About a few years ago I came across something called prions. Although I knew about BSE (also known as Mad Cow Disease) I didn't full understand how they worked.
I do understand a bit more about them, though, and I found that they are different than most biological agents of destruction. I thought a few months ago before talk was warming up, as it is now, that these things would be great for use in destroying the ecological population species in omnivores and carnivores.
These things are non-living as in they are more of a biochemical without DNA. Thus, making them different than a virus, that doesn't mean they don't act like one. They simply take other biomolecules and transform them into another mishaped protein. Although this biochemical reaction and complete destruction of the entity takes a long period of time the damage is irreversible.
Even more interesting about this is how the prions can be transferred from one being to another and can't be killed. They can't be killed except at a very high temperature. The problem was when people were eating beef and they took in the prion-contaminated material, thus creating a jump of disease to them.
It seems that Nature magazine and some other scientists are deciding to talk about this now, so I figured, I will to.
The president thinks this is a
potential hazard, but they put it on their list of petty things that can create a problem. I believe if this were used correctly, it would enable the ability to jump from species to species to species. Thus when the correct universal prion is set forth into the wild, the ecological population of areas will be at great harm.
When I learned more about prions, I thought about the species jump, but I couldn't find much information on the web until I read nature today. It seems that other scientists are interested in finding a cure for prions, but in all reality, it's hard to detect because it takes years to destroy brain tissue. Usually by the time it's noticable, people are so destroyed that they become incapable of doing regular things.
This makes it a large tactic in my opinion, patience is a virtue.
