
Demon in the Freezer - Tomte
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/17/opinion/errol-morris-demon-in-the-freezer.html
======
gww
There is another fantastic book called "Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of
the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from the
Inside by the Man Who Ran It " By Ken Alibek.

For example, the USSR supposedly had an annual production of weaponized
Smallpox measured in tons, which is a ridiculous amount of virus.

~~~
hello_asdf
I was under the impression that this author had been mostly discredited due to
his discussions on the Soviets combining various other contagions and smallpox
being highly improbable [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Alibek#Criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Alibek#Criticism)

~~~
gww
I think he fluffed the book up a bit, but I believe some of the assertions
about their research activities and production have been confirmed.

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TuringTest
> _these residual stocks of smallpox should not be destroyed because some
> ruthless super-criminal or rogue government might be working on a new
> smallpox_

We _know_ for sure there's such supervillain. We call it Nature.

~~~
Kristine1975
Nature is chaotic neutral, not chaotic evil. Also it hates to be
anthropomorphized ;-)

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Balgair
Smallpox is a thing. Yes it is deadly and a bad thing, like nukes or taco-bell
being open at 3am. But it is still a thing. It's evilness derives from the
people who can use it as a thing, not itself. For instance, rabies is a very
bad virus too, but is used all the time in research
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies_virus#Application](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies_virus#Application)).
There, rabies is used as a thing in the vein of a tool for research, not as a
tool to hurt others. Having some back-ups somewhere like in an internationally
governed vault in Greenland would be most prudent. We all have access, in
theory, then to it and it is less likely to be used as a bad thing in the
future that way.

~~~
gww
I think the control of viruses such as smallpox may become irrelevant once
their genomes can be synthesized de novo ("in a test tube"). There is still
the challenge of producing fully infectious virions but it is possible and has
been done with poliovirus
([http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12114528](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12114528)).

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Kristine1975
Does anybody else get goosebumps when reading about how smallpox has been
eradicated? A disease that for thousands of years killed and maimed billions
of humans -- gone for good[1]. It's a great testament to human ingenuity and
perseverance.

[1] Well, except for those samples mentioned in the article

~~~
Aelinsaar
I get goosebumps when I hear talk about eradicating Aedis Aegypti. Maybe I'm
just a simple person, and the elimination of a macroscopic species strikes me
a little harder, but there it is.

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doctorpangloss
As an animator and researcher on the piece, I'd want to clear up some details
in the comments below:

We synthesized viruses as early as 2002,[0] and you can get the sequence for
Variola right now.[1]

Ken Abilek is regarded as largely discredited.[2] Sergei Popov, seen here,
made a great variety of claims, but the ones in the documentary seem to be the
most consistent with other sources.

In particular, a great extra source is Jeanne Guillemin, a medical
anthropologist who wrote a variety of books about the Vector institute, its
accidental release of anthrax into the city of Sverdlovsk,[3] Ken Abilek and
Sergei Popov's claims about what went on in Vector, and the Amerithrax case.
Her analysis is largely consistent with experimentation with Variola at the
Vector facility in Sverdlovsk, less so the chimeric agent making that
allegedly occurred there according to Ken Abilek.

Richard Preston argued that man is the demon in the freezer. There is no
compelling scientific use for variola today, and if it can be synthesized
artificially anyway, there's no compelling use for it sitting around in
preposterously expensive high security.

Mutually assured destruction by variola was the only reason it was kept
around. The Soviet Union was alleged to have filled a handful of missile
warheads with variola, along with anthrax and ricin. The Soviet Union was
alleged to believe that the United States was developing anti-nuclear weapon
technology (it was). But to be clear, the United States for a period of time
violated the biological weapons development ban too. Weapon development is
crazy business and it's the only legitimate use of variola today.

[0]
[http://www.nature.com/news/2003/031110/full/news031110-17.ht...](http://www.nature.com/news/2003/031110/full/news031110-17.html)
[1]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/NC_001611.1](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/NC_001611.1)
[2] [http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/01/nation/na-
alibek1](http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/01/nation/na-alibek1) [3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak)

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theophrastus
Should the blueprints to variola, (a single linear double stranded DNA genome
186 kilobase genome sequence), be destroyed too? It wouldn't take too much
effort to generate 186 kilobase DNA sequence ("longest gene made by us
>230kb"[1])

[1] [https://www.dna20.com/services/gene-
synthesis](https://www.dna20.com/services/gene-synthesis)

------
karcass
There's no way to eliminate smallpox completely now that it has been
sequenced, unless you can also get rid of the _digital_ copies as well. It's
getting easier and easier to print DNA and RNA. We might not be able to print
a full virus yet but it's only a matter of time.

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Rotten194
There's a very good book by the same name about Smallpox eradication and the
debate over destroying remaining stocks of the virus. I highly recommend it.

~~~
facepalm
Maybe entertaining, otherwise I wonder how the contents could be useful to me
personally.

~~~
pdabbadabba
I suppose that depends on whether you are interested in developing an informed
opinion about, among other things, whether we should preserve or destroy
remaining stocks of smallpox virus. If not, then no, it probably will not be
useful. But that probably also means you are reading and commenting in the
wrong thread.

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zappo2938
Pretty sure that David Baltimore had access to the virus at Rockefeller
University. That would be one place it would be kept in the United States.
That is their thing, the rarest of diseases. Perhaps, he was worried about
himself. I mean that in a abstract sense. Imagine if you had that destructive
power available to you.

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gozur88
I've never understood why these samples were maintained. I don't find "some
ruthless super-criminal or rogue government might be working on a new
smallpox" compelling - if some rogue government develops a new smallpox and
releases it, we'll have plenty of samples to work with.

~~~
tete
You mean more rogue governments than the ones that keep it around with the
goal of annihilating another nation?

(this goes to ANY government doing that or similar)

~~~
gozur88
I'm just quoting the article.

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mark-r
Eliminating the remaining samples is an irreversible decision. It's impossible
to predict what value those samples might have if kept, because we don't yet
know what use they would be put to.

There's not too much danger in it getting loose again, after all we eliminated
it once already.

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dang
Url changed from [http://kottke.org/16/05/the-demon-in-the-
freezer](http://kottke.org/16/05/the-demon-in-the-freezer), which points to
this.

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isidoreSeville
I can't help but agree with this article's argument which seems to be 'there
are some smallpox samples'.

~~~
cm2012
Part 2 of the argument is that they must be destroyed.

