From: Russell Wallace (russell.wallace@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Oct 17 2005 - 19:05:15 MDT
On 10/18/05, Joel Peter William Pitt <joel.pitt@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There is also the principle of "know thy enemy".
>
> By making the genome secret you add value to it and the disease it is
> responsible for. If it is freely available then understanding of how the
> disease kills is available and can lead to better defense, with lots of labs
> able to work on it rather than just a couple of Government approved ones.
So do you advocate that scientists keep doing this sort of thing until
governments decide scientists have proven themselves untrustworthy and start
legislating bans?
If we get to the point, some decades down the line, where it becomes
possible to draw up blueprints for nanotech weapons, do you advocate
treating them the same way?
Anyhow, not really SL4 material but I'd be happy to discuss off list.
This particular incident isn't SL4 directly in and of itself, but I think
it's very damned relevant to things that are. I think this is the sort of
issue that could tip the balance between whether we (humanity,
Earth-descended life) make it or not.
- Russell
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