posted on Mar, 12 2008 @ 07:30 AM
Well, nobody is that optimistic as to think that military bio-warfare development peaked with anthrax (was developed during ww2) so there are deadly
unknown toys in storing, for sure. However there is also natural process due to which new human-"targeting" disease are and will be appearing.
Population is growing, people are changing places with higher frequency and places with no previous human population are colonized. So it is hard to
answer , but in my opinion, new deadly weapon will for sure remain deadly only if nobody knows what it is. Once it is used, ways to fight it could be
found.
As for those above-mentioned threats - biggest killer among them is HIV. There is money to be made to pharmaceutical industry, and it is being made
with high - priced combination of medications which is intended to be used as long as person is alive. To make effective antiviral one time-treatment
is hard but it also means - loose money being made now. So i suppose that once patents will start running out and generic companies will be able to
enter the market, something better WILL appear. As for "designer" of this - i would say nature,virus is too good at what it does.
Ebola- very dangerous, highly monitored, no money to be made right now - no interest from pharmacy guys. I bet that some countries might have it as a
weapon, but design - nature (in my opinion).Local bats as transmitters, and similar stuff points it to be endemic to the area.
SARS - ChiKeyMonKey could be right, respiratory diseases are usually more dangerous to older/weaker people,but this is dangerous to all. However the
fact that survival rate is not that small- if a weapon, then poor one.
Bird Flu - Also the problem that survival rates are "acceptable". Since this is not the first case of animal disease sticking to humans - i'd say
it is nature at work.
I feel that the easiest way to wipe us out would be to take an existing bacteria (like ones that causes ,say, pneumonia), give it all the resistance
traits, and there you go - only countries with access to few non-resistant (yet) antibiotics will be relatively unharmed.