[anonymouskimmer]

A secret skunkworks approach could facilitate genetic inventions that don't get passed into the general knowledge base. It would be difficult making discoveries that all of the other biologists working in society miss, but is remotely plausible.

[eesmith]

Yeah, no. That does not seem plausible at all.

Again, the technology would be able to cure cancer. Do you really think all those employees - who know that their friends and family could be cured of their cancer - would be willing to keep mum of the cure?

[anonymouskimmer]

It depends on how isolated they are kept from each other's work. It's not as if we don't already have decent cancer therapeutic technologies in the pipeline.

[eesmith]

We do not have broad-spectrum anti-cancer therapeutics, much less ones which are based on self-reproducing communicable organisms that target the cancer's DNA.

If I'm wrong, what are you thinking of?

[anonymouskimmer]

Therapeutics which prompt the endogenous immune system to recognize the cancer cells as something to attack. I believe this is the basis of mRNA cancer therapeutics? I believe they are targeted for individual cancers and possibly individual people, but given the speed in which they can be made this doesn't seem like a major future hurdle.

Throw one into a gene therapy vector and it could conceivably reproduce itself (though that seems like a bad idea for a cancer therapeutic anyway).

[eesmith]

"I believe" and "conceivably" do not make good evidence that something is in the pipeline.

mRNA cancer therapeutics do not target nuclear DNA. They do not enter the nucleus and they produce proteins to trigger an immune response against the targeted disease, not against the DNA of the targeted disease.

[anonymouskimmer]

You're misinterpreting my initial objection. Skunkworkers would care less about the personal ramifications of keeping technology which could be used to cure cancer secret if there are already viable full-cure treatments for all of the cancers they or their family members may plausibly come down with.

[jacquesm]

> Again, the technology would be able to cure cancer.

That's your strawman. But I can - easily, at that - imagine a POC that would be specific enough to kill a single human with a very high degree of success given some meta data about them and a sample of their DNA. I'm for obvious reasons not going to expand on that here because we have too many idiots in this world but the fact that you can't imagine such things doesn't mean that others can not.

[anonymouskimmer]

It would be easier to just novichok the person.

[jacquesm]

Maybe. Not always. Heads of state tend to be very well protected against such attacks for instance.

[eesmith]

So what? Movie plot scenarios do not need to reflect reality.

I can easily imagine hopping on the next Pan Am rocket service to Luna City.

I can easily imagine using a space laser to kill that same human.

I can easily imagine taking a bridge from Key West to Cuba.

I can easily imagine taking a pill to regrow an amputated leg.

Just because you can easily imagine a POC doesn't mean it's doable in our lifetimes.

What are you going to target in the DNA? Is it a single short sequence or multiple markers across the genome? How does the bioweapon sequence that DNA to find it? How does that then trigger the appropriate biological response? How do you prevent mutations? What infectious organism will you use? How do you know the target isn't already immune to that infection?

Even if you expand on one or two of these in convincing detail (congrats on your future Nobel Prize, by the way), that's still not enough for the idiots in the world to make a usable weapon.

And so many easier ways to kill someone exist.