[HN Gopher] New technology aims to stop wildlife from spreading ... ___________________________________________________________________ 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] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-21 23:00 UTC)