Have Sticks, Will Smash

Or, Alternate Methods for Getting–The–Writing–Done

Declan SmashTwoSticks Telford

Declan and His Happiest Life

My parents once said if they were reincarnated they’d want to come back as a Telford cat, and that seemed an erstwhile achievement for some time.

So Many Telford’s

However, now that I have a child, I’d want to come back as a Telford human! He’s had a fabulous summer and there’s no end in sight. The first half of July he spent in Ontario at his grandparents’ beach house, the second half home in Squamish where we’ve had endless sun and heat, big summer days and long summer naps.

And don’t forget the Toddler of the Year competition! He’s made it through the first round and now it’s down to the top 20 for round two. Only the top 15 make it through to the next round, a lot like Formula One race qualification but in this comp, it’s the total votes that will crown the winner. Don’t forget to vote daily, it’s free! Click HERE for a link to vote for Declan. As I type this he’s in 5th place, down from 2nd, so vote every day with your morning coffee!

The Future

While doing some vibe-research (if that’s a thing yet) I came across an article effectively confirming everything I’ve been posting about H5N1, that its spread throughout the world is the result of human bio-engineering.

Read the full article HERE.

The following is from my vibe friend, OpenAI:

Bioweaponeers

Genetic engineering is not limited to humans – scientists can also modify the genomes of viruses and other pathogens. This capability has huge dual-use potential: on one hand, it enables research to understand diseases and develop vaccines; on the other, it could be misused to create deadly new pathogens. The ethics of “gain-of-function” experiments – where a virus is deliberately modified to study how it might become more transmissible or virulent – has been fiercely debated. A famous example occurred in 2011, when two labs (led by Ron Fouchier and Yoshihiro Kawaoka) independently engineered the avian H5N1 influenza virus to be transmissible in mammals. These researchers had “mutated the hell out of H5N1,” creating what one called “one of the most dangerous viruses you can make”warontherocks.com. The U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity initially moved to block publication of these methods, fearing they could serve as a cookbook for bioterroristswarontherocks.com. After intense deliberation, the World Health Organization allowed the research to be published, reasoning that the public health benefits outweighed the riskswarontherocks.com. Critics vehemently disagreed – they warned that publishing the exact genetic changes “would enable rogue scientists to replicate the manipulations and weaponize a more contagious virus.”warontherocks.com Proponents like Dr. Anthony Fauci argued, however, that the insights gained (for example, in developing vaccines or understanding pandemic risks) justified the work, noting “the benefits in vaccine advancement outweighed the risks of nefarious use.”warontherocks.com This ethical tightrope – balancing scientific openness and progress against biosecurity dangers – remains a subject of ongoing policy debate.

Beyond experiments, completely synthesizing viruses from scratch has also become feasible, raising additional ethical and safety alarms. In 2017, Canadian researchers assembled an extinct horsepox virus (a relative of smallpox) using mail-order DNA at a cost of only about $100,000statnews.com. Although horsepox itself is harmless to humans, this demonstration was a wake-up call: it showed that “the threat of deadly viruses created by humans is more than theoretical.”statnews.com If horsepox can be resurrected, so could smallpox (the virus that killed hundreds of millions before eradication in 1980) or other eradicated pathogens. The lead scientist argued he did this to spur better oversight – and indeed, many experts took notice. Synthetic biology techniques mean that if one has the genetic sequence of a virus, one might recreate it or even design new variants. This is why dual-use research rules and biosecurity safeguards have tightened. In the US, any experiments that could make pathogens more dangerous (so-called DURC: dual-use research of concern) must undergo extra layers of approvalstatnews.com. The goal is to ensure scientists have very good justification (like developing medical countermeasures) before undertaking work that could be misused to threaten public health. Even so, policing this globally is difficult – not all countries have the same regulations, and the necessary equipment and DNA synthesis services are now widespread.

Engineering viral genomes is a privilege that comes with great responsibility

What sets these technologies apart is their “theoretical potential to cause suffering and death on a massive scale,” far beyond historical biowarfare, by “making viruses more transmissible and lethal and by creating entirely new organisms”tailored to specific targets.

This theme, that just because we can doesn’t mean we should, is prevalent in my sci-fi work. Like it worms its way into my writing without any conscious effort. My own personal bias shining through I suppose, that we are all (most) inherently good. I noted that Dr. Fauci justified gain–of–function testing on H5N1 years ago. The article is worth a read and then if you want a play by play have a quick read through some of my previous stacks regarding the westerly spread of H5N1. Made in lab? Without question. More on this next week.

Writings

I’ve owned the rights to this image for a few years now, and recently plugged it into Sora (an image generating AI by the same people that brought you ChatGPT) and asked it to create a wraparound cover for me. Here’s a sneak preview.