BREAKING NEWS: The craziest crazies have somehow escaped the asylum and installed themselves in high positions of power. Insane, they are coming up with one bad idea after another and barking orders at us, mad shine in their eyes and saliva coming out of their mouths. They are crazy — and in charge of institutions, schools, newspapers and armies.
“Mutant progeny are recovered in the next generation at frequencies ranging from 65 to 100%; up to 30% of progeny derived from plants infected with a virus expressing three sgRNAs have mutations in all three targeted loci.”DARPA never disclosed if they tested this program outside of greenhouses.
But our standards for health and dignity are so low that this objection is better than no objection, and even this limited kind of objection and questioning DARPA takes some courage (even though it’s unknown if they would have objected in 2020).
“In the editorial, published on Thursday in Science Magazine, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and the University of Freiburg in Germany, and France’s Université de Montpellier, requested more transparency and opportunities for public discussion regarding the project and its implications.
‘Easy simplifications could be used to generate a new class of biological weapons,’ a press release reads, ‘weapons that would be extremely transmissible to susceptible crop species due to insect dispersion as the means of delivery.’”What did DARPA say?
“In an email to Motherboard, a DARPA spokesperson rebutted the thesis of the Science Magazine piece and denied any intent to deploy technology developed through Insect Allies in an offensive setting.
‘We created Insect Allies specifically to develop technology that can deliver positive, protective traits to plants to help them survive unanticipated and/or fast-moving agricultural threats,’ the spokesperson wrote. ‘We see it as a critical addition to the national security toolkit, part of a layered strategy to preserve the security of the food supply.’”
“The Insect Allies program is a collaboration between the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Environmental Protection Agency, US Army, and other agencies. According to a DARPA slide presentation, the goal of Insect Allies is to “stably transform multiple mature crop plants in a complex, multi-species plant and insect community with enhanced trait(s) of agricultural interest” by mid-2021.”Newsweek covered it, too. In a 2018 article, they said that “the U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been accused of trying to create a new class of biological weapons that would be delivered via virus-infected insects.”
“Scientists with DARPA are looking at introducing genetically modified viruses that can edit chromosomes directly in fields — these are known as horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents (HEGAAs). The DARPA program is using the principles of HEGAAs but, unlike traditional methods of dispersal — like spraying fields with them — it wants to spread them through insects.”The researchers raising the alarm asked specifically why, for agricultural use, it was so important to use insects as gene modification vectors, given that spraying was available. In response to Newsweek at the time, DARPA denied all allegations of military use and reiterated that the project’s aim was to protect American crops. In 2022, another paper was published where researchers expressed their concerns:
“The hazard and exposure potential of an HEGAA approach can vary greatly depending on the viruses, vector insects, target plant species, and genetic modifications selected and their effects. However, at the current stage of development, the most critical aspect is the compromised reliability of the HEGAA approach, owing mainly to its complex design with three different species ...
They are a cause for concern because of the numerous effects that can increase the potential for hazard and exposure. Combined with the current inadequacy of corrective measures, it is clear that there is an urgent need for early analysis of whether HEGAA approaches can be inherently contained and controlled by their specific technology design.”
“Agents such as pathogens, symbionts or synthetic protein assemblages that can be acquired through horizontal transmission in the environment can potentially be engineered to become HEGAAs. This would be achieved using biotechnology methods to confer to them the capacity to alter nucleotides in the chromosomes of infected individuals through sequence-specific editing systems like CRISPR, ZFNs or TALENs.
No known infectious agent naturally has the capacity to gene edit eukaryotes in a manner that can be flexibly targeted to specific sequences (distinct from substantially random natural processes like retroviral integration).”
“By definition, HEGAA induced gene editing events are intended to occur outside of contained facilities such as laboratories or hospitals.
While genetically modified viruses with CRISPR editing have been successfully used as research tools in laboratories or for gene therapy in clinical settings, all gene editing events are intended to physically occur within contained facilities. By contrast, HEGAAs for their intended mode of action relies on inducing gene editing events that occur largely or exclusively in the environment.”There are two types of HEGAAs: somatic and germline. Somatic HEGAAs are not inheritable, while germline ones “impact somatic cells and also cell lineages from which germline cells can be ultimately generated (e.g. sperm, oocytes, pollen, ovules, zygotes or seeds).”
And here it the actual 2020 panel (some of it is already outdated but very educational):
“Even as the halfway point of the Insect Allies program approaches, DARPA has chosen not to publicly describe in its response to our Science article what is the basis of their having concluded that a developmental pathway exists that circumvents the early proliferation of biological weapons (described by the black development path in the accompanying image).
This is in addition to explaining in detail why their developmental plan is easier to develop than alternative paths (described by the red paths). As our Science article makes clear, this is central to justifying the wisdom of embarking on the development of HEGAAs, and many other types of GM viruses.
Over the next five years, only a minority of anticipated CRISPR-inspired innovations will involve intentional environmental releases (see recent NAS report). HEGAAs, and some other GM viruses, have the property of an early-stage biological weapons proliferation risk that is not shared with most other proposed techniques (including avant-garde ones like gene drive).
Choosing not to clearly address these obvious issues of global concern, as detailed in the Science article, makes their current model of develop first and explain later an especially unwise path, particularly for this insect-delivered program, that in many ways appears to be designed to get carried away.”
“DARPA has enjoyed a strong relationship with Silicon Valley since the early 1960s, working with innovators to lay the groundwork for new industries built around Agency investments in semiconductors, networking, artificial intelligence, user interfaces, programming, materials, microsystems, and more.
[We knew that!!!] Biotech is now emerging as a breakthrough opportunity space and it represents an area that is ripe for fresh collaboration among DARPA, the nation’s top researchers, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs.”Here are some of the listed topic of interests:
“Through a DARPA-funded program, scientists at the University of California invented a tiny rig that connects to an insect’s brain and flight muscles. Once implanted, the device takes over the insect’s body, turning it into a remote control cyborg capable of receiving flight commands wirelessly from a nearby laptop.”It’s all good and fun (not really, more like a horror movie), and we could close our eyes — but will it be fun if the emboldened crazies try to remote-control your children?
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