France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes • Hacker News Board

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#271

Post by oh_sigh » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

disabled wrote: post #246

jamespwilliams wrote: post #17

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…

Keep in mind that the researcher was only 23 years old at the time when the lab accident happened. In some ways, she was basically a kid. As everyone knows, she ended up dying because of this. A human has a fully developed adult brain around age 25, but for some people it is not until age 30 [1]. [1] https://bigthink.com/mind-brain/adult-brain?rebelltitem=1#re...

I wonder how much time you would have to sever your finger if you get poked by a tainted forcep?

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#272

Post by patall » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #198

varispeed wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it because many researchers put their ego first over the science? It's so many times that they ridicule ideas, that often amounts to bullying and then they rarely even say sorry when it turns out they were wrong. Why won't academia flush out these types of people? The toxic atmosphere with no way of getting rid of bad apples is what put me off from studying.

It’s because discovering something completely new and unheard of that isn’t even hinted at hy any existing theory is extremely rare. Most people with such claims turn out to be wrong, doing bad experiments, fudging data, or worse. The scientific community is resistent to such things because 90% of the time they are right to be resistant, the hypothesis is conclusively disproven, and we never hear about it again. Some…

Exactly, though I would rather put that number at >99%. I would think, its kind of black swan event where in hindsight, everyone thinks its easy to see but it was not.

Recently, we see that here and there with covid research where some single lab (or doctor) comes up with theory that matches some peoples preformed believe. When most scientists then oppose that theory, those people claim that this one of those <1% of cases were all the science is disproven, citing all the cases where it was, failing to see the many more situations where it wasn't.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#273

Post by newsbinator » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

newacct583 wrote: post #201

marcodiego wrote: post #30

Scary. I think and airborne human transmissible prion disease that kill in a few years is the kind of event that can bring our society back to prehistoric living in just a few decades. Hope it never happens.

Prions aren't airborne. vCJD and mad cow spread by a feedback loop involving slaughtered infected animal brains being fed to the same animal stock. This case was a technician who stabbed herself with a tool heavily coated in brain matter from infected animals. It's not like a virus where just a few particles is enough to bootstrap an infection. At least, it's never been seen.

Prions can be airborne.

> "Common knowledge is that prions aren't airborne, and can't cause infection that way," said neuropathologist Adriano Aguzzi of University Hospital Zurich, co-author of a study appearing today in PLoS Pathogens. "We were totally surprised and also a bit frightened at how efficient [airborne infections] were."

https://www.wired.com/2011/01/airborne-prions-disease/

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#274

Post by dotcommand » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 10:42 PM UTC

chrbarrol wrote: post #23

Has there been any research on Prions as a bio-terrorism weapon? It sounds like you could infect thousands/millions and have a close to 100% death-rate without anyone noticing until many years after the contamination started. Imaging contaminating food/drinking water with the Prion which causes Kuru [1] for example. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)

> Has there been any research on Prions as a bio-terrorism weapon?

All such research has dual military-civilian usages. Similar to how all nuclear energy research has nuclear weapons implications. All space/rocket research has icbm implications.

As a matter of fact, all nuclear energy, space activity, etc by all nations are tied explicitly or implicitly to the military/defense.

It's why when our "enemies" ramp up on nuclear energy or space research, we ( the government and our media ) complain. It's also why we keep tabs on such research by our "allies" as well.

If any major nation is researching something, my guess is that they are also researching how to weaponize it and defend from it.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#275

Post by relax88 » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 10:49 PM UTC

subroutine wrote: post #183

Aqueous wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article from 2011 suggests aerosol transmission in mice: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020930/

To attenuate fears a bit... Aerosol transmission was proven possible if you're sitting inside a vapor inhalation chamber equipped with a nebulizer spraying out liquid droplets containing >2% w/v brain homogenates from terminally scrapie-sick mice. Rest assured if you somehow get infected by PrPSc through airborne transmission, someone was trying really hard to make that happen.

So wear goggles and a mask while killing zombies… got it!

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#276

Post by Dah00n » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 11:12 PM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #42

> Jaumain’s family has filed both criminal charges and an administrative suit against INRAE, alleging a range of problems at Jaumain’s lab. She had not been trained in handling dangerous prions or responding to accidents and did not wear both metal mesh and surgical gloves, as she was supposed to, says Julien Bensimhon, the family’s lawyer. The thumb should have been soaked in a bleach solution immediately, which did…

Sounds just like many places that handle prions in the US. Bad? Yes. Normal? Yeah, pretty much so.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#277

Post by dnautics » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

BoxOfRain wrote: post #237

medstrom wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case I guess the message targets people in other cities than the doomed one. "This could happen to your city too".

Wouldn't an entire city being sprayed with prions be a fairly apocalyptic event in and of itself? Those prions aren't going to go away, they'll get blown about and distributed by the millions of cars, buses, and trains going in and out of the city. What can you realistically do about that, go full Imperial Inquisition and raze the entire section of the country to the ground?

honestly, I doubt it. Prions do go away, exposure to oxidizing acids (nitrous, sulfuric), oxidizers like car exhaust ozone, sunlight probably damages them, random environmental proteases that are extremely hardy (because they are designed to work outside)... Also we don't really know of a way to make large volumes of prions; IIRC nobody has made a de novo infective prion, you could seed a folded prion protein to become infective prion using a biological source, but that level of biotech requires a significant lab with large-scale fermentation, or I suppose you could just grow flocks of sheep or cattle and harvest their brains, that would probably get noticed too.

We also don't really know what the population penetrance of prion is. It's possible, for something like british mad cow disease, basically everyone got exposed, but only some people got sick due to a random high infectious load, or a weakened capability of the body to clear the prion...

There are proteases in the body that are capable of clearing amyloid forms (insulin-degrading enzyme, e.g.) and it would be hard to believe that for a sufficiently small dose it wouldn't get cleared before it got to the brain.

strange, I just looked it up, but no one has investigated if increasing IDE expression in mice has a protective effect against prpSc infection (when the infection is not administered directly to the brain)... If there are any prion researchers here... Might be an interesting experiment.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#278

Post by Dah00n » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 11:15 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #55

overlordalex wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought a _very_ effective strategy would be to get a crop-duster and spray a prion-contaminated mist over a major city, basically contaminating every public surface in a large area I'm also not sure how you would begin to clean up afterwards - do you remove the surface of everything in your city? To those saying bio-terrorism is ineffective or would not kill a lot of people in any appreciable time-scale,…

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.

It would make it much easier to get away with than bombs and spread way more fear. If it would work (I have no idea) it would be a very intelligent choice of weapon.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#279

Post by Dah00n » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 11:24 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #40

tyingq wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's "effective" mean in this context? The anthrax letters in the US in 2001 certainly dominated news cycles.

And killed very few people. That's what we call terrorism (lots of news coverage for very few deaths) - it's not effective in doing anything but news cycles.

> it's not effective in doing anything but news cycles.

"The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims" is a definition of terrorism. Death count is irrelevant (outside of spreading fear itself). Zero deaths in a terrorist attack could still be a very effective attack. Spreading something that causes a hideous disease in a city and causing mass hysteria could be an excellent terrorist tactic. Likely better than a bomb that kills a few people.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#280

Post by Dah00n » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 11:33 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #146

triceratops wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Terror" is the point of "terrorism". It's in the word.

Point of terrorism is achieving a political change through terror. Terror is not the end in itself. From this point of view, mailing of anthrax in 2001 was very inefficient.

What made 9/11 such a successful terrorist attack was that it made the US live in fear. That is a change (and it hasn't changed back). Terror (fear) is a perfectly fine end in itself for terrorism.

The anthrax mailing caused changes and fear in US society with very little work. That sounds like a very efficient terrorist attack IMO.