Recipe for Destruction - New York Times

Ray Kurzweil, author of "The Singularity Is Near" and Bill Joy, founder of Sun Microsystems and author of the seminal Wired article "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us", are usually at opposite ends of the spectrum concerning the perils and promises of technology. Ray essentially believes that mankind will merge with his technology, while Bill calls for the relenquishment of whole areas of knowledge that are too dangerous to explore. However, these two Big Thinkers are on the same page when it comes to the publishing of the genomes of pathological viruses, as was done with the recently reconstructed virus responsible for the worldwide pandemic in 1918. In a jointly authored editorial in the New York Times, they call the publishing of this data on the Internet "extremely foolish" and call for the establishment of a "Manhatten Project" to develop defenses against natural or man-made viral threats.

According to an article on KurzweilAI.net Senator Bill Frist agrees and supports the idea "wholeheartedly".

From the NY Times op-ed:

"We urgently need international agreements by scientific organizations to limit such publications and an international dialogue on the best approach to preventing recipes for weapons of mass destruction from falling into the wrong hands. Part of that discussion should concern the appropriate role of governments, scientists and their scientific societies, and industry.

We also need a new Manhattan Project to develop specific defenses against new biological viral threats, natural or human made. There are promising new technologies, like RNA interference, that could be harnessed. We need to put more stones on the defensive side of the scale.

We realize that calling for this genome to be 'un-published' is a bit like trying to gather the horses back into the barn. Perhaps we will be lucky this time, and we will indeed succeed in developing defenses for these killer flu viruses before they are needed. We should, however, treat the genetic sequences of pathological biological viruses with no less care than designs for nuclear weapons."