The other day I saw someone uploaded a short article for public view which was entitled "How To Breed A Biological Weapon". And in fact it would seem to be exactly what the title suggested: a instruction in how to breed a biologic (or: bacteriologic) weapon. In spite of being a bit confused, and in some places slightly misguided, otherwise the article actually seemed to be impressively well informed. However the composition of it did make it a bit hard to make heads and tales of.

In the following I will explain more precise and clear what was the main topic of the original article; namely the technique of selective bacteriologic breeding. To maintain another perhaps VERY IMPORTANT THEME of the article: Let me repeat the quote mentioned in the same article:

"If we can not have sex then lets do the second best thing and kill people!" ("DOGMA")

And what seemed to be the authors final conclusion on it:

"It seems no woman came to save the day" (Anonymous)

The entertainment industry frequently portray the nuclear bomb as the ultimate weapon of mass murder. And admittedly a nuclear blast does render great opportunity for the special effects departments to impress the audience. Much less recognized by the public audience is the threat presented by bacteriological weapons. Which none the less yealds a much more frightening perspective. For two reasons:

The first reason why I said that the threat presented by bacteriological weapons is much more frightening is that it can simply be more deadly: Measured by the naked number of fatalities a bacteriological weapon has a many times more deadly potential than any nuclear bomb.

A nuclear blast may wipe out anything within a radius of several dusin miles which could potentially count millions of lives if detonated over a densely populated area. - By contrast a contageous disease - if it is "tuned" right - is not limited to a particular radius but has the potential to spread across the globe, killing close to everybody it infects: Potentially counting BILLIONS of lives.

The second reason why bacteriological weapons are more dangerous is the accessibility:

A nuclear bomb may not be particular difficult to manufacture as such. But the materials are much too expensive and much too difficult to get a hold of for anyone who does not have the budget of a entire nation. - Bacteriological weapons on the other hand are not only so easy and so cheap to manufacture that practically anyone could do it! Only provided that they know how to.

Your first concern if you were considering to breed a bacteriologic weapon would propably be how to avoid getting infected yourself. The article pointed out (correctly) that making a vaccine is extremely simple, since a vaccine is simply a thinned up version of the infection: The medical industry like to make believe that vaccines are very complicated and demanding to manufacture so that they can make money. But the fact is that the only thing about creating a vaccine that might be that complicated is to isolate the particular disease so that they can make vaccines that ONLY immunize against that particular disease. (So that vaccines for different diseases can be sold seperately and they can make more money).

That said chances are that you would automatically acquire immunity against the bacteria you were breeding simply by working with it. So making a vaccine would actually be completely unnecessary. But for the sheer sake of public enlightenment I will give short account of this topic all the same: The principle of vaccination was discovered in the middle ages in connection with the so called "black death" outbreaks. Fycisians who had been studying the bodies of diseased victims of the epidemic discovered that having previously worked with infected bodies they had become immune to the disease themselves. This led to the discovery of the bodys immune defence system, and in turn to the invention of the vaccine: By introducing a minimal amount of the disease to patients in advance the patients own immune defence system learns how to fight off the disease so that it is ready for it in case the patient is ever exposed to it again.

But now back to the main topic of this article:

SELECTIVE BREEDING:

The easiest, if not the only way to produce a bacteriologic weapon is through selective breeding:

Selective breeding means deliberately selecting the individuals from a population to breed on which to the highest degree has the qualities you desire:

For example if you start off with a population of grey butterflies and then consequently breed those individuals which has the brightest wings of their generation then each generation of butterflies you breed will in general have brighter wings than the previous and you will eventually end up with a population of very bright winged butterflies. (Or like if you prefer a population of compulsive consumers then you would enforce selective criteria based on consumption).

And the same principle could of course be applied to other criteria than the brightness of the wings. As well as to other species than butterflies. Including bacteria and infectious diseases:

Selective breeding of a contageous disease works by the same basic principle: You infect a number of test animals (isolated from each other) with some disease, such as a common cold. And you would then use - for example - whichever animal gets most sick (or the air from its cabin) to infect the next, fresh, population of animals. And so on: Each time generating a generation of the disease which is a little stronger than the previous one.

There are two parameters in particular which determine how deadly a contageous disease is: The RATE OF MORTALITY and the PERIOD OF LATENCY:

RATE OF MORTALITY:

Obviously whichever strain of the disease kills the highest number of test animals is more flat-out deadly than its "competitors".

PERIOD OF LATENCY:

The "latency period" is the period of time FROM the initial infection UNTIL the first symptoms begin to show: During this period - in which the infected individual is contageous but no symptoms has shown yet - the infection has the best opportunities to spread, since the infected individual is carrying the infection around to others without suspecting anything out of the ordinary.

(The latency period of the so called "black death" which raged in medieval Europe was about 40 days. So in effect the disease could spread exactly as far and as fast as one could travel in fourty days by horseback. In modern day society in which one can travel between continents in a matter of hours the latency period has no need to be anywhere near that long. A latency period of one week should be quite sufficient to ensure maximum spread.)

NOTICE: The latency period (as well as all other precesses) PROCEED MUCH FASTER in smaller animals than in larger animals: As a rule of thumb you may asume that any process proceed by the same ratio as compared to humans as the ratio of 50 human years to the expected natural lifespan of your test animals in question.
For example: If you are using mice (which have a expected natural lifespan of about two years = 730 days) you should calculate with a factor of 1:25 (50x365 (=18,250) divided by 730 equals 25).
So for example a latency period of seven days for humans is equivalent to a latency period of a little less than 7 hours for mice. (7 days = 7*24*60 = 10,080 minutes - divided by 25 equals 10,080 / 25 = 403 minutes = 6 hours and 43 minutes).

So in other words the combined breeding criterion becomes the product of

MORTALITY x LATENCY

where MORTALITY = percentage of individuals that die, and LATENCY = number of hours from the time of infection until the first symptoms appear.

Before the infection result in fatalities among the animals some other value measuring "how sick" the animals get (such as a mean of how many minutes or hours the animals are rendered immobile, or similar) should go in place of the MORTALITY value. But otherwise the procedure may remain exactly the same.

For each generation of infection the air from the cabins of

Whichever group of animals (or the air from their cabins) of each generation of the infection achieves the highes value of MORTALITY x LATENCY is used as the source of infection for the next set of test groups of animals.

Secondly there are two more qualities which determine the "deadliness" of a epidemic disease:

AIRBORNE INFECTION:

A virus that spread through the air has the best chances of getting around quickly and is practically impossible to contain. - This quality is implemented by isolating the animals in each group from each other to ensure that infection between individuals can not occur through other medias (such as the water or food supply, or through the fecies, etcetera).

ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE:

Bacteria too obviously develop immunity which is why many of the common diseases today are beginning to display resistancy to the antibiotics we use to treat them with. - This quality is implemented by adding antibiotics to the food of the animals so that the infection you breed is sure to have acquired reistance to it.

Finally: If you aim at making a bacteriological weapon that will work on humans you must make sure that it is actually capable of infecting other species than your test animals:

CROSS SPECIES RECEPTIVITY:

Finally: In order to make sure that you dont breed a virus that is specific to only the species you use as test-animals you should regularly test it on animals of a different species. For example each time a significant evolution towards a more deadly strain is achieved. As long as it works on mammals in general you can asume that it works on humans too.

THE END

This concludes this article. The article I have mentioned that inspired this article also made a point, that I already hinted at, of what kind of feelings a man may begin to nourish if he doesnt have sex for a decade or two. But that seem to fall a bit outside the scope of the topic at hand. I hope I have managed to enlighten someone with knowledge of things they didnt know before, and perhaps given someone a bit to think of.

Take care. And dont forget to wash your hands.

Article Source: http://www.articleset.com