All claims against politics are considered bold.
Reasons for engeneering SARS are political and economical with a bit of racist spice-up.
Japan is economically more capable than the US, and also controls many important American companies (via shares).
China produces fair-quality low-cost copies of expensive firmed products(which sell better on numerous markets), and is still Comunist in a way.
I cannot give you the exact examples & numbers, it would take way too much time, trouble and space.
Just think about it... I know that you know what I mean, and what I'm saying, you just don't want to accept it (or get it the right way).
AIDS (HIV) was also engeneered, for the purposes of wiping out homosexuals and (I guess) "non-white" people, because thats where it originally appeared. It went out of control because the people who created it weren't (and couldn't have been) aware of the connections and implications it had.
I'm surprised at how they did not learn anything from that, because they are repeating their mistake. (although they're trying to localise it) How can anyone even think about making a virus to kill someone?
Who are "they"? Well, if I knew exactly who, I'd be dead now, wouldn't I?
NO, I AM NOT PARANOID, I'VE JUST PUT THE PIECES TOGETHER, AND FORGOT ABOUT PREDJUDICES AND REMEMBERED THE FACT THAT SOME PEOPLE ACTUALLY HAVE NO COMPASSION AND FEELING OF GUILT.

p.s. Restrain from flaming, please... Read a few times, and add something yourself... I DID NOT write my every thought, so it may look&feel offensive, but that's not the idea!




CMPT XPBATCKOJ !!!

Edited by - Cpbuja on 22-05-2003 01:24:14

Look, you may be right, (IMO you're most likely wrong though) but perhaps you should think before you post, ok? your post was politically charged, and you knew better than that to post such things on TLR. Have you given thought that some may actually take offense? saying "please refrain from flaming" is not going to save you; being sensitive to others' feelings is.

I said in my first post in this thread that I didn't want to start an argument about politics... But they were asking for it. Tachyon, to be precise, sparked the flame, I replied and now I see that my flame is coming to get me...
Damn... I did it again...




CMPT XPBATCKOJ !!!

I thought sars came from pigs.

Once in Malaysia, there was this Nipah virus, pronounce (Nee Paahh)
They killed all the pigs in the affected area, cause the area is quite dirty, and thes pigs eat dirty food.

First they were thinking of shooting them, then bury the death. But bleeding dying pigs is a real mess, given the epidemic spreading, so the just dig a big hole in the ground, put the pigs in and bury them...alive...

a few officer (close to a hundred) died during the process too, thanks to the nipah virus, but government kept quiet about it..

They said Sars was a mutated form of virus in the family of the common cold. It's a fact that the bacteria/virus world is 50 yrs ahead of current medicine. The immune system that everyone has does a great job of destroying most things you are unaware of, sometimes it doesn't exactly work to plan though and viruses can mimic parts of you fooling the immune system. I have to disagree about these being man made though.

@B : Hope things are improving for you, if not, continue with linked up gaming

@Wiz : When you become a mad-scientist, make sure you head your field, make more money that way!!!!

Skymouse

@Cpbuja,
SIV (Simian Immuno Virus) existed a long time before HIV, since in Africa people would eat whatever they could get, this included monkeys and apes from time to time if they were caught. Since we have such a similar genetic make-up to other primates, it would not take much for a virus to mutate enough to affect humans.
As you say, it went out of control. I can quite easily imagine though that one sexually active person could contract HIV in Africa, unwittingly bring it back to the US and the rest of the world, and then through subsequent relationships spread the virus rather quickly. Since gay men don't get pregnant there would have been less use of safe sex at that time so it would have spread quickest in these groups. Also, don't forget it can be spread through things such as sharing razor blades or in drug abusers through the sharing of needles.
As for SARS you answer your own question quite well

---

I'm surprised at how they did not learn anything from that, because they are repeating their mistake. (although they're trying to localise it) How can anyone even think about making a virus to kill someone?

---

If the US government did start AIDS then they would know the dangers and would not start SARS, regardless of all the Bush jokes, they're not stupid. I doubt they're repeating their mistakes. I will admit I know little about SARS as a virus itself, I've heard all sorts of conflicting stories from mutated chicken flu (that would be so completely new to our immune system we wouldn't have the antibodies to protect ourselves) to a new coronavirus. I do know however that as far as epidemics go, it is hardly at the proportions of say the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed 20-40 million within a year. If SARS was engineered to cripple China (with a population of 1.2 billion) it would need to be much more deadly than it is at the moment (264 deaths so far), and considering this is mostly in Beijing, a heavily populated city it is surprisingly weak. As you say, it is now being contained, the number of cases of this virus is starting to drop (12 new cases reported in China on Monday, the lowest yet).
What it has managed to achieve most is to disrupt the daily lives of people in the affected countries.
I'm not saying that SARS is not a bad thing, it's terrible, it's just that I don't appreciate people who rather than look for more evidence and approach a situation with an open yet slightly sceptical mind, try to link things by assuming reasons for it and looking purely for the evidence to support those ideas.
Sorry Cpbuja but I feel that perhaps you've been watching a few too many episodes of the X-files

----------------------------------------
Eat a third and drink a third and leave the remaining third of your stomach empty. Then, when you get angry, there will be sufficient room for your rage.

Edited by - Recusant on 22-05-2003 10:37:28

@barbarian

Sucks you're stuck in college. Luckily you obviously have the net and hopefully FL and a few other tasties to keep you going

As for the whole engineered virus thingy :

I'm starting a PhD in the autumn (on PTGS mechanisms which i will come back to in a sec). I'm not saying that makes me any more qualified to have an opinon about this as anyone else, just that i have a reasonable amount of background info on the subject).

HIV (the virus which causes AIDS), as recusant correctly states originted from SIV in african monkeys. Most likely from eating infected meat (there have been suggestions of man/monkey sex but its irrelevant) - the same way a recent ebola outbreak started. Similar viruses are also found in cows and cats. Due to its complexity and apparent deviousness at evading the immune system it is tempting to suggest it is man made. The existence at the time (and subsequent closure) of a research project designed to make an 'ubervaccine' by getting one virus to express seqments of protein coat from many viruses only added fuel to these rumours. However i would dismiss them for the following reasons :

1. Practically : Biotech was in its infancy at the time. While it is always generally assumed the military live in a fantasy future world 100's of years ahead of the rest of us i find this unlikely in the case of biology. To engineer such a virus would be damned near impossible. Even now our best methods of understanding viruses are fairly primitive - we disable part of it or look for a crippled version and infer the function of genes/proteins from the phenotype and known missing parts. Actually designing enzymes from scratch is unheard of. Usually we steal one or (more recently) a collection of domains (bits) and hope for the best. A trial and error method of culturing human cells with SIV infefected monkey ones would be the easiest option and if you accept SIV is natural then there is no need to suggest human intervention to create HIV.

2. Politically : If (as has been suggested by others) HIV was designed to wipe out black people and homosexuals it hasnt done a very good job. If i had ordered it i would be asking for my money back. O.k. so it started in africa, but viruses dont just appear out of thin air. They must have genetic 'parents', and the easiest way for this to happen is close contacts between many different species, that way the virus can swap genes with many species and the viruses they harbor. In europe and the U.S. these circumstances dont occur very much. I'm not talking about farms or cattle ranches, i'm thinking of the bird markets of china where sars developed or the jungle villages where ebola was discovered. Therefore new viruses are most likely to develop in 'non-white' countries.
After leaving africa tho HIV proved itself to be not racist at all and will happily infect white people too. As for the homosexual infection rate being higher, as has been pointed out pregnancy is not an issue for homosexuals so condom use was (and is) lower. Also the anal membrane is thinner than the vaginal wall and thus HIV can cross more easily. So a virus supposely engineered to eradicate blacks and gays suddenly is killing white straight people? How exactly did the 'engineers' hope to stop this happening? There are already plenty of viruses which kill far more black people than white people (i.e. malaria) if this was the motivation it would have been far easier to tinker with one of these. Or if a new virus was wanted, to already have a cure which was prohibitively expensive for poorer countries to buy (as with many diseases), that way if it gets out of control you dont have to worry about your family catching it (BTW the only HIV vaccine trials to have published result suggest the vaccine is actually more effective at protecting black people than white people - although it was a relatively small trial)

As for SARS again it is tempting to suggest it has worked out in the interests of the U.S. i.e. stifling the asian economy, distracting from the mess in iraq etc.
While it would be conceivable these days for a virus to be modified (as someone already said SARS is a mutated coronavirus) i still think it would be grossly irresponsible - even for some bunch of cold heated x-flies style mentalists. The simple fact is the animal markets of china are the ideal conditions for new viruses to develop - many species with densities far above those found anywhere in nature. If i were told to engineer a virus to damage the asian economy i would go for modifying influenza, much more is known about it and it would be easier to develop a vaccine/cure for the people you didnt want to catch it. The fact is SARS has been blown out of all proportion by the media, heres an interesting statistic i saw the other day :

300 - Number of people killed by SARS (ever)
3000 - Number of people killed by malaria every day

While the U.S. has a history of behind the scene meddling (check out 'The Trial Of Henry Kissinger') its usually far less surgical than bioengineered viruses. Genrally giving money to terrorists or paying assasins seems to be the way they prefer (call that political if you like but it is a fact).

My area of research - PTGS and specifically RNAi offers a potential for us to cathc up with bacteria and viruses in the bio-arms race. Human cells transcribe DNA to RNA and then translate RNA to proteins which either directly make up the cell or catalyse reactions to build the rest. Within the last 5 years a mechanism has been discovered where specific RNA's can be very accurately targetted for destruction. This bypasses the need to look for drugs (a very hit and miss process) and means instead we can directly target the viruses genes for destruction (sort of surgical strike instead of carpet bombing ). Both HIV and SARS are RNA viruses and thus vulnerable to this technique. Several papers have already shown HIV genes can be degraded via this method. Other potential targets are the receptor molecules they use to enter cells. Look out for sensationalist reports in the media of an RNAi cure for SARS.

God damn that is so long even i cant be arsed reading it

Actually, for a disease to stifle the asian economy I would've gone for Dengue (sp?) fever....
Already rampant in Southern Asia, it is entirely conceivable that it would mutate become even more lethal, and easily spread.

The following statement is FALSE:
The Previous Statement is True.
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@barbarian: think of all the things you can learn at the college given the time that you have to spend there!

I don't have a drinking problem. I drink. I get drunk. I fall down. No problem.
(stolen from a local pub)

Its totally rediculous to suggest that MY government engineered SARS, we are not stupid and we know how fast a virus like that could spread, second of all WHY would we want to do anything like that, what would infecting half of china with SARS do for the average American or even the American government, i mean just think about it most of our commodities are made in China if alot of people in China die then there will not be anyone to produce these goods, what you are saying makes absolutely no sense.
ANOTHER LIBERAL THREAD SHOT DOWN

Drop the politics! SARS is produced by nature, not by any country. If it turns out to be, I'll post a picture of my eating my sock.

Drop the politics, or I'll have to click this!

-- Gamer Heaven, where the screenshots are never blurry, and the script kiddies get publically kicked around. -#reallife

Join the army against the Chaos
An offer you cannot refuse

This is all MHO based on a few observations I've made.

The first headline I saw of SARs was around the start of the Gulf War II. While I wouldn't put it past my government to orchestrate something like this, I doubt it's the direct actions of the US Government. To high of a chance of a "carrier" moving over here and starting outbreaks here.

Given the aproximate time this was reported, it's one h*ll of a coincidence if this a natural occurance, though most people believe that. I have a feeling that it is the work of terrorism, perhaps testing it out. Had this happened in the US, it would immediately be called a terrorist attack. The "game" or "test" would be up. However, you start in a country where people most likely won't think that with a sizable population, you could perform the testing required for a larger scale bio-attack. Also taking into account the amount of business travelers to Asia. Essentially one be a carrier and not even know about it.

Terrorism doesn't necessarily have to hit your "target" nation/government and doesn't always have to involve bombings, hijackings, etc.

The last words of a merchant: "Don't waste your ammo"

Ah crap, I knew better than to ask you that. I just wanted a nonspecific answer I made a mistake. Anyway, last warning before the thread is clickzored

just lock this thread its starting to piss me off