A little proof!

As the article I posted a few weeks ago seems to be a little unrealistic at some points - yes, I am aware of that and I realised it myself - I thought it would be useful to describe a few things that are possible today.

I recently read an article from the webpage I fucking love science that describes how scientists grew a functioning heart using stem cell and organ-on-a-chip technology.
The research was carried out to learn more about a rare and untreatable heart disease. This disease, called Barth syndrome, is caused by a single gene (TAZ) that lies on the X-chromosome and thus appears mostly in boys.
Throughout the research, scientists took skin cells of two Barth syndrome patients and converted them into stem cells that carry the mutation. The cells were tricked into joining and forming a human heart, that even contracted as a real heart would - even though less strong. When this experiment succeeded, they even were able to cure the disease.
Modelling up the disease from a single skin cell to a real heart disease is a major achievement. It helped them to understand the illness and how it affects the body.
With regard to biological warfare I can say that, once again, dual-use dilemma appears. Even though it is absolutely magnificent that scientists came closer to finding a cure to a rare heart disease, the simple fact that they were able to create said disease using a single cell is frightening.

Another very interesting article I read on I fucking love science concerns sperm created from skin cells. What was even more interesting is that I found someone already using this article for his stem cell CAJ. As this is not the first time that I found someone else blogging about a topic that is linked to mine, I thought I'd give the link in case someone is interested.
In order to find a cure to infertility in men, or at least provide other possibilities than adoption to couples that wish to have a baby but can't because of infertility, scientists generated sperm precursors from skin cells.
These cells were taken from three infertile men and two fertile men, which served as a control group. Said cells were then turned into stem cells and transplanted into the testines of mice. It was found that the cells turned into sperm precursor cells, but not into mature sperm cells. Scientists suspect that this is due to the differences between humans and mice. While the cells of the fertile men were more likely to turn into precursor stem cells, the simple fact that the cells of the infertile men converted at all is a huge achievement.
It has to be noticed, however, that the artificial cells caused cancer in the mice which means that this research carries a certain risk. Future research might be carried out on animals that are closer to humans.
This corresponds perfectly to the possibilities described in one of my earlier posts. Using this research, it might be possible to create sperm traces of a politician on clothing and thus creating "evidence" for an affair the politician actually never had.

These are only two examples of reality and how it corresponds to my CAJ. Research is a good thing, but what I personally am really afraid of is its high potential of misuse. The further research and knowledge progresses, the higher becomes the risk of it being misused.

Abstract for "When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection"

The aim of this research is to provide a short mathematical analysis of an outbreak of zombie infection and some mathematical models for a possible reaction to the unlikely outbreak of said infection. While the author himself concedes that it is a fairly unrealistic model if used with zombies, these models can be used to provide useful information for real threats like BSE, swine flu or other diseases. It aims to show how mathematical models can be adjusted to numerous variations of factors that would complicate a fight against zombies. The methods used are several scenarios that demonstrate possible outcomes under the following circumstances: Basic Model, Model with Latent Infection, Model with Quarantine, Model with Treatment and Impulsive Eradiction. The author based his research on a species of zombies common in popular-culture movies, slow, stupid and cannibalistic. His scenarios either end with the eradiction of zombies or the eradiction of humankind, and as the model called Impulsive Eradiction proves to be the most efficient one (it leads to the eradiction of zombies within 10 days) the author concludes that, in order to survive a zombie outbreak, humans have to hit hard and hit often to exterminate zombies once and for all.

My own abstract to my CAJ!

The purpose of this CAJ is to provide information about biological warfare. The precise focus at the beginning was fairly general, what biological warfare is and what can it be used for. With further research it evolved and treated the following subjects: how can a biological weapon be created, dual-use of science in general and on the example of Botox. It continued with what might be possible in the future with regard to personalised biological weapons and a short analysis of a military review treating the subject of ethnic biological weapons (published in 1970 by the US government). The information collected was mainly found on the Internet. Several reports from the website of the National Center for Biotechnology Information and other sources were used. The articles were read, analysed and summarised so that the reviews would only include what was important for the topic. It was found that the threat of biological weapons is imminent and that it can hardly be avoided. Due to the fact that biological weapons are far cheaper and more efficient than any other weapon of mass destruction they will become increasingly common in the very near future. In conclusion it can be said that biological warfare is incredibly dangerous and could either destroy humanity or enslave them to people who have the one supervirus to kill us all. The focus of further research would thus lie on more specific examples of how biological agents can be (mis)used and maybe look into some conspiracy theories.

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