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Don't Fear The Grey Goo
from the embrace-the-grey-goo! dept
There was a lot of news last week when Prince Charles talked about his fear of nanotechnology wiping out the planet by coating us in a "grey goo" of self-replicating nanobots. Now, the people who know better are starting to speak out on why Prince Charles has nothing to fear from grey goo. It seems that now that most people have gotten over their fear of computers, the neo-Luddite movement is focusing on the next area they don't understand.
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Not so fast
Would it be that hard to make a nano-catalyst that changes the receptors on a common-cold rhinovirus to a polio virus? The only difference between a rhinovirus and polio virus is the receptors on the membrane (polio virus binds to nervous tissue rather than mucus tissue), and a few letters in the genetic code.
It's been shown recently that deadly polio virus is easy to make from public-domain DNA code and some lab equipment; they killed some lab mice with it.
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