Any thoughts on possible threats and what we should do to protect ourselves?

Threats and defenses are going to come from the same source - our rapidly increasing knowledge of genetics and the rapidly increasing competence of genetic technology.

I caught an article that detailed how fast that's all changing by pointing out that it took seventeen weeks to sequence the genome of one potentially dangerous flu strain and only three days to sequence a similar virus' genome just two years later.

Fairly shortly the step from sequencing a threat genome to crafting a defense will also shrink. The more we understand of genetics the easier it becomes to understand the immune system and the easier it becomes augment/assist/fine tune/supercede the immune system.

But of course all that technology's available to bad guys as well and the technology is rapidly getting cheaper as well as more capable. For $600 you can put together your own thermal cycler which is the crucial gadget necessary to successfully run the PCR reaction, heart of the genetic revolution.

What about bird flu, swine flu, drug resistqnt TB and a whole host of other drug resistant diseases. It seeks like this stuff can occur without genetic engineering just as well.

Quote from: Dan on October 10, 2011, 04:14:51 AM
What about bird flu, swine flu, drug resistqnt TB and a whole host of other drug resistant diseases. It seeks like this stuff can occur without genetic engineering just as well.

Not genetic engineering by us but genetic engineering in the older sense.

Even there though the speed of technology will triumph. The pathogens won't get smarter and more knowledgeable but we will, we are. So we'll beat them as well.

I'm hearing we are running low on options for treatment of certain strain even now.

And our advancements are speeding up their evolution to keep pace. That is the whole point of our heavy use of antibiotics in commercial pig farming.

The difference between evolution and technology is that evolution's pace may change some under the lash of survival pressure but there's an upper limit to the speed of evolution.

The same limit doesn't apply to technology. Knowledge accumulation isn't linear. The sum of our knowledge is doubling at a pretty ridiculous rate and the intervals between doublings is declining.

All of that is well and good. But if we get a strain that jumps our last line of defense then we are gonna seee tens or possibly hundreds of millions of deaths and an economy that will largely revert to the 19th century for a few years.

Quote from: Dan on October 12, 2011, 11:03:42 AM
All of that is well and good. But if we get a strain that jumps our last line of defense then we are gonna seee tens or possibly hundreds of millions of deaths and an economy that will largely revert to the 19th century for a few years.

Something you may like looking at Dan.
Deadly Black Death bug hasn't changed, but we have.
snip~
WASHINGTON — Scientists have cracked the genetic code of the Black Death, one of history's worst plagues, and found that its modern day bacterial descendants haven't changed much over 600 years.

more @

http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/news-science/20111012/US.SCI.Black.Death/

Quote from: Dan on October 12, 2011, 11:03:42 AM
All of that is well and good. But if we get a strain that jumps our last line of defense then we are gonna seee tens or possibly hundreds of millions of deaths and an economy that will largely revert to the 19th century for a few years.

I wonder.

If you ignore the irresponsible and mercenary scare-mongering I'd say we're in much better shape to deal with a pandemic then we've ever been. Sure air transportation means infectious agents can travel around the earth in hours not months but our technology also allows us to detect, identify and deal with a pandemic at a much earlier stage of its spread then ever before. We're better-fed and heathier then ever before. The means of dealing with a pandemic are more highly developed, responsive and effective then at any time in human history.

It may be that worrying about pandemics is, at least partly, a case of "fighting the last war" rather then looking towards new dangers.

If a global pandemic hits then our ability to cope will be good right up to the breaking point. But we will reach a point where things like mortality rates, transmission rates, etc will be just strong enogh to keep doctors and policemen and everyday workers at home for extended periods. And at that point more people die from the breakdown of civil society than from the disease.

Not just the old and young and chronically ill. Also think about the tens of millions of people in cities who will run out of water in days and run out of food quickly thereafter. Think of how the mortality rates will skyrocket once medical professionals stop coming to work in the hospitals.

And the right strain of bird flu or pig flu could do exactly what I have described above.