81–90 of 305 posts
The study of rare, contagious diseases seems likely enough to result in an eventual outbreak that it should be treated like enriching uranium. Which is to say, with great caution- and not like regular science but rather like the kind of science with potentially very negative externalities.
The multi-year gap makes this one especially difficult to track down to specific events/exposures.
The study of rare, contagious diseases seems likely enough to result in an eventual outbreak that it should be treated like enriching uranium. Which is to say, with great caution- and not like regular science but rather like the kind of science with potentially very negative externalities.
For instance, a steel mill producing rolling stock to sell me releases sulfur into the air that dirties your property, imposing a cost on you.
Prion research doesn't necessarily impose costs on anyone.
We don't hear about all of the problems. I wonder what else is wrong and what happened. Whistleblowers need protection, not punishment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not really effective because it takes years to manifest symptoms of prion disease. Terrorism usually has a message attached to it, and "you're gonna start dying in 10 years" is not conducive to messaging.
In this case I guess the message targets people in other cities than the doomed one. "This could happen to your city too".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is an excellent way of thinking about them. For anyone unfamiliar, OP is referring to the Kurt Vonnegut novel which has a fictional state of water (ice-nine) that immediately freezes all other water it comes into contact with into more ice-nine. Edit: I committed a sin and didn't mention the title: Cat's Cradle.
There must be some kind of counter-agent, or life as we know it would not exist.
I mean cancer is not contagious, but it still kills millions a year.
The study of rare, contagious diseases seems likely enough to result in an eventual outbreak that it should be treated like enriching uranium. Which is to say, with great caution- and not like regular science but rather like the kind of science with potentially very negative externalities.
Hm: "long period of uncertainty began on 31 May 2010, when she stabbed her left thumb with a curved forceps while cleaning a cryostat—a machine that can cut tissues at very low temperatures—that she used to slice brain sections from transgenic mice infected with a sheep-adapted form of BSE . She pierced two layers of latex gloves and drew blood" Later in the article: ""We conduct research only on mouse-adapted sheep…
I think there's a mistake in the article, her website goes into more detail:
https://soutien-a-emilie0.webnode.fr/lhistoire/ (gtranslate)
> Emilie is therefore working that day on samples of mice infected with strains of human prions. It is important to stress here that these were human strains and not animal strains, the species barrier no longer protecting, the infectivity of the pathogens handled by Emilie was therefore total.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why does every lab have to be shut down for 3 months? Auditing everyone and their processes takes a while.
Why would you audit processes when the allegation is that someone got infected because she wasn't following the processes?