Polio, DES Crack, and Proofs of Concept

[Khoder bin Hakkin]

In the most recent _Science_ some biologists gripe that the scientists
who synthesized infectious
poliovirus from its description were not doing anything novel, just a
"prank".  Any biologist
would have known that, since you could concatenate nucleotide strings,
and since polio needs nothing
besides DNA (eg no enzymes) to be infectious, obviously you can synth
polio.

This is *remarkably* similar to cognescenti reactions to the DES Crack
project.  Yes, it was
obvious it would work, and it was largely unnecessary (from a
security-planning perspective)
to actually do it.  But it was proof-of-concept.  Like synthesizing
polio.



--
"Better bombing through chemistry."
 -John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org
 on use of speed by US pilots