BW/ Genetic Engineering and BW

The up’s and down’s of scientific advance

Whenever new findings are presented to the world, people come up with positive and negative usages of this new finding.

This is also the case for genetic engineering. One the one hand it can be used to “cure”some serious diseases  (see Steffi's blog form information ) on the other hand it also opens up new possibilities for the field of biological warfare. Below some of those possibilities are listed. It is however not confirmed that such biological weapons really exist. It really is a mere description of possibilities.

For one, it may possible to create a biological weapon which targets a specific person’s genome. This agent may spread through populations showing minimal or no symptoms, yet it would be fatal to the intended target.Just imagine how this could be used to intimidate people. I guess the furniture emerging from such a period of intimidation would make Biedermeier furniture look dull.

Also viruses which until now only used animals as their hosts could be genetically modified and developed to infect humans. The Ebola Virus would be a candidate for such a genetic modification.

As my heading also includes the up’s: genetic manipulation of viruses could also be used to create vaccines that provide immunity against multiple diseases with a single treatment. Although it needs to be added that "provoking" immunity be being infected with a "weak" modification of a disease is not universely perceived as being positive.

In this sence I can only recommend you to live fast and die young ;)
No I am just kidding: I wanna stress this again, these scientific findings aim to raise awareness and are not in progress!