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From: root@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: Viral infections:  Modern medicine seems virtually helpless!
Message-ID: <590@bu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 18-Aug-85 00:48:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.590
Posted: Sun Aug 18 00:48:52 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Aug-85 06:49:22 EDT
References: <191@tekig5.UUCP> <314@kitty.UUCP>, <249@ecsvax.UUCP>
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 20

>From: emigh@ecsvax.UUCP (Ted Emigh)
>Subject: Re: Viral infections:  Modern medicine seems virtually helpless!
>...I can think of no way of
>introducing sickle cell anemia or Tay-Sachs disease into a population through
>chemical warfare.

Although I agree with your first point (that these diseases are not
racially specific at all in the sense of somehow it is easier to induce
in some populations) don't let the limits of your imagination act as a
proof.  Some attacks on sickle-cell involve specific viruses which
change the the broken gene pattern (I forget what it was, but isn't it
just one misplaced base?) with the correct pattern. If such a cure is
possible, then inducing genetic diseases should be similarly possible,
though *not* racially specific (that would take a method that
distinguished the race somehow and also induced the disease, pretty
absurd.) Kinda points out how frightening a lot of this research is, we
may be in more danger from a broken test-tube than all the nuclear bombs
combined, at least the latter don't grow by themselves!

	-Barry Shein, Boston University