
| tomrod wrote:
| Eh, but the risk that once the knowledge is published and
| the tools are available to the public we now have a novel
| and frankly horrible way to once again murder the biosphere
| seems high, no?
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've replaced the baity title with the hopefully less
| baity subtitle. Thanks!
| car_analogy wrote:
| How about "The quest to make a 'contagious' animal vaccine"?
|
| A technology cannot be fairly represented by the intent of
| its inventors. It's equivalent to describing the Manhattan
| project as "New technology aims to end WWII and provide
| cheap, clean power".
| hirundo wrote:
| It is difficult for me to imagine trusting the public health
| apparatus enough to feel that informed consent to medical
| procedures is a vestigal, dangerous liberty.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| calebm wrote:
| This sounds like a good contender for the cause of human
| extinction.
| dang wrote:
| All: please don't post shallow, predictable, reactive comments.
| Those lead to boring threads. We want _reflective_ responses, not
| reflexive ones:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
|
| For this it would probably be a good idea to read the article.
| slackfan wrote:
| Looking forward to biotech companies doing this anyways, having a
| good number of people die due to allergic reactions, and then
| society shrugging and going 'but it's for the greater good, and
| if you don't agree you're a conspiracy theorist'.
| datameta wrote:
| How many people have died from allergic reaction to covid
| vaccine?
| juanani wrote:
| slackfan wrote:
| What does the covid vaccine have to do with anything?
| Anaphylactic reactions to vaccines are common, and are an
| assumed side effect of any vaccine. Multiply the entire
| population of the world by 1%, which is a normal assumed rate
| of an allergic reaction to most vaccines, and then figure out
| how many people don't have ready access to epi pens (a
| temporary fix that gives you an hour or so to get to the
| hospital, and the price of which has been significantly
| jacked up by the pharmaceutical monopoly), or live anywhere
| where an ambulance response time is >20 minutes (most major
| US cities). And then you have a fun little number that's
| expendable for the common good, so to speak.
|
| No, it isn't large, but it sure as all hell isn't 0.
| [deleted]
| TrevorJ wrote:
| A plausible sci-fi story could probably be written about some
| ancient high-tech earth civilization doing this to rid themselves
| of bacterial infections and accidently inventing viruses.
| wcarss wrote:
| or... of viruses being von neumann probes, possibly corrupted
| from some original purpose like "find, adapt to, and take over
| hosts, then build signals"
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Something like this: https://www.smbc-
| comics.com/comic/2011-08-08
| [deleted]
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