[zwkrt]

> If you take those genes and put them into organisms like bacteria and yeast, which normally do not have these proteins, they actually become much more desiccation-tolerant

Well I have a newfound fear of humans creating a bacteria as hard to kill as a tardigrade…

[aetherspawn]

I mean all we need now is to find out how to make a prion that forms TDPs so we can glue it to the outside of COVID-19 in some twisted gain of function research.

[noduerme]

This is such a sad exemplar of where we've gone as a technological society. Thirty years ago, you could have suggested releasing a virus that destroyed cancer, and people would have cheered.

[animal531]

I think people have just had to become a bit more realistic after having their eyes opened. Right now my imagination says that this virus might destroy cancer, but who knows what else it's going to do?

[bboygravity]

Clinical trials know what else it's going to do.

This reasoning is like the fear of a some random TESTED C++ code destroying the internet, because "it might do things that you don't expect in the long run". Well yeah... it might... but...

[Guthur]

And after 30 years many of us have seen enough corporate propaganda to weary of any so called technological promises.

[amelius]

There is even a worse example: imagine a protein that locks onto pieces of DNA that are only present in people of a certain race, etc.

The worst part is, we can stop building the foundations of this type of technology, but our geopolitical opponents will not.

[xenophonf]

> imagine a protein that locks onto pieces of DNA that are only present in people of a certain race

The good news is that "race" is a social construct, not a genetic one. Very little genetic variation differentiates between groups of people, and the differences that exist do not map onto socially recognized categories of race.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.23882

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1078311

https://www.nature.com/articles/ng1438

I can help you access the full text of all cited research if you can't get it through your library or employer.

[scottLobster]

Won't theoretically stop someone from discovering the genetic signature for a certain natural skin pigmentation, or slanted/smaller eyes. Sure it won't be perfect, but people who would create and use such a weapon probably wouldn't care about collateral damage.

I can certainly see it being China's final solution to the Uyghur question. They have a long history of callously and needlessly killing large swaths of their own people toward nationalistic ends, and not just under Communist rule.

[drekk]

There is more genetic variance within "races" than between them. Your imagination is neither necessary nor sufficient for it to be possible, let alone feasible.

I also honestly do not understand why China is the bogeyman here given that Long Island, NY was the eugenics capital of the world within living memory. Utah, the state in which I live, didn't shutter its own eugenics program until the 1960s. I'm trying to recall when China dropped nuclear ordinance on civilian populations and really failing here.

I figured it's probably a western bubble thing and sure enough most people in most countries don't view China as the obstacle to world peace. https://fullfact.org/news/america-world-peace/

[xenophonf]

> the genetic signature for a certain natural skin pigmentation

Such a thing does not exist:

> Our understanding of the genetics of melanin formation and distribution within cutaneous and follicular tissues has recently greatly expanded through the power of genome-wide association studies (GWASs) using large databases such as those of the UK Biobank (22) and 23 and Me (51). This research has provided new insights into the biology of skin and hair color and underscores the highly polygenic nature of these two traits, with complex epistatic interactions apparent between the genes involved.

(https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-genom-0831...)

Again, there's no biological basis for "race":

> People today look remarkably diverse on the outside. But how much of this diversity is genetically encoded? How deep are these differences between human groups? First, compared with many other mammalian species, humans are genetically far less diverse – a counterintuitive finding, given our large population and worldwide distribution...

> Early studies of human diversity showed that most genetic diversity was found between individuals rather than between populations or continents and that variation in human diversity is best described by geographic gradients, or clines. A wide-ranging study published in 2004 found that 87.6% percent of the total modern human genetic diversity is accounted for by the differences between individuals, and only 9.2% between continents. In general, 5%–15% of genetic variation occurs between large groups living on different continents, with the remaining majority of the variation occurring within such groups (Lewontin 1972; Jorde et al. 2000a; Hinds et al. 2005). These results show that when individuals are sampled from around the globe, the pattern seen is not a matter of discrete clusters – but rather gradients in genetic variation (gradual geographic variations in allele frequencies) that extend over the entire world. Therefore, there is no reason to assume that major genetic discontinuities exist between peoples on different continents or "races." The authors of the 2004 study say that they ‘see no reason to assume that "races" represent any units of relevance for understanding human genetic history. An exception may be genes where different selection regimes have acted in different geographical regions. However, even in those cases, the genetic discontinuities seen are generally not "racial" or continental in nature but depend on historical and cultural factors that are more local in nature’ (Serre and Pääbo 2004: 1683-1684).

(https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/human-skin-col...)

[stametseater]

Naomi: FoxDie is a type of retrovirus that targets and kills only specific people. First, it infects the macrophages in the victim's body. FoxDie contains smart enzymes, created through protein engineering. They're programmed to respond to specific genetic patterns in the cells.

Snake: Those enzymes recognize the target's DNA?

Naomi: Right. They respond by becoming active, and using the macrophages, they begin creating TNF epsilon. It's a type of cytokine, a peptide which causes cells to die. The TNF epsilon is carried along the bloodstream to the heart, where they attach to the TNF receptors in the heart cells.

Snake: And then...they cause a heart attack?

Naomi: The heart cells suffer a shock and undergo an extreme apoptosis. Then... the victim dies.

[bboygravity]

This is actually super trivial with today's technology.

It's a little too late to "stop building the foundations". That's like wanting to "stop building the foundations" for the tech that allows governments to spy on civilians. We're about 20 to 30 years passed that.

[jacquesm]

> our geopolitical opponents

Who are they?

[TechBro8615]

Pretty sure OP is referring to the Chinese.

[FrustratedMonky]

Australians. Argentina? Could be anybody.

[barrysteve]

We did globally coordinate and deploy a vaccine campaign with little spare time.

[noduerme]

which was the most technologically positive and futuristic thing that's happened in a long time. Thank you for stating it.

[lm28469]

We don't need humans for that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomonas_aeruginosa

Eventually we'll get to a point where nothing will work against these

[COGlory]

P. aeruginosa is an incredible organism. Not only is it antibiotic resistant, but it also is starvation resistant. So even when you have antibotics that work, it's often to difficult to get them to all the cells, since cells at the bottom of a biofilm just shut down completely for weeks on end. End the course of antibiotics, and they pop back up and start growing again.

Thankfully, there are major tradeoffs associated with those traits, which makes them not particularly virulent to healthy people.

[justinclift]

The real question is, if these genes are spliced into a human do they awaken post-dessication craving human blood? :)

[seanhunter]

Craving for human blood said to be "within acceptable tolerance". Every technological step forward has it's pros and cons.

[AwaAwa]

This is the purpose of Marketing. Feature, not a bug.

[isk517]

In the future you will eat the flesh of your fellow man and you will like it.

[jryb]

Nature is already doing this experiment, right now, and has been for billions of years. This couldn't cause problems even if we wanted it to.

[vlovich123]

That feels like fatally flawed reasoning. Nature took billions of years to sequester carbon. It’s taken a few hundred to release an amount that’s permanently altered the climate of the Earth.

There’s lots of problems humans can create that “nature” couldn’t precisely because we drastically compress time scales that make adaptation exceedingly difficult.

[ajani]

But it took no time for the universe to come into existence. In a bang and flash.

[vlovich123]

Since time stretches out to infinity as you approach a singularity, if we assume all matter started out compressed at the Big Bang, then actually it took forever amount of time for the universe to come into existence. I’m not a physicist though so I may have gotten the relativity aspect wrong.

[nunobrito]

Climate has been changing since the planet exists and you benefit from everything that a modern society has to offer. Better if you become the example of change in society and go live inside a cave to reduce your own carbon footprint.

[circuit10]

https://xkcd.com/1732/

[nunobrito]

Instead of comics, better understand that climate has always changed and will continue to change.

Not that long ago that parts of the globe were for centuries warmer up to 5 degree celsius and then fallen into a mini ice-age: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

Reality is quite cold, literally.

[circuit10]

Did you even look at what I posted? It addresses what you're saying, and it shows the Medieval Warm Period on the graph. In fact, even the article you posted has a similar graph as the first image on the page.

[lm28469]

The medieval warm period and following "little ice age" are not even visible on the xkcd graph, that's how small they are compared to massive recent changes. You're looking at micro trend with a magnifying glass and macro trend with a distorting lens if you think the medieval events are anywhere close to what's happening. No recorded climate change happened as fast as the current one, there have been wilder changes but they happened over centuries, not decades

Saying climate always changed so it's ok is like saying you'll die eventually so it's ok if you die tomorrow

> better understand that climate has always changed and will continue to change.

I think virtually no one ever argued against that: https://skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=48