brad
11-20-2003, 04:23 PM
two stories. note the date on the first. but hey everyone knows technoology is very very slow progress.
second story says science fiction stuff could be ready by 'next decade'. so about six years.
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http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,16272,00.html
12:30 PM Nov. 16, 1998 PT
Israel is reportedly developing a biological weapon that would harm Arabs while leaving Jews unaffected, according to a report in London's Sunday Times.
The report, citing Israeli military and western intelligence sources, says that scientists are trying to identify distinctive genes carried by Arabs to create a genetically modified bacterium or virus.
The "ethno-bomb" is reportedly Israel's response to the threat that Iraq may be just weeks away from completing its own biological weapons.
The task is very complex because both Arabs and Jews are Semitic peoples. But according to the report, the Israelis have succeeded in isolating particular characteristics of certain Arabs, "particularly the Iraqi people."
Dedi Zucker, a member of the Israeli parliament, denounced the research in the Sunday Times. "Morally, based on our history, and our tradition and our experience, such a weapon is monstrous and should be denied."
Last month, Foreign Report claimed that Israel was following in the ignominious footsteps of apartheid-era research, in their supposed efforts to develop an "ethnic bullet."
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http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,7890639%255E401,00.html
CIA warns of designer bio-weapons
From correspondents in Washington
17nov03
A GROUP of US scientists has warned the Central Intelligence Agency that recent advances in biotechnology could give life to "designer" biological weapons able to target selected groups of people, act with a delay and turn deadly in reaction to medicine, according to a CIA document made public in Washington.
The warning came during a closed-door seminar organised at the request of the CIA by the National Academy of Sciences to devise strategies for dealing with the dangerous by-products of the so-called genomic revolution.
The spy agency would not disclose when and where the meeting occurred. But its unclassified account of the seminar, dated November 3, was obtained by the Federation of American Scientists, a non-profit organisation.
"The effects of some of these engineered biological agents could be worse that any disease known to man," the CIA report warns.
Scientists have cautioned that explosive growth in knowledge about genes and their functions could make traditional means of monitoring weapons of mass destruction obsolete, according to the document.
This could make weapons that now exist only in science fiction novels real over the next decade.
These new tools of war were likely to include binary biological agents made up of two components that are relatively harmless separately but that become deadly when combined, according to the CIA account.
"A particularly insidious example would be a mild pathogen that when combined with its antidote becomes virulent," the report says.
It may well be possible in the future, experts explained, to design a virus that, acting alone, would cause just flu-like symptoms but that would turn deadly when its target takes an aspirin in the hopes of relieving a headache.
Other "designer" biological weapons could be taught to resist antibiotics, evade an immune response and permanently wreck a person's genetic make-up, the panellists told the CIA.
second story says science fiction stuff could be ready by 'next decade'. so about six years.
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,16272,00.html
12:30 PM Nov. 16, 1998 PT
Israel is reportedly developing a biological weapon that would harm Arabs while leaving Jews unaffected, according to a report in London's Sunday Times.
The report, citing Israeli military and western intelligence sources, says that scientists are trying to identify distinctive genes carried by Arabs to create a genetically modified bacterium or virus.
The "ethno-bomb" is reportedly Israel's response to the threat that Iraq may be just weeks away from completing its own biological weapons.
The task is very complex because both Arabs and Jews are Semitic peoples. But according to the report, the Israelis have succeeded in isolating particular characteristics of certain Arabs, "particularly the Iraqi people."
Dedi Zucker, a member of the Israeli parliament, denounced the research in the Sunday Times. "Morally, based on our history, and our tradition and our experience, such a weapon is monstrous and should be denied."
Last month, Foreign Report claimed that Israel was following in the ignominious footsteps of apartheid-era research, in their supposed efforts to develop an "ethnic bullet."
---------------------------------------------------
http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,7890639%255E401,00.html
CIA warns of designer bio-weapons
From correspondents in Washington
17nov03
A GROUP of US scientists has warned the Central Intelligence Agency that recent advances in biotechnology could give life to "designer" biological weapons able to target selected groups of people, act with a delay and turn deadly in reaction to medicine, according to a CIA document made public in Washington.
The warning came during a closed-door seminar organised at the request of the CIA by the National Academy of Sciences to devise strategies for dealing with the dangerous by-products of the so-called genomic revolution.
The spy agency would not disclose when and where the meeting occurred. But its unclassified account of the seminar, dated November 3, was obtained by the Federation of American Scientists, a non-profit organisation.
"The effects of some of these engineered biological agents could be worse that any disease known to man," the CIA report warns.
Scientists have cautioned that explosive growth in knowledge about genes and their functions could make traditional means of monitoring weapons of mass destruction obsolete, according to the document.
This could make weapons that now exist only in science fiction novels real over the next decade.
These new tools of war were likely to include binary biological agents made up of two components that are relatively harmless separately but that become deadly when combined, according to the CIA account.
"A particularly insidious example would be a mild pathogen that when combined with its antidote becomes virulent," the report says.
It may well be possible in the future, experts explained, to design a virus that, acting alone, would cause just flu-like symptoms but that would turn deadly when its target takes an aspirin in the hopes of relieving a headache.
Other "designer" biological weapons could be taught to resist antibiotics, evade an immune response and permanently wreck a person's genetic make-up, the panellists told the CIA.