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Biotechnology Risk
Biotechnology risk is a form of existential risk that could come from biological sources, such as genetically engineered biological agents. The origin of such a high-consequence pathogen could be a deliberate release (in the form of bioterrorism or biological weapons), an accidental release, or a naturally occurring event. A chapter on biotechnology and biosecurity was published in Nick Bostrom's 2008 anthology ''Global Catastrophic Risks'', which covered risks including as viral agents. Since then, new technologies like CRISPR and gene drives have been introduced. While the ability to deliberately engineer pathogens has been constrained to high-end labs run by top researchers, the technology to achieve this (and other astonishing feats of bioengineering) is rapidly becoming cheaper and more widespread. Such examples include the diminishing cost of sequencing the human genome (from $10 million to $1,000), the accumulation of large datasets of genetic information, the discovery o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Existential Risk
A global catastrophic risk or a doomsday scenario is a hypothetical future event that could damage human well-being on a global scale, even endangering or destroying modern civilization. An event that could cause human extinction or permanently and drastically curtail humanity's potential is known as an "existential risk." Over the last two decades, a number of academic and non-profit organizations have been established to research global catastrophic and existential risks, formulate potential mitigation measures and either advocate for or implement these measures. Definition and classification Defining global catastrophic risks The term global catastrophic risk "lacks a sharp definition", and generally refers (loosely) to a risk that could inflict "serious damage to human well-being on a global scale". Humanity has suffered large catastrophes before. Some of these have caused serious damage but were only local in scope—e.g. the Black Death may have resulted in the de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virulence
Virulence is a pathogen's or microorganism's ability to cause damage to a host. In most, especially in animal systems, virulence refers to the degree of damage caused by a microbe to its host. The pathogenicity of an organism—its ability to cause disease—is determined by its virulence factors. In the specific context of gene for gene systems, often in plants, virulence refers to a pathogen's ability to infect a resistant host. The noun ''virulence'' derives from the adjective ''virulent'', meaning disease severity. The word ''virulent'' derives from the Latin word ''virulentus'', meaning "a poisoned wound" or "full of poison." From an ecological standpoint, virulence is the loss of fitness induced by a parasite upon its host. Virulence can be understood in terms of proximate causes—those specific traits of the pathogen that help make the host ill—and ultimate causes—the evolutionary pressures that lead to virulent traits occurring in a pathogen strain. Virulent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marc Lipsitch
Marc Lipsitch (born 1969) is an American epidemiologist and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he is the Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. He has worked on modeling the transmission of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Education and early career Lipsitch attended Yale University, where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy in 1991. He attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, studying zoology, and received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1995. There, he studied under Robert May and Martin Nowak. He then returned to the United States for his postdoctoral fellowship at Emory University from 1995 to 1999. During that time, he worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before joining the faculty at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Research As an epidemiologist, Lipsitch has focused his research on better understanding the evolution of in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pandemic
A pandemic () is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. A widespread endemic disease with a stable number of infected individuals is not a pandemic. Widespread endemic diseases with a stable number of infected individuals such as recurrences of seasonal influenza are generally excluded as they occur simultaneously in large regions of the globe rather than being spread worldwide. Throughout human history, there have been a number of pandemics of diseases such as smallpox. The most fatal pandemic in recorded history was the Black Death—also known as The Plague—which killed an estimated 75–200 million people in the 14th century. The term had not been used then but was used for later epidemics, including the 1918 influenza pandemic—more commonly known as the Spanish flu. Current pandemics include HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. Definition A pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
H5N1
Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 (A/H5N1) is a subtype of the influenza A virus which can cause illness in humans and many other animal species. A bird-adapted strain of H5N1, called HPAI A(H5N1) for highly pathogenic avian influenza virus of type A of subtype H5N1, is the highly pathogenic causative agent of H5N1 flu, commonly known as avian influenza ("bird flu"). It is enzootic (maintained in the population) in many bird populations, especially in Southeast Asia. One strain of HPAI A(H5N1) is spreading globally after first appearing in Asia. It is epizootic (an epidemic in nonhumans) and panzootic (affecting animals of many species, especially over a wide area), killing tens of millions of birds and spurring the culling of hundreds of millions of others to stem its spread. Many references to "bird flu" and H5N1 in the popular media refer to this strain. This was reprinted in 2005: According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ferret The ferret (''Mustela furo'') is a small, domesticated species belonging to the family Mustelidae. The ferret is most likely a domesticated form of the wild European polecat (''Mustela putorius''), evidenced by their interfertility. Other mustelids include the stoat, badger and mink. Physically, ferrets resemble other mustelids because of their long, slender bodies. Including their tail, the average length of a ferret is about ; they weigh between ; and their fur can be black, brown, white, or a mixture of those colours. In this sexually dimorphic species, males are considerably larger than females. Ferrets may have been domesticated since ancient times, but there is widespread disagreement because of the sparseness of written accounts and the inconsistency of those which survive. Cont |
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