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Short Sharp Science: A New Scientist blog

Craig Venter's plan to email vaccines around the world

Debora MacKenzie, Brussels correspondent


(Image: Joe Raedle/Getty)









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Emailing a protein/dna-fragment or a virus or very different things, so that's not a very likely problem.


Access to heroin has never been a problem, but still only a subset of humans bother to use it. Banning it just makes it more expensive.

What you want to look out for is someone developing a super-heroin that's easily aerosolized. :D



Digital Rights Management is one possible way of preventing privately owned 3D printers for making illicit products. Anti-addiction vaccines may also become available at around the same time. Since said vaccines would only prevent addiction, not cure it, parents would likely inoculate their children with the vaccine in infancy to prevent them from becoming addicts in the first place. This will render the ability to print up illegal drugs moot.


How difficult would it be to cross check the email against different sources to ensure its not a bio weapon...or better yet, encryption, codes...very naive to think the people who want to push this through haven't thought of these. Personally I can't see any flaws that don't have a solution when it comes to this...if you do , post and lets discuss.


My only issue is using email. As has been said, it is insecure, and far to much so for this job.
For actions like this, the medical industry should look to Linux, which has had to deal with dodgy packages for years. Package the schematics, sign them with a private key and then distribute over a secure connection. For the most part, this will stop intersection and spam issues. However, some work would be needed to make it safe in the eyes of the public.

This is an amazing step forward in the vaccination of people, but it must be done right.



You do realize that a virus IS a protein/DNA fragment, right? It's nothing but a fragment of DNA in a shell; hence the reason that Viruses (Phages) can be used to therapeutically inject DNA fragments into living creatures.

So it is a very likely problem

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