"Self-spreading vaccines have some of their roots in efforts to reduce pest populations. Australian researchers described a virally spread immunocontraception, which hijacked the immune systems of infected animals—in this case a non-native mouse species in Australia—and prevented them from fertilizing offspring. The earliest self-spreading vaccine efforts targeted two highly lethal infectious diseases in the European rabbit population (myxoma virus and rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus). In 2001, Spanish researchers field-tested a vaccine in a wild rabbit population living on Isla del Aire, a small Spanish island just off Menorca. The vaccine spread to more than half the 300 rabbits on the island, and the trial was deemed a success."

https://thebulletin.org/2020/09/scientists-are-working-on-vaccines-that-spread-like-a-disease-what-could-possibly-go-wrong

"The principal security concern is that of dual-use. In essence, this means that the same research that is used to develop self-spreading vaccines to prevent disease, could also be used to deliberately cause harm. You could, for instance, engineer triggers into a virus that cause immune system failures in infected people or animals, a bit like HIV does naturally. Or you could create triggers in a virus that cause a harmful autoimmune response, where the body starts attacking its own healthy cells and tissues."

https://thebulletin.org/2020/09/scientists-are-working-on-vaccines-that-spread-like-a-disease-what-could-possibly-go-wrong

"While researchers may intend to make self-spreading vaccines, others could repurpose their science and develop biological weapons. Such a self-spreading weapon may prove uncontrollable and irreversible.

We don’t have to dig very deep for a historical example of weaponized biology. As the apartheid-era South African biowarfare program shows, social, political, and scientific pressures can lead to the misuse of biological innovation."

https://thebulletin.org/2020/09/scientists-are-working-on-vaccines-that-spread-like-a-disease-what-could-possibly-go-wrong

"Codenamed Project Coast, South Africa’s program was primarily focused on covert assassination weapons for use against individuals deemed a threat to the racist apartheid government. In addition to producing contraptions to inject poisons, Project Coast researchers developed techniques to lace sugar cubes with salmonella and cigarettes with Bacillus anthracis.

While there have been many biowarfare programs, including several that were far more elaborate and sophisticated, the South African program is particularly relevant in thinking through malicious uses of self-spreading vaccines. One of Project Coast’s research projects aimed at developing a human anti-fertility vaccine."

https://thebulletin.org/2020/09/scientists-are-working-on-vaccines-that-spread-like-a-disease-what-could-possibly-go-wrong

"The idea took hold during a time of widespread concern over worldwide population explosion. Schalk Van Rensburg, who oversaw fertility-related work at a Project Coast laboratory, told South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a forum for examining the sordid history of the era and laying the foundation for future peace and tolerance, that he thought the project was in line with the World Health Organization’s attempts to curb rising global birth rates. He believed it could bring his lab international acclaim and funding. According to Van Rensburg, Wouter Basson, the director of the biowarfare program, said the military needed an anti-fertility vaccine so that female soldiers would not fall pregnant.

While some of the scientists involved in the project denied awareness of ulterior intentions or even that their fertility work was part of a military endeavor, Van Rensburg and Daniel Goosen, a lab director, told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that the real intention behind the project was to selectively administer the contraceptive in secret to unwitting Black South African women."

https://thebulletin.org/2020/09/scientists-are-working-on-vaccines-that-spread-like-a-disease-what-could-possibly-go-wrong

"In the end, the anti-fertility vaccine was not produced before Project Coast was officially closed down in 1995, 12 years after it was initiated. An early version was tested in baboons, but never in humans. South Africa isn’t the only country to try and forcibly sterilize parts of its population. European countries, including Sweden and Switzerland, sterilized members of the Roma minority in the early half of the 20th century and some, like Slovakia, continued even beyond that. More recently, analysts have alleged that the Chinese government is sterilizing women in Xinjiang, a province with a large population of Uighur Muslims.

It doesn’t take a massive leap of the imagination to see how the aims of South Africa’s anti-fertility vaccine project would have benefited from research into self-spreading vaccines, particularly if you combine it with current developments in pharmacogenomics, drug development, and personalized medicine. Taken together, these strands of research could help enable ultra-targeted biological warfare."

https://thebulletin.org/2020/09/scientists-are-working-on-vaccines-that-spread-like-a-disease-what-could-possibly-go-wrong

"The Biological Weapons Convention, the treaty that bans biological weapons, is nearly 50 years old. Negotiated and agreed to in the depths of the Cold War, the convention suffers from outdated modes of operation. There are also significant compliance assessment challenges. The convention certainly didn’t stop South Africa from pursuing Project Coast in the early 1980s.

Self-spreading vaccine research is a small but growing field. At the moment, about 10 institutions are doing significant work in the area. These laboratories are primarily located in the United States, but some are in Europe and Australia, as well. As the field expands, so does the potential for abuse.

So far research has primarily been bankrolled by US government science and health funders like the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Health and Human Services. Private organizations like the Gates Foundation and academic institutions have also financed projects. Recently, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), sometimes thought of as the US military’s research and development wing, has gotten involved in the research. The University of California, Davis, for example, is working on a DARPA administered project called Prediction of Spillover Potential and Interventional En Masse Animal Vaccination to Prevent Emerging Pathogen Threats in Current and Future Zones of US Military Operation. According to a pamphlet, the project is “creating the world’s first prototype of a self-disseminating vaccine designed to induce a high level of herd immunity (wildlife population level protection) against Lassa virus … and Ebola.”"

https://thebulletin.org/2020/09/scientists-are-working-on-vaccines-that-spread-like-a-disease-what-could-possibly-go-wrong

"Military investment in biological innovation for defensive or protective purposes is permissible under the Biological Weapons Convention, but it can still send the wrong signals. It could cause countries to doubt one another’s intentions and lead to tit-for-tat investment in potentially risky research, including in self-spreading vaccines. The result of research gone awry or biowarfare could be catastrophic for health and the environment.

At a time when the norm against chemical weapons is degrading, underscored most recently by the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny with the nerve agent Novichok—a crime for which many European officials blame Russia—the international community simply can’t afford to have the same thing happen to the norm against the use of biological weapons. It would completely defy the spirit of the treaty if it seemed like states would even want to pursue high-risk dual use activities in biology.

Early, open, good-faith conversations about scientific aims and advances that cause particular dual-use concerns, as self-spreading vaccines do, are essential to exploring the broader stakes of certain technical trajectories. The University of California, Davis program is pursuing ways to incorporate an “off switch” to safely control the technology. And DARPA says any field experimentation related to the project would follow biosafety protocols. But these pledges won’t suffice. Our ambition must be to make a collective decision about the technical pathways we are willing, or not willing, to take as a society."

https://thebulletin.org/2020/09/scientists-are-working-on-vaccines-that-spread-like-a-disease-what-could-possibly-go-wrong

@AfrikaIPR • https://thebulletin.org/2020/09/scientists-are-working-on-vaccines-that-spread-like-a-disease-what-could-possibly-go-wrong • https://t.me/s/AfrikaIPR/85 - https://t.me/s/AfrikaIPR/93 ••

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Auto-Delete, Widgets, Expiring Invite Links and More

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New home screen widgets for iOS and Android let you preview messages and instantly open chats.

Group and channel admins can create additional invite links with a limited duration, number of uses, or both.

Groups approaching the limit of 200k members can now convert to Broadcast Groups that allow unlimited members.

For more information on all these features and their uses, read our blog:
https://telegram.org/blog/autodelete-inv2

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In channels, you can join a voice chat with your personal account or appear as one of your channels.

For the full story on all these features (and some excellent video demos), check out our blog:
https://telegram.org/blog/voice-chats-on-steroids/

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Merchants can now natively accept credit card payments in any Telegram chat, relying on 8 integrated third-party payment providers. Telegram doesn't store card info and charges no commission.

Voice Chats can now be scheduled in advance – members will see a countdown in the chat and can choose to be notified when the chat starts.

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Android users can directly download Telegram from our site. The app will get new updates automatically – and faster than the Play Store version:
https://telegram.org/android

For more info on all these changes, including new animations and job openings at Telegram, read our full blog:
https://telegram.org/blog/payments-2-0-scheduled-voice-chats