On Fri, 1 Sep 2000, David Honig wrote:
Nuh. I think they should be happy about biology education - might one day give them a nice young crackpot with the talent to create a drug user killing flu...
Then they lose a taxpayer or at least prison slave labor.
Well, who's there to say you cannot create less potent variants first, which only make users sicker than normal people. Then, over a couple of decades, increase the effect subtly. If done in secrecy we can accumulate 'research' which shows that the drugs indeed do kill, lending popular support to even stricter control/paternalism.
The US govt funds research into vaccines that make recreational pharmaceuticals not fun in the innoculated.
I know. I think they already have the first prototypes ready, at least for THC. Of course, it's not very dependable yet. Actually putting the relevant functionality in a suitably well designed retrovirus could innoculate most of the population without ever seeking consent. Again, possible to achieve in secrecy since at least THC is known to be unpleasant to some people - suddenly the percent would be 90. Biotech certainly opened some interesting horizons for me... ;) Sampo Syreeni <decoy@iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university