Yeah I wish.. the reality is that scientists pay a shit load of money to be able to publish in big journals. Said journals then demand a shit load of money from other scientists that want to read it. Yes there are open access journals but they´re far and in between and they don´t have as much of an impact factor, meaning no more money from third party funding for the scientists. Srsly, the current system is hoing towards a singularity and needs to change asap
@@MisterK9739fr. I could not access anything without my institution's account because the price to read a single fucking paper is ridiculous. Corporate greed at it's finest, capitalism finds a way to exploit even knowledge
@@MisterK9739 I don't think that's nearly as big a problem as you're making it out to be. I'd imagine that subscriptions to those journals are much like subscriptions to Netflix, in that everyone in the scientific community at least knows someone who can share their password. I could very well be wrong, though. If I am, please Point me towards relevant information.
@@dahat1992 you are very, very wrong. It's not uncommon for access to journals to range from $90+ _per article_ or a few hundred dollars annually. That's just one journal.
As someone actually working in biotech who also has a home lab it’s not that easy. Most organisms aren’t available to purchase especially pathogens. As for DNA sequences it is monitored and I’ve personally been called by the FBI WMD directorate and the International gene synthesis consortium when they were checking up on what I was buying even though it wasn’t pathogenic. So there are public and private watchdogs on all this stuff, plus making and testing novel viruses isn’t as easy as this video makes it seem. Especially if you need a lot of human test subjects. If you want to know where the biological super weapons will come from it’s rogue states like North Korea. They have the money, the human test subjects, the ability to hide what they are doing and leaders crazy enough to try it. Also a group of biohackers working with biotech at home made and tested the first successful Covid vaccine months before any corporation and published all their methods and results online. If Covid had been a much worse virus and especially if it’s delivery had been weaponized by targeting government infrastructure like the CDC and the FDA. They might have been the only ones to actually make a working vaccine. Mostly because biohackers are decentralized and can work a lot faster since there isn’t any bureaucracy and they tend to test things on themselves. There is a very real possible scenario where a state makes a biological WMD and deploys it strategically crippling the corporate and government infrastructure leaving only a decentralized network of citizen scientists to respond. Let’s not regulate them out of existence please. Edit - in reply to the comments saying how can biohackers make a vaccine if they can’t make a super plague. Vaccines are much easier, the first vaccine was made in 1796, it’s not remotely the same scale of work. It’s the difference in tech and infrastructure that you would need is the same as what you’d need to go from making a toy robot in your garage as a hobby and making an army of military robots. Vaccines are just a lot easier to make than WMDs because they are old and simple technology that works with the amazing power of your immune system where plagues have to work against that power.
This. I don't know why this video was trying to fearmonger so fucking hard. Upvote & comment to boost the shit out of this guy. Legend. Buying specific genes & equipment will get you flagged faster than buying guns.
@@elmojackson6621 Oh no! A rogue state, a country with massive amounts of wealth, independent researchers and manufcaturing can produce their own WMD! OH NO! Stop fearmongering. There's zero difference regulating it, as was proven by the NK buildup of missiles and nuclear weaponry. if they want to break the law, and international treaty, they will.
For the record, anyone with a relatively strong undergraduate physics education and some engineering experience knows how to build a nuclear bomb, as well as most of the constituent parts, with relatively accessible materials. The obstacle to building one is that fuel enrichment requires infrastructure that is visible from space and will quickly get you in a lot of trouble. How to do any of that is not really a secret at all.
@@DudeNoEdge Because they have to import the materials needed to refine it and construct facilities underground to do it, and also let UN Nuclear teams in to inspect any facility they have that is known of being able to refine the materials. It’s entirely possible as of now that they have constructed nuclear warheads as they were not really abiding to the treaty they signed. It’s likely if they have they won’t say they have until they have nukes capable of reaching all of Europe and the US as a deterrent: they also have to ensure the rockets which they have already constructed for nuclear warheads can properly carry them and won’t fail.
I am very pleased to see people questioning this video, its messages, and sensationalism, all while adding correct information. As Kurzesagt gets influenced by donors and deadlines, the people are upholding what is needed
I wouldn't call the video sensationalist. This topic is rarely talked about so a wake up call is well needed. Just think of how scientists were saying we could get global pandemics and superbugs years ago but no one cared until we got covid.
Something is very wrong and different about this video. The people are faceless and generic. There are no birds. The video isn't broken into their usual kind of chapters, nor does it have an intro. They didn't promote this video on reddit like they usually do. Heck, even their sources document is cited incorrectly. Their bibliography cites a source about UVC lamps, but links to an article that doesn't have any mention of the claim. The biggest thing to me is that this video relies very heavily on a single source, and the author of that source received millions of dollars in funding from the sponsor of this video. That doesn't feel right to me, either. Kurzgesagt says in their finance video that they have contracts that prevent their grant givers from editorial influence other than suggesting topic areas. Their reliance on a paper published by someone who received money from the same institution makes doubt that claim. Something is just very wrong about all this. I can't say I'm happy with this video, it feels overly alarmist and downplays the benefits of the free sharing of information and scientific research. If I can't even trust some of the facts in this video, I'm not gonna trust the opinions, either. And I say this as a long-time fan, too. I really love what kurzgesagt brings the world. I just want some kind of explanation for why this all happened. How'd they get their sources cited wrong? How did they not see the conflict of interest in their main source? Why is the animation style and format so different? By all means, I'd love to be wrong. If I missed something I'd love to know. But at first glance, it really seems like something's up with this video. Edit: It actually is broken into chapters, it's just more subtle about it.
My opinion is this is money from people that don't care about money but care about control through "charities"... corporations are rapidly evolving in to monopolies
@@D3v15H Google who finances and supports this channel, its anything but objective. But it's competently produced, which makes it all the more dangerous.
I work at a community biology lab and it's actually pretty difficult to get virus, even just as gene DNA, even for non-pathogens. Then, as others have pointed out, you still need to assemble them. There is already a decent amount of due diligence and international collaboration, especially by the large biotech distributors that currently dominate the market. This is one case where the inevitable centralization under capitalism leads to safer systems. This is of course at the cost of access to the poorest communities and we could intentionally design regulatory systems while also maintaining the spread of knowledge and access to technological resources. This also ignores viral ecology...the reason that existing deadly viruses like ebola are much easier to contain than COVID has to do with differences in virulence: a long incubation time and a large proportion of asymptomatic infections. Often the traits that allow a virus to easily and quickly spread throughout a population also reduce its virulence as dead hosts (usually) can't spread the virus.
@@sv3432 That's just statecraft. All countries, or rather their geopolitical and economic elites, will seek to enrich themselves at the expense of others. This isn't a problem of biotechnology or even technology in general, but politics and power. The people who make the rules will also generally break them; consider the US sanctioning Iran for trying to build a nuclear weapons program while fiercely holding on to its own. While non-proliferation sounds like a good idea on the surface, it inherently privileges those nations that developed those weapons first. While I'm no expert, the current state of disarmament seems to be a dance of saving face while also maintaining the upper hand...so just typical politics. Intellectually, politically and personally, I'm not interested in what states should or should not regulate because I don't believe in them. I also think being worried about bad actors in other states is propaganda at best. Consider popular notions of "rogue state" or "terrorist" that ignore the enduring outright evil committed by the governments of the imperial nations on the peoples of the rest of the world. This lack of critical thinking about (international) politics within a historicized conversation of power is what makes this video at least off-putting. While the science is correct, it is being used to promote the underlying political ideology without acknowledging that ideology or the distinction between the two.
SARS-CoV-2 isn't really a mild virus. It just is good at spreading asymptomatically. I've read that many people that get Ebola have mild or asymptomatic infections, but they don't transmit the virus.
@@sv3432 .. What are you worried about... I'm sure CCP China will follow the rules. They follow all kinds of rules. One of the current rules is that 100% of private corporations and clinics and pharmaceutical companies now are mandated to have a CCP communist cell within them ... This cell reports to the Chinese military complex. Nothing to see, nothing to worry about.
I'm definitely noticing that that's a recurring theme with Kurzgesagt videos; getting people's attention with something super scary or existential crisis-inducing, and then ending the video with "yeah but actually, you really don't have to worry that much".
Actually the conclusion is not that you dont have to worry about it - rather you can actually do something about it. I disagree that highlighting potential threads of biotechnology to be of 'an ideology' and yes I watched that video you mentioned. Kurzgesagt is meant to be informative while still being visually appealing and entertaining. Letting people keep track of current advancements in technologies is something I favor and respect!
@@fxelix9951 I don’t think that video says that “highlighting potential threads” (or threats, if you meant that) _is_ (inherently) “of an ideology”, but rather that it’s being done in a way that betrays the existence of one, and that that ideology then shapes _how_ the highlighting is done. Ya know?
As someone who has worked with an actual virus for completing a 6-month dissertation project, I had to sign around 7 different forms stating that I know what I'm gonna do at the lab, the kind of reagents I'm most likely gonna use, the people I'm gonna work with, the type of microbe that will be studied, and so on. Also, I was given limited lab access where the card only worked for 12 hours as I was doing my Masters and there was 24x7 CCTV surveillance. On top of all that, we all followed a strict protocol in sorting and disposing of any kind of lab waste we generated. So yeah, everyone kinda knew what I was upto from start to finish, and we did everything safely and cautiously. The idea that people could easily make a deadly world-ending microbe at home in the distant future is rather daft because it is very difficult, risky, and expensive to get your hands on even some of the most basic equipment, enzymes, and even a perfectly harmless microbe. Kurzgesagt, I do love your videos, but please be careful when talking about anything related to making a home-made bioweapon as it perpetuates the false idea that scientists are out there creating pandemics for the fun of it, and I mean this as a microbiologist.
You do realize that you could create a replica of Anthrax at home? A biologist with a chemical background should know this stuff. If you are savvy enough, you could replicate a virus like Yellow Fever at home. You would just need to preserve the host
@@RadioGalaxyWaves You could, the question is whether you could survive doing it. Anyone with a basic knowledge of chemistry have also been able to make gunpowder and several chemical weapons at home for decades yet that hasn't really been an issue because working with these things is obviously dangerous and likely to get you killed without the right equipment. And there's some equipment like ventilation systems and clean rooms that will never get cheap and affordable. So far toxic gas has only been used by terrorist a couple of times despite the relative simplicity of synthesizing it, compare that to how often simple things like cars or guns have been used.
You mean how the us government funded the creation of covid? Did you see the hearings with faucci and rand paul It is so obvious but they have the media on their side
@@hedgehog3180Even accepting everything you've just said, bad actors only need one asshole with SARS COV-2 to sneeze into a petri dish and the fundamental materials are there. Don't pretend for a moment that the "controls" you endure are universal. Rogue nations aren't called, "rogue," for no reason.
As a molecular biologist working on gene therapy using viral vectors, I can assure you that it is extremely difficult to avoid being tracked when ordering genetic components. Even though our biosafety level 1 is officially defined as "non-pathogenic material that is unlikely to harm the environment and humans," we are still obligated to report each case to the appropriate authorities and maintain meticulous documentation of our biosafety level 1 experiments. These experiments, which are considered safe according to the defined biosafety standards, are subjected to frequent monitoring by regulatory bodies. As you can imagine, things get even more strict when working with higher biosafety levels like viruses that target human cells. This time the kurzgesagt clip is more entertaining than informative.
Are these national or international regulations, though? I'd assume that some or even many countries do the right things but that there still are too many that either don't monitor, or don't enforce their regulations.
This video felt incredibly weird. Not only the structure, lack of faces, the alarmist tone, the lifelessness of the animation... What feels the weirdest to me is the sub-par sources, and the fact that the main source for this video was paid by the same organization that paid for this video. I will explain. (I apologize for how long this is.) I looked through the sources that they listed, and out of the 52 times they source something, 9 times Kurzgesagt sourced the same book. And of those 52 sources, only, to my eye, 13 were about the manipulation and study of bacterial/viral genes in any capacity. (There were 6 on nuclear weapons, for comparison). And about the claim of easy access to both materials and knowledge that the argument hinges on? There is one source about concerns related to easy access to genetic information, and one about easy access to DNA editing equipment. The source about easy access to genetic information (other than the book this video is based on) brings up several good examples of the risk involved with being incredibly open with knowledge about viruses and bacteria. It brings up case studies where scientists edited viruses, and published their results, in a way that was a cause for concern. Such as editing a mousepox virus so that it could bypass an existing vaccine, and publishing what gene editing was done to make that possible. The source does show an opposing opinion, which says that those with access to that information can then plan to counteract such a gene, if a virus like it were to be released on human populations. And this source, while intriguing, focuses wholly on the formal, laboratory-based research. Which this video decisively does not address, instead talking about, essentially, 'backyard biologists'. Which the second source talks about. This source isn't a peer-reviewed paper, or published in a scientific journal, unlike the first one. This source talks about DIY CRISPR kits - at home DNA editors. But the source makes no mention of infectious diseases, saying that these kits can ".... make bacteria and yeast change colour, produce a fragrance or live in inhospitable places, but their lives are short." The source says that there is very little that can be actually done to bacteria beyond this. Which does not back up the claim that pretty much anyone could have access to powerful gene-editing capabilities. As for the book - the primary source of this video. I am not inclined to read it in its entirety, but I will provide relevant quotes they listed, and break them down. For materials access: "DNA constructs of length sufficient to generate infectious 1918 influenza virus can now be obtained for US$1,500; coronaviruses cost approximately US$2,000, but typically must be enzymatically stitched together by hand prior to virus generation, limiting (for now) the number of capable individuals to those also skilled at modern biotechnology. The laboratory equipment and reagents required for these tasks can typically be obtained for less than US$50,000.” So... It doesn't mention who has access to such materials (making it seem like anyone could order it off the internet), nor does it say how easy it is to edit such diseases to make them bio-weapons. That is the only mention of material access. For information access: “Security concerns are less salient in the current culture of the life sciences, as evidenced by the number of projects explicitly intending to create, identify, and publicly share a list of viruses ranked by apparent threat level.” "Under the current system, a scientist who warns the world of a pandemic-class agent inadvertently provides widespread access to skilled "lone wolf" actors who rely on commercial DNA synthesis, as well as well-resourced actors who do not” His argument appears to be that publishing information about potential pandemic-creating agents or mutations gives people the information to create them... Without considering the opposite side of that coin - it also gives people the information to stop them. Overall... Not very convincing, to me, at least. The many comparisons to nuclear weapons, in his quotes, feel odd to me. It's the comparison between life, an ever-evolving, extremely complex system, to nuclear bombs and their proliferation, which is exclusively a weapon or energy source. There are no "cures" or "vaccines" for a nuclear explosion, but there *is* for viruses and bacteria. So while there is pretty much only danger in the democratization of information about nuclear weapons, there is undoubtedly upsides to the information on diseases. The collaboration and wealth of information that scientists had on the subject is precisely what led to the super fast discovery of a COVID-19 vaccine! But, solely the arguments aside... This was a weird video, very unlike most of Kurzgesagt's. The changing of the title and thumbnail (which is done solely for engagement - and Kurzgesagt hasn't shown they cared for that before). The fact this video was paid for by the same organization that paid the man who wrote the book this video is based on, essentially saying exactly what's in said book, the weirdly lackluster sources compared to normal videos, the bad analogy in nuclear, not looking at an opposing viewpoint, not going in-depth about something crucial (like who has access to viral materials), the odd structure, the sub-par animation.... I won't read too much into it, but I can say confidently that this is not the standard quality that I expect from Kurzgesagt, and that I am very disappointed in them for this. Thank you for reading this. Sorry that it's so long... But Kurzgesagt is a huge channel, doing a lot of good, I think, so I don't want them to go down the route of whatever led to this video being created. Edit: Spelling mistakes
This is a great comment, and a wild exception to the rule that is TH-cam comment quality. All I’ll say is to perhaps consider: By the time a potentially uber sophisticated viral weapon is leaked upon the masses, the damage done could be so irrevocably damaging to the world economy and population sizes of most countries before counter actions of vaccines can be manufactured and distributed on a global scale. But regardless, the last pandemic was man made and it was pretty harmless, unless you consider the ousting of the bad orange man-it seems the gain of function researchers won’t have the green light to wipe us pitiful masses out for some time yet.
@@sterlingtolman it was pretty harmless except literally millions of people died. I'm sure 9 II was harmless too... I mean it killed less than 0.01% of the population in NYC!! HARMLESS
Simply here to boost the engagement of this comment so Kurzgesagt sees and responds to it! I think this channel would benefit greatly (though I know it would hinder their sense of polish) if after every video or two they released a non-artistic and purely informative comment response video addressing questions and concerns regarding the previous few episodes (something like what PBS Spacetime does). I would like to hear this channel get more technical without needing to focus on aesthetics and entertainment in the video, and especially would love to hear specific responses to comments like this, addressing critiques over specific sources and certain logical extrapolations. Not only would this boost the trust and information given by Kurzgesagt, but it would produce more time efficient content, boost community engagement, and teach everyone following this channel how to have proper scientific discussion/debates. @Kurzgesagt Please do this! :)
@@MrCanadianDuck I would love this so much! I know it'd be a significant time investment, but yes, that seems incredible! Even just to further clarify things that confuse people, or even offer suggestions for further beginner's research or videos, if people are that interested.
I wasnt sure whether the feeling I was getting from the video was based, but thankfully I can see in the comments that more people are noticing, I'm so glad critical thinking is not dead. I know very little about biology and chemistry but could notice this video feels like kurtzgesagt just repeating in their own style the worldview and ideas of someone else.
This video is the only video from Kurzgesagt which has left a frown on my face after watching it. I have a degree in microbiology and this video makes it sound like anyone with a couple of thousand bucks and a microscope has the potential to create a deadly virus. Truth is it requires training, knowledge in the field, and expensive machines to successfully work on viruses (and most importantly SAFELY). Our current understanding of viruses is nothing compared to say, E. coli. It’s not as simple as using gene editing like CRISPR and replacing a couple of genes to make a super mutant. Simply, the most efficient way (and quickest) way would be to use human trials to select for variants that showed higher infectious rate while also increasing lethality, but that’s not something you can just do in your backyard…
As far as I understood their point was that since biotech is becoming simpler to degree of specialization and expertise required to create bio weapons decreases every year, so while exceedingly unlikely today in the future it might be possible for people to create dangerous pathogens.
You have a degree in microbiology. So do tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of other people. Thus, the expertise exists among a large number of people. Their point is that the chance of a terrible outcome has increased exponentially, and that it continues to increase. That is, it's not "that anyone could", it's that "anyone might". And that opinion is shared by many experts.
Agreed, this video puts everything they do in a really bad light, the fact that they were able to get this much wrong/exaggerated, and explain it as fact when there is almost no evidence for all of these claims is dumbfounding. This video is about as realist as saying AI God overlords are coming soon and will rule the world, like sure its a theory, but theres still absolutely no evidence that this will happen in the near future its HIGHLY speculative.
Like reading a news article about a topic you actually know a lot. classic. So it's likely the same on every video but at the same time you have to crunch tons of information into a short video that everyone can understand and follow along. not defending but understandable
Something you missed about this, is that they are also researching antibodies and other things USING that freely shared data, in fact i believe that there are programs to auto compute antibodies from a gene sequence directly.
Sorry, I don't think you know what you are talking about. There's no point in designing an antibody computationally when it can be produced by inoculating a host animal and let its B cells figure it out.
That's both amazing and terrifying. On one hand, it could save humanity, on the other we could be relying entirely on automated processes that could easily be wrong.
Something you missed about this, there was a subtle videogame reference. The red and white logo on the building at 3:48 is that of Umbrella Corporation's, the company that started the zombie apocalypse in Resident Evil.
As scientist working in a microbiology laboratory, I can tell you it is nearly impossible to get your hand on something dangerous online. The only way to get dangerous bacteria or viruses involve going through an tremendous amount of administrative and certification work impossible to do if you are not in university or big company. The same goes for bacteria and viruses modification, you not only need the equipment (that isn't easy to get as it is expensive and for some them, you need certification and authorization too), but also the people to work with (terrorists are rarely academics). And the cherry on top of the icing, you need to justify why you would like to have such bacteria or viruses to work with. So it is not really for tomorrow (nor the day after), people will be able to make something dangerous in their garage. The good news is all the tools you propose to put to stop new pandemic are already done since... decades... Next inform better yourself! I am very disappointed how the documentation of this video has been so poorly handled. You really need to make a second video to show how difficult it is to make super bug in your backyard....
Considering Bill Gates (who funded their last video in part) is known for driving hard lines for IP protection and against free transfer of knowledge, this video feels a little like it follows a less than factual approach.
I think the fear is less about individuals and more about if contrys were behind manufacturing dangerous viruses.. for a contry it would be cheaper to make a bio weapon than to make something like a nuke
I think you missed the point of the video. The point was this will be possible not that it's. As for getting your hands on a deadly virus... you forget there is a way to do it. An easy way. Most terrorists live in poor countries with sub par healthcare. Like lets say a modified Malaria strain. Go find someone with Malaria and get samples. As for assuming terrorists lack funding or are always under-educated... true but going to a university with a gun is not that hard. Grab like 10 microbiologists and buy equipment. I guess my point is Microbiologists like yourself are not experts in terrorism. Your argument is that it would be hard for terrorists to get supplies through legal means. Your right. But the bad part of your argument is terrorists won't order it online. They won't get a deadly virus online, they will find it. They won't study it themselves they will kidnap someone and threaten to blow their brains out if they don't work. They have funds, a lot of them massive funds. They can always steal equipment too from hospitals. So next time just think? Like I am sure your great at your job but your not thinking like a terrorist your thinking like a scientist.
Im sure someone has said this, but the only reason the COVID vaccine was made so quickly was 1) due to decades of (fairly) open access research on coronaviruses, and 2) how all the flux of covid research was very accessible across the world during the early stages of the pandemic. Making research secret when it comes to public health will only do a diservice to the field, especially during catastrophies
This video felt “off” from what I am used to and expect from kurzgesagt. I didn’t get that feeling of being informed after watching this. Felt more like I did as a kid after listening to my father discuss a possible future conspiracy.
I'm really glad most of the people here are able to think for themselves and actually voicing concerns when they feel the videos are not up to mark. It's really disappointing that they would just throw out a word salad like that and not explain anything while making such wild claims.
So many biotech researchers in the comments saying the same thing - that it's quite the opposite, it's very hard to procure (genetic material of) pathogens.
I am sorry but the things said about doing biotech at home is just very unrealistic. I am working in Biotech and every little thing is expensive as hell. As a trained biochemist/geneticist etc., doing top notch biotech at home where you manage to get "breakthrough discoveries" every few years would only be possible as long as you have a huge funding or being a multi millionaire if not billionaire who can afford all the expensive devices, including service contracts and the staff who can operate it properly.
Not to mention they imply that it's an easy thing to create a virus from scratch with only a digital copy of a DNA/RNA sequence and some inert molecules. Something which hasn't been demonstrated in even high-end labs, to my knowledge.
@@melwindash5673 I am pretty sure that this is not easy to get approved in the more civilised countries. Without these approvals, no serious peer reviewed journal will ever accept such work. Also, it is not really a breakthrough achievement anymore if you manage to mutate dogs or rats. Furthermore, if you really want to make pure mutants, one would already induce these mutations in the germline, which again is expensive and time consuming. Even for a hightech lab it could take 5-10 years to make a homozygous mouse strain with a knock in mutation.
@@melwindash5673 Ok and? We can make pets glow in the dark, this isn't a huge danger, but it might be animal cruelty. Doing some simple genetic editing is something people can do for fun in a home lab if they're fairly wealthy but getting scared over that is like getting scared over a chemist making black powder or a physicist building a fusor.
Modifying existing viruses requires getting the virus and doing very specific work on it. If we could create microbes from just knowing the sequence of their genetic material and creating it easily, this could open up a Pandora’s box that would make ghost guns look benign.
In the end i feel like this is a strategic miss-framing of DIY biology projects, exaggerating their potential risks and minimizing the regulations that already exist on such projects, and it pushes for information regulation which would really lead to further information monopolies and centralization in companies
You can't safely use UV lamps at home, they decompose synthetic and organic materials alike, producing often toxic or allergenic compounds. There's a solid reason these are used in hospitals and other strictly controlled environments only. And air cleaner has little to do with your epidemiological safety, either. Most points of contact are in public transportation or other human activity hubs like workplaces and restaurants, not in your house.
222 nm UV is safe. It does cause photochemical smog indoors if there's high levels of volatile organic compounds in the indoor air, but ventilation in accord with the current standards eliminates that issue.
Home UV C is available to everyone, surprisingly cheaply, for central air systems especially. perhaps it is because of covid? I assume you are referring to something else?
Tldr: Biotech tools may be cheap but you still need to know how to use it. It's easy to mess up and simply fail so it's unlikely the average person would succeed. I'm more concerned about Kurzgesagt's call to wall up information on biotech & genomes. When I was a highschool student preparing for International Biology Olympiad 6-8 years ago, I experienced firsthand how easy it was to construct a makeshift biotech lab. Our teachers brought stuff from the university and turned a hall in our dormitory into a makeshift lab. Of course there were no cleanroom or hazmat suits or those kind of things. They just put some machines on the table, kept the reagents / enzymes / DNA solutions in a household fridge, and stored other tools in the corner of the room (micropipettes & tips, microtubes, racks, etc). We didn't deal with dangerous microbes nor genes, but I do recall doing DNA cleaving with enzymes (not crispr), PCR and electrophoresis. There were other experiments of course (animal dissection, preparing microscopic slides out of plants, culturing bacteria & fungi, staining bacteria, etc...), but the biotech experiments were the most exciting. Even though biotech tools, DNA & reagents have become cheaper but it doesn't mean you can conjure up a virus that easily. Properly using them needs particular knowledge, skill & finesse. A simple mistake could fail your whole experiment. It's like sculpting statues: even with a hunk of marble, a hammer, chisels and knowledge of how a human looks, it is unlikely that the average person would be able to create a statue of decent quality. Even with access to budget biotech tools, reagents, and the virus genome, it is unlikely that the average person would be able to create that virus. To me, the most alarming part is the call to wall up information on genomes & information on biotech. Much information in the science world is behind a paywall already and even us who were preparing to compete in an international olympiad often resorted to "third party services" to access the information (books & research papers) free of charge.
Great, great, great post. I cannot stress enough how much I agree. Generally, someone not in this field tends to think its rather simple now that we have the genome mapped, custom-made pcr primer-kits available on demand and crispr-cas9 invented. This couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, each new invention opens up new possibilities and may allow for automation or acceleration of development... but each new tech invention also adds layers of complexity and cost. And low-key actors are very, very, very unlikely to even have the best "tools" to begin with compared to pharma companies, governments, hospitals and universities. They will have last years model, at the very best of circumstances. If any low-key malevolent actor were to try to obtain this kind of new equipment - the best machinery and the cleanest reagents - they would also be all the easier to track...
Pretty sure we all learnt during COVID that the most 'successful' viruses walk the line of fatality as extremely lethal viruses have no chance to spread and infect others. Even if you created one with a very long incubation period with sudden onset death this would provide a large window for people to get treated and slow down the spread (and its ability to spread during this incubation period would likely be limited by the fact you need to be having symptoms to transmit things often). This will always provide a limiting factor on just how lethal a virus can really get.
This is why other coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-1 and MERS didn't spread nearly as well, they had a much higher fatality rate, so A) their carriers died before they could spread it very far, and B) authorities freaked TF out and shut everything down hard. The worst/best virus is the one that has a long incubation period, short infectability period, has minimal symptoms that can blend in (i.e. "cold-like" or "flu-like" symptoms) and won't raise alarms, but still kills eventually. Or worse, disables. I think that's one of the biggest fears of scientists/virologists in the next one.
@@CeruleanDragon1 Imagine a virus that has an incubation period of 1 year, and it slowly kills the eyes but eventually makes you blind with a 99% accuracy, and it spreads like covid.
@@CeruleanDragon1 Not saying you're wrong, but the main difference between SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses is the former is passed on primarily by asymptomatic (or presymptomatic) individuals. It wasn't that other coronaviruses are more lethal, many aren't, but that people knew they were sick, and avoided passing them along. And my candidate for a really nasty virus would be a retrovirus, that incorporates itself into the host cell's DNA, or a herpesvirus, that can go dormant in nerve cells. Think about EBV, that most humans have in their nerves. Certain environmental factors (malaria or smoked fish) cause EBV to develop into Burkett's lymphoma or nasopharyngeal carcinoma. So 'construct' a herpesvirus with a specific onco-trigger, infect a population, and then deliver the onco-trigger.
I'm not surre about using something controversial as the coronha vaccine as an exemplo, que for a explanation, a should have looked for a not controversial exemple
If that knowledge is not shared, then we cannot develop counter measures against weaponised viruses allowing the first actor to develop such a virus have horrifying power.
Exactly. This closed source approach to biology being suggested here is a very neoliberal perspective, it's all about keeping all the power in the hands of one class while withholding it from all the rest. I don't understand how they can't see the problem with this perspective, it's obviously going to put everyone at the mercy of an elite minority and drive class divide. Maybe if people didn't do this then people would feel good enough about the world to, you know, not want to destroy it. But instead of suggesting equality and healthy cooperation, this channel goes the route of trying to scare everyone into giving up our power to elitists corporations and organizations that will "protect" us. No thanks, when Umbrella decide to unleash the zombie plague and try to charge us all for the vaccine I'd like to have the option of getting a team of amateur bio-hackers to make us an open source vaccine.
@@daniel4647bs like this has happened before, and it’s partially why I turned away from capitalism. The fact that progress is rapid means that our window to save the future from the elite and evil is shrinking fast.
They aren't really saying not to share the info. They are saying it should be monitored and tracked so that IF something happens, they can narrow down the guy who did it, and get what info, or even samples, they need.
@@greysen10 It is already hard to get pathogen samples under security laws like FBI WMD directorate. I would even go further and say that it is easier to gain access to radioactive elements than to acquire harmful virus sample. Some kid even used fire alarms to accumulate americium.
You cannot just order dangerous DNA or virus strains. It has to be from an account held by your university/lab, which will have been vetted beforehand, and they in turn will have vetted you.
Black market. It's not like these viruses can't be found in the wild. I'm 100% I could pay some random dude in Africa a hundred bucks to send me a sample of Ebola if I wanted to. Also, you can find dangerous pathogens around your own back yard, the bubonic plague can be found on the fleas of many rats and squirrels, and while that plague is not super dangerous now it could be if you mess around with it enough.
It is more than possible for someone to completely pass vetting on paper but to have had nefarious intent the whole time, or to pass vetting but be incompetent enough to cause an outbreak, or to be competent but blackmailed into ordering pathogens for a third party.
Thank you! I work as a scientist in a lab, and while I agree with many of the points in the video, I think Kurzgesagt definitely exaggerated the ease of purchasing samples and equipment.
actually... and i hate to be the person to say actually.... its a lot easier than you would think. Heck my university got in a bit of hot water locally when someone fucked up an order of DNA strains for research that could had made the whole school very very sick, and they did it on there personal email with zero vetting. Yes you would hope companies would vet people and most do, but some dont and its easier to slip through the cracks than you would think.
Okay this is a bit of a bigger issue: presenting UVC lamps as safe to run while people are in a room and the voiceover saying they kill the viruses you breathe before someone else can inhale them. That’s dangerous considering people are already giving themselves awful burns and even skin cancer with UVC lamps. Ventilation and filtration is an excellent idea, but putting it alongside the UVC lamps might make people who know a little about the latter distrustful of the former.
I don't think that's what they were trying to say. Notice they said new uv lights, not lights that have been around since the early days of disinfection. There are lots of articles from universities detailing these types of new lights, which are designed with human habitation in mind
@@h2o2go141 if you could give me any pointers to those studies I’d love to see them. From a base physics perspective it’s intuitively hard to see how something could be ionising enough to destroy viruses in a few seconds/minutes without still being dangerous to your skin over the course of long-term exposure. Generally UVA and UVB are not sterilising (fast enough), and they still cause plenty of problems for skin.
Far-ultraviolet UV lamps are different to UVC and are being tried as a virus-killer which is eye and skin safe (the idea is they're so short-wave they don't penetrate cell nuclei, but will destroy anything which is just rolling around in a protein capsule). But yeah this should've been made clearer.
As a molecular biologist, seeing this made me want to cry. In essence: "here is a fear mongering video that will make you nervous about things you don't understand and how easy it is to do (actually... its still hard to do and it takes a group of people a lot of effort to get anything right)" Then... "And here is a list of unreasonable requests that will halt all lab work in the field for those fears" Honestly. Making a virus will take either one crazy guy 4 years to do and then it'll probably fail. Or a team a few months. Either way, people will likely notice and you'll need a bunch of good guys to counteract it. Its like hackers in the 90s. The evil geniuses of the world will try regardless, so your only hope is to have them outnumbered by a 100 good guys.
I think it's more pointing toward what could be just around the corner instead of right now. Hence the human genome project mentioned and how it went from a massively expensive undertaking to being a relatively quick and cheap process in just a couple decades. What might biotech look like in say 2050 and what can we do now to preempt abuse of that technology? That was more what I got.
For real though, the idea of increasing the amount of information gatekeeped by people in power of *any* type is incredibly dangerous. As many others have pointed out, it's not as easy as you make it out to be to create a supervirus. You really do need the expert training for it, and the "it costs as much as a small car" claim assumes unrealistically ideal conditions with no wasted money or mistakes, which are both guaranteed for anyone not working under supervision in a controlled environment.
This idea that people in power are a monolithic untrustworthy entity is such schizo yankee shit that it's starting to become annoying. In democracies the people in power are carefully selected and filtered for this exact reason. You should value transparancy, not disorder. We need to enforce laws exactly so that the people in power are the ones who we trust we our safety or else the people in power will simply end up being the ones with the bigger stick or in this case with the bigger virus nuke.
It requires that expertise NOW. It will not require it 10 years from now. This is exactly what happened with computer viruses. At first only expert programmers could create effective viruses, while the kids could only create little practice 'bugs' with little utility. Then people developed toolkits that took the complex aspects of computer virus production and made them easy enough for the kiddies to use - and now yes, any jackass with even a modicum of programming ability and access to these kits can generate fairly effective, dangerous computer viruses and our tech industry is stuck in a literal 24 hour a day arms race with them for the rest of eternity. Same thing will happen with biological viruses. You just take the most complex aspects and wrap them up in specialized toolkits with easy user interfaces and suddenly most of an expert's capabilities are in the hands of some random schmuck. Hell. Just teach ChatGPT what viruses are and ask it to bang out 10,000 new variations an hour. It should actually be very, very good at that sort of data improvisation.
@@kelvinnnnnnnn except it doesn't cost "a small car now". Fundamentally there is a barrier to entry to This. Want to do it all yourself? Buying the supplies and equipment? Try tens of millions. A synthesizer isn't cheap. Want to run it cheaper and you just order the sequences? Good luck not triggering safety measures in place. The freely available data is also something they have and can check
It's actually nearly impossible to get *accurate* DNA sequencing by yourself in a personal house setting. You will instead get a kit from the companies that do that, who outsource it to biolabs that take the sample and put them into the machines to do it. The reason cost is low is because those machines are now well automated, and the law of scale. You are still hardly doing yourself by on your own unless you are buying millions of dollars of equipment that only big hospitals and universities can afford.
Seriously? 110 likes?? Just...no. Look up Oxford nanopore devices. Small devices about the size of a phone that can usb plug into your laptop and sequence your sample in the field.
@@justindie7543 1k for each flow cell, and you can only reuse a couple of times before buying a new one. They currently own the niche portable sequencer segment but the price is pretty unfeasible for most people. Not to mention they aren't as accurate as bigger machines. It's like saying every common person could buy Apple Vision Pro every year.
My lab uses Azenta's GeneWiz plasmid Sanger sequencing. I think in large quantities, say, 12-96 tubes of different samples containing viral replicon, I'd want that to be done by a lab other than me.
@@justindie7543 Doing an ONT library prep outside of a proper lab would be extremely difficult with any degree of reliability, and gets prohibitively expensive when you factor in all the equipment you would need.
This video feels sensationalist. I'm getting strong [citation needed] vibes from some of the claims, such as a highschooler being able to create a super virus.
They are referring to high schoolers being able to use techniques like bacterial transformation via plasmids or CRISPR, not viral engineering, which is still out of the scope of even many academic labs.
I've seen other people criticize this in the comment section as well but let me just add my own opinion onto this pile. This whole video feels like an advertisement to privatize yet another part of the scientific industry. University and institutions are willing to pay big bucks to get their stuff published in paywalled journals or to get the papers from said journals. I am frankly surprised that the biotech industry is this open on it's knowledge but I would rather keep it that way, it would allow people to learn a lot from all this knowledge on their own instead of being outside the walled garden of the medical industrial complex.
yeah this video makes no sense in a lot of ways. Not entirely wrong but wrong in the conclusions, a lot of premises and and a number of scientific things about what is needed to do biotechnology which is still way more difficult than what the video implies is and will never be so easily to "casually produce" a viable virus of any kind.
@@johnpaulcross424nah dont restrict the knowledge. Restrict who can buy the stuff. Just like restrictions to ingredients to make bombs. Its a bad idea to allow people to play with deadly viruses or bombs in their backyard
Yeah I'm not interested in giving an independent anyone a deadly spreadable virus. Need to be vetted to make sure they have an organized and safe research environment.
That’s the first video of Kurzgesagt that I didn’t like 😅. I myself work in Biotechnology. In laboratories we have safety measures to not let anything (harmless or harmful stuff) get out. There are really just few labs around the world that are S3 or S4 labs and are even allowed to work on dangerous organisms and these are highly regulated! I think that’s missing in this video.. Labs that can not even follow S1 safety standards should not even be allowed to do any work. And I hope they find these labs and shut them down.
And yet in 2019 a researcher at the university of Wisconsin got infected with a lab modified version of bird flu and not only did they try and keep it a secret they failed to follow quarantine protocols!
this video feels so weird, like it's attacking free share of scientific discoveries, wich is something amazing about science... it's the first time I have this feeling in a kurzgesagt video in years watching
There's often a lot of chat of doom and gloom, but it's encouraging to be reminded of the innovation potential of humanity which is often overlooked. Thanks, Kurzgesagt.
The amount of progress we've made in the last 100 years is incredible. Literally just a few generations ago and they'd find our technology unfathomable. First antibiotic? 1928. First proof that our galaxy is one among many? 1924. Computers, jet planes, manufacturing, construction. Go back a little further and you get solar panels, relativity, quantum physics, first cars, first airplane. And it's not like we're slowing down or hitting a plateau. There's more education, resources, knowledge, and computing power to build off of than any other point in history. It's actually crazy.
It really did feel that way instead of their more normal ground based approach that here is all the facts(eg.: the sun is massive nuclear reactor) , here is what we know(as humans) and here is what we believe(as kurzgesagt). This one felt more: this is what we believe(kurzgesagt) as facts, here are some stuff that you have to stretch them a lot to become facts (and only works if taken in a vacuum as well) and it just doesnt work like that. As you said there was a bias and it felt almost like a personal vendetta even in the narrator's voice. especially the irony was felt that right after the 5 min (what ever it was) there was the info about them doing something wrong with the info poster of evolution and how they are commited to presenting facts after that... I dont know... i am not angry... just dissapointed...
@@dylanb2990this video was sponsored by a group called Open Philanthropy. Last year they gave $150 million to the Bill Gates foundation and Novo Nordisk towards developing antivirals, which will make them a lot of money if successful. So people may see this video as maybe having an alterior motive.
This vid is a fearmongering mess intended to swain the public sentiment against any form of transparency from the bio industry. What I mean by that is this video is a tool too scare the public, based on the straw man argument of Backyard bio weapons, to allow Bio companies to operate with even less oversight than they do now. In that context it's also curios to think about who is funding this video. I would hope that it is a group of billionaires who have already stated personally and as a collective that they want to decrease the word population (obvious sarcasm). Spoiler its funded by Bill Gates.
I like how you show that there is a good end possible even as we all acknowledge the bad end that is also possible. It's so important to remember that the future * can * get better, not just worse, so that our efforts can be directed toward a thing and not just away from a thing.
I loved the Umbrella Corp and Jurassic park references in this one.. and the video itself is phenomenal as always! I love watching these and learning about the different aspects they feature.
Eh the whole concept of "We should track people and limit peoples ability to access information cause bad things could happen" Is a dicey topic, and has issues that clash with fundamental freedom of speech rights in many western countries. If anything that will be the stumbling block that will inhibit any controls who does what with biological technology. Also I take issue with the opinion that we've been "responsible" and have limited nuclear proliferation through limiting access to information when its the fact that getting a hold of the materials to make a weapon that has more been the issue. The information to make a bomb is easily obtained, its the materials and production of those materials that's extremely difficult to get a hold of or make without killing yourself, or tipping off other countries onto what you're doing. To that point look up the case of boy scout who built a functional nuclear reactor in his shed. You could conceivably control it through a licensing program, but that too has its limits, and relies on countries caring enough to license people to perform genetic work, and or the ability to control the manufacture of equipment needed to do such work. That also falls apart if the equipment is also easy to make on your own. This also somewhat mirrors efforts of gun control, as the information, equipment needed, and materials to make your own firearm is freely available and difficult to stop.
The worship of "free speech" has almost put an end to the American Experiment. What you're saying here makes me think that human life on Earth is the next thing at risk. This is not "dicey" at all. It's existential.
@@incognitotorpedo42”Worship” has nothing to do with it. History has shown us that unless freedom of speech is absolute it will eventually be taken away. “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety
@@TwistedTex and yes, I would describe areas of the US conception of freedom of speech to be ideologically dogmatic to a pathological degree. When you believe in something so fervently that you can't even rationally describe why such an absolute position is necessary, you're on shaky ground. We don't even protect human life and certainly not physical freedom to that degree.
"Your safety" has a higher priority than your freedom or human rights to these strangers that _totally_ care about you. "It's for your own good, clearly you're too stupid and need *OUR* protection."
I would have appreciated more detail on what the real magnitude of the risk is here. We live in a time when a lot of people are massively over-hyping these so-called “existential risks”, and from what I understand of the field, individual biohackers cooking up deadly plagues is still the stuff of science fiction and it would be way easier and cheaper for terrorists to just use nerve gas. Not that we shouldn’t worry at all, and who knows where we’ll be in 30 years, but we have a lot of problems in the world today and concerning ourselves too much with some of this stuff (like runaway AI) just seems like fearmongering. I think basic pandemic preparedness, which apparently we’re still not doing, would be a much bigger win and we’d get a lot of these things “for free”.
It is somewhat overheped but not impossible. Heracleum sosnowskyi can be good example of that, in laboratory tests this planet was considered good food source for farm animals but after being "realesed" it easily started to grow outside of designed areas becoming awful invasive specie.
There's no reason or excuse to assume we can just "figure it out as we go along" or anything similar with potential existential threats. The more we take them seriously _now,_ paradoxically the less we'll have to take them seriously in the future where by then it may be too late.
I think the better way to think about this specific threat isn't "it could kill us tomorrow". It's more that rolling out the infrastructure to combat it will take decades. Right now it isn't a huge danger but we need to act now or else we might not be able to stop it in time if it does become a problem.
I wouldn’t take this video at face value, I’d take it with a huge grain of salt. Advocating for less open sharing among scientists and more surveillance than already exists in the world makes me doubt that this video is sincere about fears of bio warfare rather than the desire of some people to control the spread of knowledge and keep it in the hands of a few to maintain existing power structures. Exactly like with nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, which are almost exclusively in the hands of powerful and often colonial countries that use them to maintain their hegemony.
Humanity's greatest breakthrough was the ability to share knowledge with almost anyone, anywhere. We are only at the beginning and I wish I was born later to see how far it carries us. There might always be bad outcomes possible, but I like to be optimistic in thinking that our future as a species will be unlike anything we can imagine. Especially with biotech.
If you're interested in a story about a world where everyone with a garage had access to genetic information then I'd like to recommend Genocide Man, a webcomic that ran from 2010 to 2016. It's good stuff.
I remember the time where nature shows on TV were actually informational, condensing ton of material and information into relatively short episodes. Like old Attenborough shows. Now it is one or two trivia facts stretched and repeated with different cadres to expand shows runtime to its limits and provide platform for ads, to make it worse it is not extremely uncommon for stuff to be made up. Never expected this to happen to kurzgesagt, but last few videos proven me wrong - I guess I did learn something...
Turns out billionaires even use philanthropy to further their own greedy and selfish interests, and virtually anyone will sell their soul for a piece of that pie.
Yes, this is a terrifying possibility and one I hope we never have to deal with. But the morbid curiosity in me kind of wants to see what a bioengineering apocalypse would be like. Like I’d love to read a story set on such a world just to see where it goes
Hey, If you want to see what it might be like, Try playing Tom Clancy's The Division, and then Tom Clancy's the Division 2, Both really good games (atleast in my opinion) and they both show what might happen if a super deadly disease breaks out.
There’s a serie of books called Time Riders, the final book talks about 2050 where a spore like virus gets out and turns organic matter into liquid. Maybe that could interest you.
It would be much more boring than you think. It wouldn't be much different from the Black Plague: it would kill many people as possible, but when there will be no more enough vectors to spread, it will vanish alone. Basically, we would lose just half of global population at most. And it is very unlilely that this would destroy our common civilization; autorities and armies would be equipped to protect themselves to the virus and so they would mantain the order even during the pandemic
There's also the [PROTOTYPE] games, where a lab-borne virus is purposely unleashed into New York and causing a major crisis while also giving the player character the power to mutate his body parts into weapons or armor and absorb genetic material to access the memories of other people.
With so much negative news going around at all times, I always get a little emotional watching a Kurzgesagt video. Its refreshing to see optimistic takes on what will happen in the future. Thank you for all your work.
Nah man, I totally agree. I sound like a conspiracy nutjob to myself, but Bill Gates (who funded their last video in part) is known for driving hard lines for IP protection and against free transfer of knowledge. For example, Gates was vital in preventing the AstraZeneca vaccine from becoming available open source, meaning especially countries in the global south had to pay premium dollar to be able to afford a crucial vaccine, which the inventors had wanted to make open source. To me, having this connection in the back of my mind really made this video feel very off.
I mean that one failed spectacularly tho. Other controversial had actual science and proof behind and were quite good actually, such as the ones on climate change or CRISPR
Sorry Kurzgesagt. This video felt more like you were saying what you have been paid to say instead of doing any research yourself. As others (Who work in the field) have pointed out, it's not as easy as you claim. I do remember these same claims being made years ago and regulations being put in place to prevent exactly the scenarios you describe. This video has more of a "We've been paid a lot of money to read this approved script." feel.
I don't have any experience in this field, but from reading the comments it feels more like the cautionary aspects of this video would have been true a few years ago. it's like parts of this script are outdated.
The past month was really hard for me, had eye surgery. Everything was blurry I can’t go out, I can’t study, I can’t pick a video to watch. But even though how picky I was, your channel’s always there for me, so I just binge watch all of your vids over and over. Safe to say I watched all of your vids 3 times at least, thank you much love from Thailand 🙏
I remember watching your videos when I was just 6-7 years old. It was like magic for me, still is. Thank you so much for bringing science into my life.
The way UV lamps is shown is kinda odd, as we can't use them with people nearby. Their effectiveness also decrease sharply with time, distance or even if there is a bit of dust on the bulbs (or if the light can't reach a point in space).
@@DJTimeLock you're right. However, details can be important , especially when it may be the only point of reference to people who haven't encountered this tech. It is not the end of the world, just something i noticed
2:31 Kurzgesagt does not mention that apple makes in nearly impossible to do that with their products as they wont sell you parts without signing an nda to be apart of their independent repair program. there are many longstanding issues with apple as well regarding design issues that have not been fixed, limiting cable data speeds if you are not using "genuine apple" c cords, or disabling face id if you dont if you replace a part that does not have a serial number tied to that device.
@@exdeath64 why not? People that want to, will find out anyways. Witholding information is never a solution, just an ugly band aid fix that leads to inflamation later on
All I have to say is that locking information about these pathogens that can potentially and very improbably be used for malicious purposes is not a good idea.
6:41 "No researcher would think to share data on how to turn common laboratory equipment into bomb making machines on the internet" Chemistry youtube: Am I a joke to you?
I am a PhD student in essentially virology. This video is shallow, imprecise, fear-mongering and got quite a few important things inaccurately or incorrectly. Here are the few points I noticed: 1. It’s probably impossible to do this DNA order tracing - people can just order short pieces and stitch them together like how high school students can learn to do. 2. It’s really quite difficult to make a virus more deadly/infectious in lab. Most people just experiment with a few point mutations, which almost never result in a virus that is more fit to replicate in humans. Even doing recombinations don’t work most of the times. You talking about this loosely also make scientists that do well-meaning and very important experiments being attacked by the public. I remember listening to a TWiV episode and hearing a scientist receiving extremely derogatory emails from the public for doing some standard experiments with SARS-CoV-2 that are very important to help understanding how Omicron is more infectious. 3. Vaccine development is just slow. It was lucky for SARS-CoV-2 we had some very important findings from trying to develop a vaccine for SARS-CoV-1 over a decade ago (mostly those two proline mutations in the spike). It was not intuitive and may simple need longer for other vaccines to develop. Clinical trials also just has to take that long. I am not an expert in that but I can’t imagine the whole process being shortened to just a few months - to see the short term safety effects it just takes time. I think you might have gotten the idea for the video from some old advisory letter to Obama or something like it. It was OK and makes a lot of sense to us who study the subject, but talking about it to the public should require a lot more understanding than what this video presented to avoid confusions. Edit: From some comments: I see that my wording was way too strong for point 1. The point being that there are sequences that we can control to at least greatly reduce reckless behaviors. It should be relatively easy to set up since the DNA synthesis companies are already sorting their customers based on origins.
@@randoguy7488 technically, you can kind of do that to a wild-type virus, but it’s very unlikely for one to make a more harmful one like that without very deep understanding of the virus
@@randoguy7488basically, gene sequences and gene expression are very complicated and barely understood, so you can plug and play genes, but you won't know what it would do.
"It's probably impossible"? Very scientific of you... Just because something is "quite hard" doesn't mean it hasn't been replicated and used for evil already.
Also a PhD student (neuroscience) and I agree on most points. But the problem is that things will get worse with advancements in gain-of-function research. If there's an AI model in the not-so-distant future that can tell a terrorist organisation exactly how to synthesise smallpox variants, obviously we're doomed at that point. Or at least many millions of people would die. The problem gets worse the better we get at making deadlier viruses. Your points 1 and 3 make this much worse.
This video was made possible through a grant by Open Philanthropy.
Check out the biorisk career guide from 80,000 hours:
80000hours.org/kurz-bio
Wait one day ago?
Hi
How is this comment a day old. When video was released seconds ago
Ok
Woah
The #1 asset we as humans have is the fact that scientists openly and freely share their knowledge with other scientists.
Yeah I wish.. the reality is that scientists pay a shit load of money to be able to publish in big journals. Said journals then demand a shit load of money from other scientists that want to read it.
Yes there are open access journals but they´re far and in between and they don´t have as much of an impact factor, meaning no more money from third party funding for the scientists.
Srsly, the current system is hoing towards a singularity and needs to change asap
@@MisterK9739fr. I could not access anything without my institution's account because the price to read a single fucking paper is ridiculous. Corporate greed at it's finest, capitalism finds a way to exploit even knowledge
@@andresaofelipesci hub
@@MisterK9739 I don't think that's nearly as big a problem as you're making it out to be. I'd imagine that subscriptions to those journals are much like subscriptions to Netflix, in that everyone in the scientific community at least knows someone who can share their password.
I could very well be wrong, though. If I am, please Point me towards relevant information.
@@dahat1992 you are very, very wrong. It's not uncommon for access to journals to range from $90+ _per article_ or a few hundred dollars annually. That's just one journal.
As someone actually working in biotech who also has a home lab it’s not that easy. Most organisms aren’t available to purchase especially pathogens. As for DNA sequences it is monitored and I’ve personally been called by the FBI WMD directorate and the International gene synthesis consortium when they were checking up on what I was buying even though it wasn’t pathogenic. So there are public and private watchdogs on all this stuff, plus making and testing novel viruses isn’t as easy as this video makes it seem. Especially if you need a lot of human test subjects. If you want to know where the biological super weapons will come from it’s rogue states like North Korea. They have the money, the human test subjects, the ability to hide what they are doing and leaders crazy enough to try it.
Also a group of biohackers working with biotech at home made and tested the first successful Covid vaccine months before any corporation and published all their methods and results online. If Covid had been a much worse virus and especially if it’s delivery had been weaponized by targeting government infrastructure like the CDC and the FDA. They might have been the only ones to actually make a working vaccine. Mostly because biohackers are decentralized and can work a lot faster since there isn’t any bureaucracy and they tend to test things on themselves.
There is a very real possible scenario where a state makes a biological WMD and deploys it strategically crippling the corporate and government infrastructure leaving only a decentralized network of citizen scientists to respond.
Let’s not regulate them out of existence please.
Edit - in reply to the comments saying how can biohackers make a vaccine if they can’t make a super plague. Vaccines are much easier, the first vaccine was made in 1796, it’s not remotely the same scale of work. It’s the difference in tech and infrastructure that you would need is the same as what you’d need to go from making a toy robot in your garage as a hobby and making an army of military robots.
Vaccines are just a lot easier to make than WMDs because they are old and simple technology that works with the amazing power of your immune system where plagues have to work against that power.
North Korea doesn’t have the talent to do anything. I’d think something would come from China, India or Russia…
Thanks for sharing this. Not many people are familiar with Export Controls and the network that exists to prevent folks from getting these organisms.
This. I don't know why this video was trying to fearmonger so fucking hard. Upvote & comment to boost the shit out of this guy. Legend.
Buying specific genes & equipment will get you flagged faster than buying guns.
Rogue States like North Korea or China.
@@elmojackson6621 Oh no! A rogue state, a country with massive amounts of wealth, independent researchers and manufcaturing can produce their own WMD! OH NO!
Stop fearmongering. There's zero difference regulating it, as was proven by the NK buildup of missiles and nuclear weaponry. if they want to break the law, and international treaty, they will.
For the record, anyone with a relatively strong undergraduate physics education and some engineering experience knows how to build a nuclear bomb, as well as most of the constituent parts, with relatively accessible materials. The obstacle to building one is that fuel enrichment requires infrastructure that is visible from space and will quickly get you in a lot of trouble. How to do any of that is not really a secret at all.
They want people to stop being amazed at science and inspired to do science because it has some collateral effects.
Quit trying to sound smarter than you actually are
So why is it so hard for Iran to do it
And thats why the USA does all its dangerous viral research in other countries like China and Ukraine but you know that
@@DudeNoEdge Because they have to import the materials needed to refine it and construct facilities underground to do it, and also let UN Nuclear teams in to inspect any facility they have that is known of being able to refine the materials. It’s entirely possible as of now that they have constructed nuclear warheads as they were not really abiding to the treaty they signed. It’s likely if they have they won’t say they have until they have nukes capable of reaching all of Europe and the US as a deterrent: they also have to ensure the rockets which they have already constructed for nuclear warheads can properly carry them and won’t fail.
I am very pleased to see people questioning this video, its messages, and sensationalism, all while adding correct information. As Kurzesagt gets influenced by donors and deadlines, the people are upholding what is needed
I wouldn't call the video sensationalist. This topic is rarely talked about so a wake up call is well needed. Just think of how scientists were saying we could get global pandemics and superbugs years ago but no one cared until we got covid.
I stopped actively watching years ago, to much propaganda and ideology being passed off as science.
If you've stopped watching years ago then why are you here may I ask?
Yeah I kinda like space videos and physics, but some videos seem to be aiding to spread their own thoughts or ideology
@@길-g9c It's likely because Kurzgesagt is heavily sponsored by Bill Gates
Something is very wrong and different about this video.
The people are faceless and generic. There are no birds. The video isn't broken into their usual kind of chapters, nor does it have an intro.
They didn't promote this video on reddit like they usually do.
Heck, even their sources document is cited incorrectly. Their bibliography cites a source about UVC lamps, but links to an article that doesn't have any mention of the claim.
The biggest thing to me is that this video relies very heavily on a single source, and the author of that source received millions of dollars in funding from the sponsor of this video. That doesn't feel right to me, either. Kurzgesagt says in their finance video that they have contracts that prevent their grant givers from editorial influence other than suggesting topic areas. Their reliance on a paper published by someone who received money from the same institution makes doubt that claim.
Something is just very wrong about all this. I can't say I'm happy with this video, it feels overly alarmist and downplays the benefits of the free sharing of information and scientific research. If I can't even trust some of the facts in this video, I'm not gonna trust the opinions, either. And I say this as a long-time fan, too.
I really love what kurzgesagt brings the world. I just want some kind of explanation for why this all happened. How'd they get their sources cited wrong? How did they not see the conflict of interest in their main source? Why is the animation style and format so different?
By all means, I'd love to be wrong. If I missed something I'd love to know. But at first glance, it really seems like something's up with this video.
Edit: It actually is broken into chapters, it's just more subtle about it.
My opinion is this is money from people that don't care about money but care about control through "charities"... corporations are rapidly evolving in to monopolies
@@D3v15H100%
@@D3v15H Google who finances and supports this channel, its anything but objective. But it's competently produced, which makes it all the more dangerous.
Spot on.
Notice how this video includes paid promotion? whole agenda is a scam
@@benandrews1151 What is 'control through "charities"'?
I work at a community biology lab and it's actually pretty difficult to get virus, even just as gene DNA, even for non-pathogens. Then, as others have pointed out, you still need to assemble them. There is already a decent amount of due diligence and international collaboration, especially by the large biotech distributors that currently dominate the market. This is one case where the inevitable centralization under capitalism leads to safer systems. This is of course at the cost of access to the poorest communities and we could intentionally design regulatory systems while also maintaining the spread of knowledge and access to technological resources.
This also ignores viral ecology...the reason that existing deadly viruses like ebola are much easier to contain than COVID has to do with differences in virulence: a long incubation time and a large proportion of asymptomatic infections. Often the traits that allow a virus to easily and quickly spread throughout a population also reduce its virulence as dead hosts (usually) can't spread the virus.
COVID was manmade
@@sv3432 That's just statecraft. All countries, or rather their geopolitical and economic elites, will seek to enrich themselves at the expense of others. This isn't a problem of biotechnology or even technology in general, but politics and power. The people who make the rules will also generally break them; consider the US sanctioning Iran for trying to build a nuclear weapons program while fiercely holding on to its own. While non-proliferation sounds like a good idea on the surface, it inherently privileges those nations that developed those weapons first. While I'm no expert, the current state of disarmament seems to be a dance of saving face while also maintaining the upper hand...so just typical politics.
Intellectually, politically and personally, I'm not interested in what states should or should not regulate because I don't believe in them. I also think being worried about bad actors in other states is propaganda at best. Consider popular notions of "rogue state" or "terrorist" that ignore the enduring outright evil committed by the governments of the imperial nations on the peoples of the rest of the world. This lack of critical thinking about (international) politics within a historicized conversation of power is what makes this video at least off-putting. While the science is correct, it is being used to promote the underlying political ideology without acknowledging that ideology or the distinction between the two.
SARS-CoV-2 isn't really a mild virus. It just is good at spreading asymptomatically.
I've read that many people that get Ebola have mild or asymptomatic infections, but they don't transmit the virus.
@@sv3432 .. What are you worried about... I'm sure CCP China will follow the rules. They follow all kinds of rules. One of the current rules is that 100% of private corporations and clinics and pharmaceutical companies now are mandated to have a CCP communist cell within them ... This cell reports to the Chinese military complex. Nothing to see, nothing to worry about.
Your point falls down when you learn that most of this illegal research is being done in Ukraine under 0 regulation or oversight.
I'm definitely noticing that that's a recurring theme with Kurzgesagt videos; getting people's attention with something super scary or existential crisis-inducing, and then ending the video with "yeah but actually, you really don't have to worry that much".
I mean, we all watch that stuff cuz we like it.
You're not the first to notice this... and... there's ideology at play here. "Think That Through" has a video that gets into it: v=uCuy1DaQzWI
You should definitely worry about this one more than any others they previously talked about.
Actually the conclusion is not that you dont have to worry about it - rather you can actually do something about it.
I disagree that highlighting potential threads of biotechnology to be of 'an ideology' and yes I watched that video you mentioned. Kurzgesagt is meant to be informative while still being visually appealing and entertaining. Letting people keep track of current advancements in technologies is something I favor and respect!
@@fxelix9951 I don’t think that video says that “highlighting potential threads” (or threats, if you meant that) _is_ (inherently) “of an ideology”, but rather that it’s being done in a way that betrays the existence of one, and that that ideology then shapes _how_ the highlighting is done. Ya know?
As someone who has worked with an actual virus for completing a 6-month dissertation project, I had to sign around 7 different forms stating that I know what I'm gonna do at the lab, the kind of reagents I'm most likely gonna use, the people I'm gonna work with, the type of microbe that will be studied, and so on. Also, I was given limited lab access where the card only worked for 12 hours as I was doing my Masters and there was 24x7 CCTV surveillance. On top of all that, we all followed a strict protocol in sorting and disposing of any kind of lab waste we generated. So yeah, everyone kinda knew what I was upto from start to finish, and we did everything safely and cautiously.
The idea that people could easily make a deadly world-ending microbe at home in the distant future is rather daft because it is very difficult, risky, and expensive to get your hands on even some of the most basic equipment, enzymes, and even a perfectly harmless microbe.
Kurzgesagt, I do love your videos, but please be careful when talking about anything related to making a home-made bioweapon as it perpetuates the false idea that scientists are out there creating pandemics for the fun of it, and I mean this as a microbiologist.
You do realize that you could create a replica of Anthrax at home? A biologist with a chemical background should know this stuff.
If you are savvy enough, you could replicate a virus like Yellow Fever at home. You would just need to preserve the host
@@RadioGalaxyWaves You could, the question is whether you could survive doing it. Anyone with a basic knowledge of chemistry have also been able to make gunpowder and several chemical weapons at home for decades yet that hasn't really been an issue because working with these things is obviously dangerous and likely to get you killed without the right equipment. And there's some equipment like ventilation systems and clean rooms that will never get cheap and affordable. So far toxic gas has only been used by terrorist a couple of times despite the relative simplicity of synthesizing it, compare that to how often simple things like cars or guns have been used.
Stop lying. You’ve never touched grass.
You mean how the us government funded the creation of covid?
Did you see the hearings with faucci and rand paul
It is so obvious but they have the media on their side
@@hedgehog3180Even accepting everything you've just said, bad actors only need one asshole with SARS COV-2 to sneeze into a petri dish and the fundamental materials are there. Don't pretend for a moment that the "controls" you endure are universal. Rogue nations aren't called, "rogue," for no reason.
As a molecular biologist working on gene therapy using viral vectors, I can assure you that it is extremely difficult to avoid being tracked when ordering genetic components. Even though our biosafety level 1 is officially defined as "non-pathogenic material that is unlikely to harm the environment and humans," we are still obligated to report each case to the appropriate authorities and maintain meticulous documentation of our biosafety level 1 experiments. These experiments, which are considered safe according to the defined biosafety standards, are subjected to frequent monitoring by regulatory bodies.
As you can imagine, things get even more strict when working with higher biosafety levels like viruses that target human cells. This time the kurzgesagt clip is more entertaining than informative.
What if you didn't report
That's exactly what someone who was trying to genetically engineer a super-virus would say, though...
@@Shnarfbird Then you get fired and get put on watch as they make sure you don't fuck around with that stuff again.
Are these national or international regulations, though? I'd assume that some or even many countries do the right things but that there still are too many that either don't monitor, or don't enforce their regulations.
You forget that's just the case in YOUR country. Not everywhere
You guys are amazing.
They're not. Pay attention to the propaganda against free distribution of scientific knowledge in this video.
Can't agree with that
This time anyways
Nice
Nice
This video felt incredibly weird. Not only the structure, lack of faces, the alarmist tone, the lifelessness of the animation...
What feels the weirdest to me is the sub-par sources, and the fact that the main source for this video was paid by the same organization that paid for this video. I will explain. (I apologize for how long this is.)
I looked through the sources that they listed, and out of the 52 times they source something, 9 times Kurzgesagt sourced the same book. And of those 52 sources, only, to my eye, 13 were about the manipulation and study of bacterial/viral genes in any capacity. (There were 6 on nuclear weapons, for comparison).
And about the claim of easy access to both materials and knowledge that the argument hinges on? There is one source about concerns related to easy access to genetic information, and one about easy access to DNA editing equipment.
The source about easy access to genetic information (other than the book this video is based on) brings up several good examples of the risk involved with being incredibly open with knowledge about viruses and bacteria. It brings up case studies where scientists edited viruses, and published their results, in a way that was a cause for concern. Such as editing a mousepox virus so that it could bypass an existing vaccine, and publishing what gene editing was done to make that possible.
The source does show an opposing opinion, which says that those with access to that information can then plan to counteract such a gene, if a virus like it were to be released on human populations. And this source, while intriguing, focuses wholly on the formal, laboratory-based research. Which this video decisively does not address, instead talking about, essentially, 'backyard biologists'.
Which the second source talks about. This source isn't a peer-reviewed paper, or published in a scientific journal, unlike the first one. This source talks about DIY CRISPR kits - at home DNA editors. But the source makes no mention of infectious diseases, saying that these kits can ".... make bacteria and yeast change colour, produce a fragrance or live in inhospitable places, but their lives are short." The source says that there is very little that can be actually done to bacteria beyond this. Which does not back up the claim that pretty much anyone could have access to powerful gene-editing capabilities.
As for the book - the primary source of this video. I am not inclined to read it in its entirety, but I will provide relevant quotes they listed, and break them down.
For materials access:
"DNA constructs of length sufficient to generate infectious 1918 influenza virus can now be obtained for US$1,500; coronaviruses cost approximately US$2,000, but typically must be enzymatically stitched together by hand prior to virus generation, limiting (for now) the number of capable individuals to those also skilled at modern biotechnology. The laboratory equipment and reagents required for these tasks can typically be obtained for less than US$50,000.”
So... It doesn't mention who has access to such materials (making it seem like anyone could order it off the internet), nor does it say how easy it is to edit such diseases to make them bio-weapons. That is the only mention of material access.
For information access:
“Security concerns are less salient in the current culture of the life sciences, as evidenced by the number of projects explicitly intending to create, identify, and publicly share a list of viruses ranked by apparent threat level.”
"Under the current system, a scientist who warns the world of a pandemic-class agent inadvertently provides widespread access to skilled "lone wolf" actors who rely on commercial DNA synthesis, as well as well-resourced actors who do not”
His argument appears to be that publishing information about potential pandemic-creating agents or mutations gives people the information to create them... Without considering the opposite side of that coin - it also gives people the information to stop them.
Overall... Not very convincing, to me, at least. The many comparisons to nuclear weapons, in his quotes, feel odd to me. It's the comparison between life, an ever-evolving, extremely complex system, to nuclear bombs and their proliferation, which is exclusively a weapon or energy source. There are no "cures" or "vaccines" for a nuclear explosion, but there *is* for viruses and bacteria. So while there is pretty much only danger in the democratization of information about nuclear weapons, there is undoubtedly upsides to the information on diseases. The collaboration and wealth of information that scientists had on the subject is precisely what led to the super fast discovery of a COVID-19 vaccine!
But, solely the arguments aside... This was a weird video, very unlike most of Kurzgesagt's. The changing of the title and thumbnail (which is done solely for engagement - and Kurzgesagt hasn't shown they cared for that before). The fact this video was paid for by the same organization that paid the man who wrote the book this video is based on, essentially saying exactly what's in said book, the weirdly lackluster sources compared to normal videos, the bad analogy in nuclear, not looking at an opposing viewpoint, not going in-depth about something crucial (like who has access to viral materials), the odd structure, the sub-par animation.... I won't read too much into it, but I can say confidently that this is not the standard quality that I expect from Kurzgesagt, and that I am very disappointed in them for this.
Thank you for reading this. Sorry that it's so long... But Kurzgesagt is a huge channel, doing a lot of good, I think, so I don't want them to go down the route of whatever led to this video being created.
Edit: Spelling mistakes
This is a great comment, and a wild exception to the rule that is TH-cam comment quality.
All I’ll say is to perhaps consider: By the time a potentially uber sophisticated viral weapon is leaked upon the masses, the damage done could be so irrevocably damaging to the world economy and population sizes of most countries before counter actions of vaccines can be manufactured and distributed on a global scale.
But regardless, the last pandemic was man made and it was pretty harmless, unless you consider the ousting of the bad orange man-it seems the gain of function researchers won’t have the green light to wipe us pitiful masses out for some time yet.
What the hell
@@sterlingtolman it was pretty harmless except literally millions of people died. I'm sure 9 II was harmless too... I mean it killed less than 0.01% of the population in NYC!! HARMLESS
Simply here to boost the engagement of this comment so Kurzgesagt sees and responds to it! I think this channel would benefit greatly (though I know it would hinder their sense of polish) if after every video or two they released a non-artistic and purely informative comment response video addressing questions and concerns regarding the previous few episodes (something like what PBS Spacetime does).
I would like to hear this channel get more technical without needing to focus on aesthetics and entertainment in the video, and especially would love to hear specific responses to comments like this, addressing critiques over specific sources and certain logical extrapolations. Not only would this boost the trust and information given by Kurzgesagt, but it would produce more time efficient content, boost community engagement, and teach everyone following this channel how to have proper scientific discussion/debates. @Kurzgesagt Please do this! :)
@@MrCanadianDuck I would love this so much! I know it'd be a significant time investment, but yes, that seems incredible! Even just to further clarify things that confuse people, or even offer suggestions for further beginner's research or videos, if people are that interested.
I wasnt sure whether the feeling I was getting from the video was based, but thankfully I can see in the comments that more people are noticing, I'm so glad critical thinking is not dead. I know very little about biology and chemistry but could notice this video feels like kurtzgesagt just repeating in their own style the worldview and ideas of someone else.
@itsoddsquad I'm not a native speaker but as far as I'm concerned it means 'with a foundation' or sth like that
This video is the only video from Kurzgesagt which has left a frown on my face after watching it. I have a degree in microbiology and this video makes it sound like anyone with a couple of thousand bucks and a microscope has the potential to create a deadly virus. Truth is it requires training, knowledge in the field, and expensive machines to successfully work on viruses (and most importantly SAFELY).
Our current understanding of viruses is nothing compared to say, E. coli. It’s not as simple as using gene editing like CRISPR and replacing a couple of genes to make a super mutant. Simply, the most efficient way (and quickest) way would be to use human trials to select for variants that showed higher infectious rate while also increasing lethality, but that’s not something you can just do in your backyard…
As far as I understood their point was that since biotech is becoming simpler to degree of specialization and expertise required to create bio weapons decreases every year, so while exceedingly unlikely today in the future it might be possible for people to create dangerous pathogens.
You have a degree in microbiology. So do tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of other people. Thus, the expertise exists among a large number of people. Their point is that the chance of a terrible outcome has increased exponentially, and that it continues to increase. That is, it's not "that anyone could", it's that "anyone might". And that opinion is shared by many experts.
Agreed, this video puts everything they do in a really bad light, the fact that they were able to get this much wrong/exaggerated, and explain it as fact when there is almost no evidence for all of these claims is dumbfounding. This video is about as realist as saying AI God overlords are coming soon and will rule the world, like sure its a theory, but theres still absolutely no evidence that this will happen in the near future its HIGHLY speculative.
Like reading a news article about a topic you actually know a lot. classic. So it's likely the same on every video but at the same time you have to crunch tons of information into a short video that everyone can understand and follow along. not defending but understandable
PHD in over simplifying and under researching things. essentially misinformation.
Something you missed about this, is that they are also researching antibodies and other things USING that freely shared data, in fact i believe that there are programs to auto compute antibodies from a gene sequence directly.
Sorry, I don't think you know what you are talking about. There's no point in designing an antibody computationally when it can be produced by inoculating a host animal and let its B cells figure it out.
Yes they are also doing it to try and create a vaccine for every disease possible which would save so many lives in the future 👍
thats so cool :0
That's both amazing and terrifying. On one hand, it could save humanity, on the other we could be relying entirely on automated processes that could easily be wrong.
Something you missed about this, there was a subtle videogame reference. The red and white logo on the building at 3:48 is that of Umbrella Corporation's, the company that started the zombie apocalypse in Resident Evil.
As scientist working in a microbiology laboratory, I can tell you it is nearly impossible to get your hand on something dangerous online. The only way to get dangerous bacteria or viruses involve going through an tremendous amount of administrative and certification work impossible to do if you are not in university or big company. The same goes for bacteria and viruses modification, you not only need the equipment (that isn't easy to get as it is expensive and for some them, you need certification and authorization too), but also the people to work with (terrorists are rarely academics).
And the cherry on top of the icing, you need to justify why you would like to have such bacteria or viruses to work with. So it is not really for tomorrow (nor the day after), people will be able to make something dangerous in their garage.
The good news is all the tools you propose to put to stop new pandemic are already done since... decades... Next inform better yourself! I am very disappointed how the documentation of this video has been so poorly handled. You really need to make a second video to show how difficult it is to make super bug in your backyard....
Considering Bill Gates (who funded their last video in part) is known for driving hard lines for IP protection and against free transfer of knowledge, this video feels a little like it follows a less than factual approach.
I think the fear is less about individuals and more about if contrys were behind manufacturing dangerous viruses.. for a contry it would be cheaper to make a bio weapon than to make something like a nuke
dark web idiot
@@ronidudeyou understimate how easy it is to build a nuke
I think you missed the point of the video. The point was this will be possible not that it's. As for getting your hands on a deadly virus... you forget there is a way to do it. An easy way. Most terrorists live in poor countries with sub par healthcare. Like lets say a modified Malaria strain. Go find someone with Malaria and get samples. As for assuming terrorists lack funding or are always under-educated... true but going to a university with a gun is not that hard. Grab like 10 microbiologists and buy equipment.
I guess my point is Microbiologists like yourself are not experts in terrorism. Your argument is that it would be hard for terrorists to get supplies through legal means. Your right. But the bad part of your argument is terrorists won't order it online. They won't get a deadly virus online, they will find it. They won't study it themselves they will kidnap someone and threaten to blow their brains out if they don't work. They have funds, a lot of them massive funds. They can always steal equipment too from hospitals.
So next time just think? Like I am sure your great at your job but your not thinking like a terrorist your thinking like a scientist.
Im sure someone has said this, but the only reason the COVID vaccine was made so quickly was 1) due to decades of (fairly) open access research on coronaviruses, and 2) how all the flux of covid research was very accessible across the world during the early stages of the pandemic. Making research secret when it comes to public health will only do a diservice to the field, especially during catastrophies
You got that right😊
Not to mention how well it worked 😂
I'm really glad I never took that shit
@@grandtheftavocado you and me both.
This video felt “off” from what I am used to and expect from kurzgesagt. I didn’t get that feeling of being informed after watching this. Felt more like I did as a kid after listening to my father discuss a possible future conspiracy.
Probably because it was funded by big pharma that wants to gatekeep knowledge and line their pockets.
I agree
Probably because the whole thing was bought and paid for by scummy billionaires.
That's probably because it's long-termer propaganda.
Yeah
I'm really glad most of the people here are able to think for themselves and actually voicing concerns when they feel the videos are not up to mark. It's really disappointing that they would just throw out a word salad like that and not explain anything while making such wild claims.
So many biotech researchers in the comments saying the same thing - that it's quite the opposite, it's very hard to procure (genetic material of) pathogens.
better safe than sorry
@@VivekYadav-ds8oz This is not a Republican Channel or Andrew Tate fan TH-cam channel , of course people are going to think for themselves
@@ThatGuy-lv7hf great work. now this reply section will be yours to handle. enjoy :)
This audience cares very much about science, sensationalism is for trash like bright side.
I am sorry but the things said about doing biotech at home is just very unrealistic.
I am working in Biotech and every little thing is expensive as hell.
As a trained biochemist/geneticist etc., doing top notch biotech at home where you manage to get "breakthrough discoveries" every few years would only be possible as long as you have a huge funding or being a multi millionaire if not billionaire who can afford all the expensive devices, including service contracts and the staff who can operate it properly.
Not to mention they imply that it's an easy thing to create a virus from scratch with only a digital copy of a DNA/RNA sequence and some inert molecules. Something which hasn't been demonstrated in even high-end labs, to my knowledge.
There's already peapole altering the genes if dogs and rats from home already
@@melwindash5673 I am pretty sure that this is not easy to get approved in the more civilised countries. Without these approvals, no serious peer reviewed journal will ever accept such work.
Also, it is not really a breakthrough achievement anymore if you manage to mutate dogs or rats.
Furthermore, if you really want to make pure mutants, one would already induce these mutations in the germline, which again is expensive and time consuming. Even for a hightech lab it could take 5-10 years to make a homozygous mouse strain with a knock in mutation.
@@melwindash5673 Ok and? We can make pets glow in the dark, this isn't a huge danger, but it might be animal cruelty. Doing some simple genetic editing is something people can do for fun in a home lab if they're fairly wealthy but getting scared over that is like getting scared over a chemist making black powder or a physicist building a fusor.
What disease dose wild monkeys cause
Modifying existing viruses requires getting the virus and doing very specific work on it. If we could create microbes from just knowing the sequence of their genetic material and creating it easily, this could open up a Pandora’s box that would make ghost guns look benign.
In the end i feel like this is a strategic miss-framing of DIY biology projects, exaggerating their potential risks and minimizing the regulations that already exist on such projects, and it pushes for information regulation which would really lead to further information monopolies and centralization in companies
Not an accident considering their funding and partnerships. The risk in this field is not from DIY'ers for so many obvious reasons.
you can't buy certain equipment if you're a DIY er. you need that stamp of approval.
Very true. It's outright terrifying how many people might be convinced by this terrible video
This is exactly what I was thinking!
kurtzgesagt is the illuminati!
You can't safely use UV lamps at home, they decompose synthetic and organic materials alike, producing often toxic or allergenic compounds. There's a solid reason these are used in hospitals and other strictly controlled environments only.
And air cleaner has little to do with your epidemiological safety, either. Most points of contact are in public transportation or other human activity hubs like workplaces and restaurants, not in your house.
They specially said using those in home LABS. Not just your living room/kitchen.
222 nm UV is safe. It does cause photochemical smog indoors if there's high levels of volatile organic compounds in the indoor air, but ventilation in accord with the current standards eliminates that issue.
They never said it was the only solution, just that its a help
dDude, we use a lot of those to control coating of the materials with glue...
Home UV C is available to everyone, surprisingly cheaply, for central air systems especially. perhaps it is because of covid? I assume you are referring to something else?
Tldr: Biotech tools may be cheap but you still need to know how to use it. It's easy to mess up and simply fail so it's unlikely the average person would succeed. I'm more concerned about Kurzgesagt's call to wall up information on biotech & genomes.
When I was a highschool student preparing for International Biology Olympiad 6-8 years ago, I experienced firsthand how easy it was to construct a makeshift biotech lab.
Our teachers brought stuff from the university and turned a hall in our dormitory into a makeshift lab. Of course there were no cleanroom or hazmat suits or those kind of things. They just put some machines on the table, kept the reagents / enzymes / DNA solutions in a household fridge, and stored other tools in the corner of the room (micropipettes & tips, microtubes, racks, etc).
We didn't deal with dangerous microbes nor genes, but I do recall doing DNA cleaving with enzymes (not crispr), PCR and electrophoresis.
There were other experiments of course (animal dissection, preparing microscopic slides out of plants, culturing bacteria & fungi, staining bacteria, etc...), but the biotech experiments were the most exciting.
Even though biotech tools, DNA & reagents have become cheaper but it doesn't mean you can conjure up a virus that easily. Properly using them needs particular knowledge, skill & finesse. A simple mistake could fail your whole experiment.
It's like sculpting statues: even with a hunk of marble, a hammer, chisels and knowledge of how a human looks, it is unlikely that the average person would be able to create a statue of decent quality. Even with access to budget biotech tools, reagents, and the virus genome, it is unlikely that the average person would be able to create that virus.
To me, the most alarming part is the call to wall up information on genomes & information on biotech. Much information in the science world is behind a paywall already and even us who were preparing to compete in an international olympiad often resorted to "third party services" to access the information (books & research papers) free of charge.
ok
hm, bandung?
Great, great, great post. I cannot stress enough how much I agree. Generally, someone not in this field tends to think its rather simple now that we have the genome mapped, custom-made pcr primer-kits available on demand and crispr-cas9 invented. This couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, each new invention opens up new possibilities and may allow for automation or acceleration of development... but each new tech invention also adds layers of complexity and cost. And low-key actors are very, very, very unlikely to even have the best "tools" to begin with compared to pharma companies, governments, hospitals and universities. They will have last years model, at the very best of circumstances. If any low-key malevolent actor were to try to obtain this kind of new equipment - the best machinery and the cleanest reagents - they would also be all the easier to track...
TLDR: Covid came from a lab.
As always, thanks Elbakyan and fuck Elsevier
my dads belt is still deadlier
Just yours?
😂
Nah man, My mom's slippers are basically an ICBM.
ah yes
*comedy*
Naaaa my dad’s wood spoon is way worse
Pretty sure we all learnt during COVID that the most 'successful' viruses walk the line of fatality as extremely lethal viruses have no chance to spread and infect others. Even if you created one with a very long incubation period with sudden onset death this would provide a large window for people to get treated and slow down the spread (and its ability to spread during this incubation period would likely be limited by the fact you need to be having symptoms to transmit things often). This will always provide a limiting factor on just how lethal a virus can really get.
This is why other coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-1 and MERS didn't spread nearly as well, they had a much higher fatality rate, so A) their carriers died before they could spread it very far, and B) authorities freaked TF out and shut everything down hard. The worst/best virus is the one that has a long incubation period, short infectability period, has minimal symptoms that can blend in (i.e. "cold-like" or "flu-like" symptoms) and won't raise alarms, but still kills eventually. Or worse, disables. I think that's one of the biggest fears of scientists/virologists in the next one.
@@CeruleanDragon1 Imagine a virus that has an incubation period of 1 year, and it slowly kills the eyes but eventually makes you blind with a 99% accuracy, and it spreads like covid.
@@CeruleanDragon1 Not saying you're wrong, but the main difference between SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses is the former is passed on primarily by asymptomatic (or presymptomatic) individuals. It wasn't that other coronaviruses are more lethal, many aren't, but that people knew they were sick, and avoided passing them along. And my candidate for a really nasty virus would be a retrovirus, that incorporates itself into the host cell's DNA, or a herpesvirus, that can go dormant in nerve cells. Think about EBV, that most humans have in their nerves. Certain environmental factors (malaria or smoked fish) cause EBV to develop into Burkett's lymphoma or nasopharyngeal carcinoma. So 'construct' a herpesvirus with a specific onco-trigger, infect a population, and then deliver the onco-trigger.
I'm not surre about using something controversial as the coronha vaccine as an exemplo, que for a explanation, a should have looked for a not controversial exemple
That's most of the time but not all of the time, smallpox for example was extremely contagious an 1/3 mortality rate
If that knowledge is not shared, then we cannot develop counter measures against weaponised viruses allowing the first actor to develop such a virus have horrifying power.
Exactly. This closed source approach to biology being suggested here is a very neoliberal perspective, it's all about keeping all the power in the hands of one class while withholding it from all the rest. I don't understand how they can't see the problem with this perspective, it's obviously going to put everyone at the mercy of an elite minority and drive class divide. Maybe if people didn't do this then people would feel good enough about the world to, you know, not want to destroy it. But instead of suggesting equality and healthy cooperation, this channel goes the route of trying to scare everyone into giving up our power to elitists corporations and organizations that will "protect" us. No thanks, when Umbrella decide to unleash the zombie plague and try to charge us all for the vaccine I'd like to have the option of getting a team of amateur bio-hackers to make us an open source vaccine.
@@daniel4647bs like this has happened before, and it’s partially why I turned away from capitalism. The fact that progress is rapid means that our window to save the future from the elite and evil is shrinking fast.
Anything you find in nature cannot be patented. Anything like a bioweapon you created would not be shared or patented.
They aren't really saying not to share the info. They are saying it should be monitored and tracked so that IF something happens, they can narrow down the guy who did it, and get what info, or even samples, they need.
@@greysen10 It is already hard to get pathogen samples under security laws like FBI WMD directorate. I would even go further and say that it is easier to gain access to radioactive elements than to acquire harmful virus sample. Some kid even used fire alarms to accumulate americium.
You cannot just order dangerous DNA or virus strains.
It has to be from an account held by your university/lab, which will have been vetted beforehand, and they in turn will have vetted you.
Black market. It's not like these viruses can't be found in the wild. I'm 100% I could pay some random dude in Africa a hundred bucks to send me a sample of Ebola if I wanted to. Also, you can find dangerous pathogens around your own back yard, the bubonic plague can be found on the fleas of many rats and squirrels, and while that plague is not super dangerous now it could be if you mess around with it enough.
with enough money you can order anything without vetting.
It is more than possible for someone to completely pass vetting on paper but to have had nefarious intent the whole time, or to pass vetting but be incompetent enough to cause an outbreak, or to be competent but blackmailed into ordering pathogens for a third party.
Thank you! I work as a scientist in a lab, and while I agree with many of the points in the video, I think Kurzgesagt definitely exaggerated the ease of purchasing samples and equipment.
actually... and i hate to be the person to say actually.... its a lot easier than you would think. Heck my university got in a bit of hot water locally when someone fucked up an order of DNA strains for research that could had made the whole school very very sick, and they did it on there personal email with zero vetting.
Yes you would hope companies would vet people and most do, but some dont and its easier to slip through the cracks than you would think.
Me in my basement at 3 am combining viruses with radioactive materials:
Okay this is a bit of a bigger issue: presenting UVC lamps as safe to run while people are in a room and the voiceover saying they kill the viruses you breathe before someone else can inhale them. That’s dangerous considering people are already giving themselves awful burns and even skin cancer with UVC lamps.
Ventilation and filtration is an excellent idea, but putting it alongside the UVC lamps might make people who know a little about the latter distrustful of the former.
I don't think that's what they were trying to say. Notice they said new uv lights, not lights that have been around since the early days of disinfection. There are lots of articles from universities detailing these types of new lights, which are designed with human habitation in mind
Don't forget the ozone
@@h2o2go141 if you could give me any pointers to those studies I’d love to see them. From a base physics perspective it’s intuitively hard to see how something could be ionising enough to destroy viruses in a few seconds/minutes without still being dangerous to your skin over the course of long-term exposure. Generally UVA and UVB are not sterilising (fast enough), and they still cause plenty of problems for skin.
Far-ultraviolet UV lamps are different to UVC and are being tried as a virus-killer which is eye and skin safe (the idea is they're so short-wave they don't penetrate cell nuclei, but will destroy anything which is just rolling around in a protein capsule). But yeah this should've been made clearer.
Unfortunately that's part of Kurzgesagt liberal way of preferring a technological solution over simple, free things like ventilation :(
As a molecular biologist, seeing this made me want to cry.
In essence:
"here is a fear mongering video that will make you nervous about things you don't understand and how easy it is to do (actually... its still hard to do and it takes a group of people a lot of effort to get anything right)"
Then...
"And here is a list of unreasonable requests that will halt all lab work in the field for those fears"
Honestly. Making a virus will take either one crazy guy 4 years to do and then it'll probably fail. Or a team a few months.
Either way, people will likely notice and you'll need a bunch of good guys to counteract it.
Its like hackers in the 90s. The evil geniuses of the world will try regardless, so your only hope is to have them outnumbered by a 100 good guys.
The T virus lol
That's why I wanna be a biologist too
I think it's more pointing toward what could be just around the corner instead of right now. Hence the human genome project mentioned and how it went from a massively expensive undertaking to being a relatively quick and cheap process in just a couple decades. What might biotech look like in say 2050 and what can we do now to preempt abuse of that technology? That was more what I got.
Not all labwork will halt, just work independent of corporate interests. That's exactly the point :P
Like Covid or the covid vaccine lol
Early birds will know that this video was originally titled "The Most Dangerous Weapon is NOT Nuclear"
Solve or cause?
@@chocomalk Didn't we just live through a few years of "cause?"
@@RurikLoderrw as 0:03 as
My man, those same people create the problems so they can sell the solution, if anything it makes me dread the future even more.
Hi
Me: *Creating breakfast in my kitchen*
Kur: 5:39
Me: *Completely unfazed while making toast*
For real though, the idea of increasing the amount of information gatekeeped by people in power of *any* type is incredibly dangerous. As many others have pointed out, it's not as easy as you make it out to be to create a supervirus. You really do need the expert training for it, and the "it costs as much as a small car" claim assumes unrealistically ideal conditions with no wasted money or mistakes, which are both guaranteed for anyone not working under supervision in a controlled environment.
This idea that people in power are a monolithic untrustworthy entity is such schizo yankee shit that it's starting to become annoying. In democracies the people in power are carefully selected and filtered for this exact reason. You should value transparancy, not disorder. We need to enforce laws exactly so that the people in power are the ones who we trust we our safety or else the people in power will simply end up being the ones with the bigger stick or in this case with the bigger virus nuke.
exactly. its the equivalent of trying to burn down an entire 50 storey building to the ground with just yourself and a lighter.
It requires that expertise NOW. It will not require it 10 years from now. This is exactly what happened with computer viruses. At first only expert programmers could create effective viruses, while the kids could only create little practice 'bugs' with little utility. Then people developed toolkits that took the complex aspects of computer virus production and made them easy enough for the kiddies to use - and now yes, any jackass with even a modicum of programming ability and access to these kits can generate fairly effective, dangerous computer viruses and our tech industry is stuck in a literal 24 hour a day arms race with them for the rest of eternity.
Same thing will happen with biological viruses. You just take the most complex aspects and wrap them up in specialized toolkits with easy user interfaces and suddenly most of an expert's capabilities are in the hands of some random schmuck.
Hell. Just teach ChatGPT what viruses are and ask it to bang out 10,000 new variations an hour. It should actually be very, very good at that sort of data improvisation.
give it a few years it'll cost as much as a small burger
@@kelvinnnnnnnn except it doesn't cost "a small car now". Fundamentally there is a barrier to entry to This. Want to do it all yourself? Buying the supplies and equipment? Try tens of millions. A synthesizer isn't cheap. Want to run it cheaper and you just order the sequences? Good luck not triggering safety measures in place. The freely available data is also something they have and can check
It's actually nearly impossible to get *accurate* DNA sequencing by yourself in a personal house setting. You will instead get a kit from the companies that do that, who outsource it to biolabs that take the sample and put them into the machines to do it. The reason cost is low is because those machines are now well automated, and the law of scale. You are still hardly doing yourself by on your own unless you are buying millions of dollars of equipment that only big hospitals and universities can afford.
Seriously? 110 likes?? Just...no. Look up Oxford nanopore devices. Small devices about the size of a phone that can usb plug into your laptop and sequence your sample in the field.
Or all the crazy, misanthropic rich people which exist.
@@justindie7543 1k for each flow cell, and you can only reuse a couple of times before buying a new one. They currently own the niche portable sequencer segment but the price is pretty unfeasible for most people. Not to mention they aren't as accurate as bigger machines. It's like saying every common person could buy Apple Vision Pro every year.
My lab uses Azenta's GeneWiz plasmid Sanger sequencing. I think in large quantities, say, 12-96 tubes of different samples containing viral replicon, I'd want that to be done by a lab other than me.
@@justindie7543 Doing an ONT library prep outside of a proper lab would be extremely difficult with any degree of reliability, and gets prohibitively expensive when you factor in all the equipment you would need.
This video feels sensationalist. I'm getting strong [citation needed] vibes from some of the claims, such as a highschooler being able to create a super virus.
Indeed, this video is bought and paid for by a group with a clear political agenda.
They are referring to high schoolers being able to use techniques like bacterial transformation via plasmids or CRISPR, not viral engineering, which is still out of the scope of even many academic labs.
A teen Boy Scout once made a nuclear reactor in his backyard, so.......
Then you haven't watched Black Panther 2 and you're a racist bigot.
yeah that makes no sense. They didn't even elaborate how thats even possible. Its like they just pulled that out of their asses
3:50 the umbrella corps badge gave me a bit of a flashback to "7 minutes. 7 minutes is all I can spare to play with you."
I've seen other people criticize this in the comment section as well but let me just add my own opinion onto this pile. This whole video feels like an advertisement to privatize yet another part of the scientific industry. University and institutions are willing to pay big bucks to get their stuff published in paywalled journals or to get the papers from said journals. I am frankly surprised that the biotech industry is this open on it's knowledge but I would rather keep it that way, it would allow people to learn a lot from all this knowledge on their own instead of being outside the walled garden of the medical industrial complex.
Agreed, restricting the spread of knowledge would be deleterious to independent researchers as well as the public
yeah this video makes no sense in a lot of ways. Not entirely wrong but wrong in the conclusions, a lot of premises and and a number of scientific things about what is needed to do biotechnology which is still way more difficult than what the video implies is and will never be so easily to "casually produce" a viable virus of any kind.
Well, kurzgesagt are openly shills for the rich and states, so I’m not surprised they put out yet another propaganda piece
@@johnpaulcross424nah dont restrict the knowledge. Restrict who can buy the stuff. Just like restrictions to ingredients to make bombs. Its a bad idea to allow people to play with deadly viruses or bombs in their backyard
Yeah I'm not interested in giving an independent anyone a deadly spreadable virus. Need to be vetted to make sure they have an organized and safe research environment.
Whether its Biological, Mechanical or Nuclear, if Humanity is to be undone it will be by its own hubris.
that's pretty much a guarantee at this point...
“Two things are infinite: The universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
- Albert Einstein
No war ever has been waged over hubris
No
Pretty much
That’s the first video of Kurzgesagt that I didn’t like 😅. I myself work in Biotechnology. In laboratories we have safety measures to not let anything (harmless or harmful stuff) get out. There are really just few labs around the world that are S3 or S4 labs and are even allowed to work on dangerous organisms and these are highly regulated! I think that’s missing in this video..
Labs that can not even follow S1 safety standards should not even be allowed to do any work. And I hope they find these labs and shut them down.
Kurzgesgat definitely got sold, the sponsor is very suspicious too
Wuhan Institute of Virology has entered the chat...
And yet in 2019 a researcher at the university of Wisconsin got infected with a lab modified version of bird flu and not only did they try and keep it a secret they failed to follow quarantine protocols!
@@EperogiLimousineThe sponsor is literally owned by George Soros. You can’t make this shit up.
Ukraine and COVID China would differ, leftard.
Seeing the Umbrella Corp at 3:50 and the possible T virus after it got me more interested in Bio Science and medical history
this video feels so weird, like it's attacking free share of scientific discoveries, wich is something amazing about science... it's the first time I have this feeling in a kurzgesagt video in years watching
It's not that deep
what are you talking about...
@@heroricspiritfreinen38 You really just say it's not that deep in the comments of a science channel?
@@heroricspiritfreinen38Free share of data is integral to the exponential progress we’ve seen in the sciences this decade.
Try again bozo.
Same here. Then I remembered who is paying for the video.
There's often a lot of chat of doom and gloom, but it's encouraging to be reminded of the innovation potential of humanity which is often overlooked.
Thanks, Kurzgesagt.
It's not humanity and it's innovations that I'm wary of, it's the people who rule over us and weaponize those innovations in the worst possible ways.
The amount of progress we've made in the last 100 years is incredible. Literally just a few generations ago and they'd find our technology unfathomable. First antibiotic? 1928. First proof that our galaxy is one among many? 1924. Computers, jet planes, manufacturing, construction. Go back a little further and you get solar panels, relativity, quantum physics, first cars, first airplane.
And it's not like we're slowing down or hitting a plateau. There's more education, resources, knowledge, and computing power to build off of than any other point in history. It's actually crazy.
@@tomc.5704 which is why it feels like we're barreling toward destruction, or if we're lucky, the singularity
@@Hawk7886it's easy to be afraid of what you don't understand.
@@bigsmall246 why shouldn't you be afraid of things you don't understand?
This video felt particulary nebulous. Less based on reality, more based on a bit of bias.
That's what they're being paid to do.
It really did feel that way instead of their more normal ground based approach that
here is all the facts(eg.: the sun is massive nuclear reactor) , here is what we know(as humans) and here is what we believe(as kurzgesagt).
This one felt more: this is what we believe(kurzgesagt) as facts, here are some stuff that you have to stretch them a lot to become facts (and only works if taken in a vacuum as well) and it just doesnt work like that.
As you said there was a bias and it felt almost like a personal vendetta even in the narrator's voice.
especially the irony was felt that right after the 5 min (what ever it was) there was the info about them doing something wrong with the info poster of evolution and how they are commited to presenting facts after that...
I dont know... i am not angry... just dissapointed...
Yeah.
@@whackamole4909what does that even mean?
@@dylanb2990this video was sponsored by a group called Open Philanthropy. Last year they gave $150 million to the Bill Gates foundation and Novo Nordisk towards developing antivirals, which will make them a lot of money if successful. So people may see this video as maybe having an alterior motive.
3:15 I got new idea for my science exhibition
Thanks bro😊
3:14 this is definitely a "Kurzgesagt out of context" moment
Lol
No it's not
I am proud of you guys! 3/4 videos in a span of a month; don't rush them, they need and are enjoyable as always.
They have numerous on the go at the same time so we sometimes get months where multiple are ready at the same time 😊
Yep, I even thought it was from their German channel for a second
The power of Bill
Need to be*
This vid is a fearmongering mess intended to swain the public sentiment against any form of transparency from the bio industry.
What I mean by that is this video is a tool too scare the public, based on the straw man argument of Backyard bio weapons, to allow Bio companies to operate with even less oversight than they do now.
In that context it's also curios to think about who is funding this video. I would hope that it is a group of billionaires who have already stated personally and as a collective that they want to decrease the word population (obvious sarcasm). Spoiler its funded by Bill Gates.
It's amazing to see how much your animation quality has evolved over the years. Keep up the good work!
Can you delete this so i have more likes on my comment pls
Yeah
@@Iknowwhoyouare999bro what
Amazing what will happen when you pick up a few billionaire backers eh? Lolol
@@Iknowwhoyouare999work better for it next time or something
"To cringe or not to cringe that is the question" -Kurzgesagt, 2023
I like how you show that there is a good end possible even as we all acknowledge the bad end that is also possible. It's so important to remember that the future * can * get better, not just worse, so that our efforts can be directed toward a thing and not just away from a thing.
2:40 Not going to happen because giant corporations dont want you to build or repair your own devices, because that doesnt make them much money
Bruh it’s just an analogy don’t overreact
I don’t think we should try to restrict the sharing of information, plus doing that isn’t easy
I loved the Umbrella Corp and Jurassic park references in this one.. and the video itself is phenomenal as always! I love watching these and learning about the different aspects they feature.
☂☣
Where? Time stamps pls
@@IbrahimAli-vt1fv 3:47 and 4:03
Indeed
The irony of that is clearly lost on you. This is propaganda.
Eh the whole concept of "We should track people and limit peoples ability to access information cause bad things could happen" Is a dicey topic, and has issues that clash with fundamental freedom of speech rights in many western countries. If anything that will be the stumbling block that will inhibit any controls who does what with biological technology.
Also I take issue with the opinion that we've been "responsible" and have limited nuclear proliferation through limiting access to information when its the fact that getting a hold of the materials to make a weapon that has more been the issue. The information to make a bomb is easily obtained, its the materials and production of those materials that's extremely difficult to get a hold of or make without killing yourself, or tipping off other countries onto what you're doing. To that point look up the case of boy scout who built a functional nuclear reactor in his shed.
You could conceivably control it through a licensing program, but that too has its limits, and relies on countries caring enough to license people to perform genetic work, and or the ability to control the manufacture of equipment needed to do such work. That also falls apart if the equipment is also easy to make on your own.
This also somewhat mirrors efforts of gun control, as the information, equipment needed, and materials to make your own firearm is freely available and difficult to stop.
The worship of "free speech" has almost put an end to the American Experiment. What you're saying here makes me think that human life on Earth is the next thing at risk. This is not "dicey" at all. It's existential.
@@incognitotorpedo42”Worship” has nothing to do with it. History has shown us that unless freedom of speech is absolute it will eventually be taken away.
“Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety
Several countries have implemented highly effective gun control systems. It's not a matter of capability, it's a matter of will and culture.
@@TwistedTex and yes, I would describe areas of the US conception of freedom of speech to be ideologically dogmatic to a pathological degree. When you believe in something so fervently that you can't even rationally describe why such an absolute position is necessary, you're on shaky ground. We don't even protect human life and certainly not physical freedom to that degree.
"Your safety" has a higher priority than your freedom or human rights to these strangers that _totally_ care about you.
"It's for your own good, clearly you're too stupid and need *OUR* protection."
I would have appreciated more detail on what the real magnitude of the risk is here. We live in a time when a lot of people are massively over-hyping these so-called “existential risks”, and from what I understand of the field, individual biohackers cooking up deadly plagues is still the stuff of science fiction and it would be way easier and cheaper for terrorists to just use nerve gas. Not that we shouldn’t worry at all, and who knows where we’ll be in 30 years, but we have a lot of problems in the world today and concerning ourselves too much with some of this stuff (like runaway AI) just seems like fearmongering. I think basic pandemic preparedness, which apparently we’re still not doing, would be a much bigger win and we’d get a lot of these things “for free”.
As someone that works in a molecular biology lab, this seems really far fetched imo. Definitely overhyped
It is somewhat overheped but not impossible.
Heracleum sosnowskyi can be good example of that, in laboratory tests this planet was considered good food source for farm animals but after being "realesed" it easily started to grow outside of designed areas becoming awful invasive specie.
There's no reason or excuse to assume we can just "figure it out as we go along" or anything similar with potential existential threats. The more we take them seriously _now,_ paradoxically the less we'll have to take them seriously in the future where by then it may be too late.
I think the better way to think about this specific threat isn't "it could kill us tomorrow". It's more that rolling out the infrastructure to combat it will take decades. Right now it isn't a huge danger but we need to act now or else we might not be able to stop it in time if it does become a problem.
@@nieznajomy4398 "somewhat overheped but not impossible" seems like a very wild reason to advocate more privatization of science, no?
Teşekkürler.
Thank you so much! ❤
I wouldn’t take this video at face value, I’d take it with a huge grain of salt. Advocating for less open sharing among scientists and more surveillance than already exists in the world makes me doubt that this video is sincere about fears of bio warfare rather than the desire of some people to control the spread of knowledge and keep it in the hands of a few to maintain existing power structures. Exactly like with nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, which are almost exclusively in the hands of powerful and often colonial countries that use them to maintain their hegemony.
Yeah. Just think how much better off the world would be if small towns or rich individuals could construct their own nuclear weapons. /s
@@Jesse_359 or imagine if no one had nuclear weapons anymore.
@@le2382 that'd be great - but currently hard to imagine.
Humanity's greatest breakthrough was the ability to share knowledge with almost anyone, anywhere. We are only at the beginning and I wish I was born later to see how far it carries us. There might always be bad outcomes possible, but I like to be optimistic in thinking that our future as a species will be unlike anything we can imagine. Especially with biotech.
The greatest breakthroughs were the wheel, agriculture, the steam engine and electricity
@@Grasslander You got me there. One of the greatest then.
control obey restrict information hide the truth and watch people spy on them put them on lists is this what we want?
control obey restrict information hide the truth and watch people spy on them put them on lists is this what we want?
@@GrasslanderDon’t forget the printing press! (:
@7:20 "the really spicy stuff". Thanks, now I'm going to have a side of existential dread every time I reach for the hot sauce now
If you're interested in a story about a world where everyone with a garage had access to genetic information then I'd like to recommend Genocide Man, a webcomic that ran from 2010 to 2016. It's good stuff.
You just sucked away half a day of my life. Thank you!
4:02 Nice throwback to mr. DNA and Jurassic Park.
Indominus Rex spotted!
4:45 “New Batshit virus discovered” I see what you did there.
Lmao
Lmao
I was trying to find this comment
This is definitely going to be featured into a Kurzwgat out of context video
YOOO as a lifelong Resident Evil fan, I see and love the easter egg you guys dropped at 3:50!
I remember the time where nature shows on TV were actually informational, condensing ton of material and information into relatively short episodes. Like old Attenborough shows. Now it is one or two trivia facts stretched and repeated with different cadres to expand shows runtime to its limits and provide platform for ads, to make it worse it is not extremely uncommon for stuff to be made up.
Never expected this to happen to kurzgesagt, but last few videos proven me wrong - I guess I did learn something...
Turns out billionaires even use philanthropy to further their own greedy and selfish interests, and virtually anyone will sell their soul for a piece of that pie.
@@Locke42485Not virtually. Literally anyone has a price. It just varies on the "how much" part.
😢😔
what?
ok
Yes, this is a terrifying possibility and one I hope we never have to deal with. But the morbid curiosity in me kind of wants to see what a bioengineering apocalypse would be like. Like I’d love to read a story set on such a world just to see where it goes
Hey, If you want to see what it might be like, Try playing Tom Clancy's The Division, and then Tom Clancy's the Division 2, Both really good games (atleast in my opinion) and they both show what might happen if a super deadly disease breaks out.
There’s a serie of books called Time Riders, the final book talks about 2050 where a spore like virus gets out and turns organic matter into liquid. Maybe that could interest you.
It would be much more boring than you think. It wouldn't be much different from the Black Plague: it would kill many people as possible, but when there will be no more enough vectors to spread, it will vanish alone. Basically, we would lose just half of global population at most. And it is very unlilely that this would destroy our common civilization; autorities and armies would be equipped to protect themselves to the virus and so they would mantain the order even during the pandemic
Yeah
There's also the [PROTOTYPE] games, where a lab-borne virus is purposely unleashed into New York and causing a major crisis while also giving the player character the power to mutate his body parts into weapons or armor and absorb genetic material to access the memories of other people.
With so much negative news going around at all times, I always get a little emotional watching a Kurzgesagt video. Its refreshing to see optimistic takes on what will happen in the future. Thank you for all your work.
watching a kurzgesagt video is always an emotional roller coaster
Shouldn't forget they are a bunch of shills that lie for money
Lmao he is usually spewing alarmist propaganda though
His videos on ants and non political stuff is good though
@@NeostormXLMAXhow tho??
What's more possible some guy at a wet market eating a bat or people that do this for a living accidentally leaking a virus ?
Ryan Reynolds AKA Deadpool
Antibiotic resistance
Anyone else notice this video felt different than their usual vids?....must just be me
Nah man, I totally agree.
I sound like a conspiracy nutjob to myself, but Bill Gates (who funded their last video in part) is known for driving hard lines for IP protection and against free transfer of knowledge. For example, Gates was vital in preventing the AstraZeneca vaccine from becoming available open source, meaning especially countries in the global south had to pay premium dollar to be able to afford a crucial vaccine, which the inventors had wanted to make open source.
To me, having this connection in the back of my mind really made this video feel very off.
The Unbrella corp reference at 6:48 was perfect lol
Doofenshmirtz is finally gonna be able to take over the tri-state area with this
Biotech student here. I will never grow tired of this quote by Richard Feynman in "The Meaning of it All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist":
It's always the videos sponsored by open filanthropy that miss...
*i wonder why*
I mean that one failed spectacularly tho. Other controversial had actual science and proof behind and were quite good actually, such as the ones on climate change or CRISPR
I think open filanthropy is manipulating Kur.
8:30 “ Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall”
bro wrote batshit virus at 4:45 and thought we woudnt notice💀💀💀
argh the last part about the poster and working to be better really made me tear up, you guys are amazing🥲
Sorry Kurzgesagt. This video felt more like you were saying what you have been paid to say instead of doing any research yourself. As others (Who work in the field) have pointed out, it's not as easy as you claim. I do remember these same claims being made years ago and regulations being put in place to prevent exactly the scenarios you describe.
This video has more of a "We've been paid a lot of money to read this approved script." feel.
I don't have any experience in this field, but from reading the comments it feels more like the cautionary aspects of this video would have been true a few years ago.
it's like parts of this script are outdated.
Your posters are all incredible, the quality of the art is amazing and I’m definitely gonna buy a few of them, they are easily worth the money.
2:03 THAT MAN HAS A LEFT HAND ON HIS RIGHT SIDE
*He's too dangerous to be kept alive*
I want to thank all the nerds out there putting in the work to figure things out.
The past month was really hard for me, had eye surgery. Everything was blurry I can’t go out, I can’t study, I can’t pick a video to watch. But even though how picky I was, your channel’s always there for me, so I just binge watch all of your vids over and over. Safe to say I watched all of your vids 3 times at least, thank you much love from Thailand 🙏
I remember watching your videos when I was just 6-7 years old. It was like magic for me, still is. Thank you so much for bringing science into my life.
How old are you?
He can be anywhere from 8 to 17
@@kanishkjaiswal5088He was born in 1970. He just identified as a teen.
@@kanishkjaiswal5088He's definitely not over 15. Judging by his profile picture.
@@theequalizer2007💀
3:50 Only true nerds will recognize that insigina.
The umbrella logo from resident evil
Not really considering how popular resident evil is
you guys always bringing up and owning your mistakes is such a nice thing to see
7:25 the most dangerous virus:
AMONG US
Noooooo😭
There is always a impostor among us
leat fingies
What most of you missed is a discovery that was developed in 2018 and spread almost like a virus to tremendous scales, it was mentioned at 7:26
Damn youuu! 😡 *shakes fist*
GET OUT OF MY HEAD
GET OUT OF MY HEAD
Buyed a shirt last month and it has very good quality. Also feels good to support you guys
Can we appreciate the joycons on the desk here? 5:08
there is also a caterpie pokemon card
@@rowanstree8499 it's cute
The way UV lamps is shown is kinda odd, as we can't use them with people nearby. Their effectiveness also decrease sharply with time, distance or even if there is a bit of dust on the bulbs (or if the light can't reach a point in space).
I'll take the viruses over the UV burns, eye damage, and melanoma, lol
It was just a visualization... Not like everything else they show is 100% accurate.
@@DJTimeLock fr tho
@@DJTimeLock "Kinda odd" is a pretty fair critique of an extremely common device in biotech.
@@DJTimeLock you're right. However, details can be important , especially when it may be the only point of reference to people who haven't encountered this tech. It is not the end of the world, just something i noticed
2:31
Kurzgesagt does not mention that apple makes in nearly impossible to do that with their products as they wont sell you parts without signing an nda to be apart of their independent repair program.
there are many longstanding issues with apple as well regarding design issues that have not been fixed, limiting cable data speeds if you are not using "genuine apple" c cords, or disabling face id if you dont if you replace a part that does not have a serial number tied to that device.
It's just an analogy bro, it's not that deep.
@@mackworsfold4087innit
"What if we made a nuclear bomb in our backyard" Sounds like the quiet kid who is capable of doing it.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master." - Commissioner Pravin Lal, Alpha Centauri
This honestly, Security through obscurity isn't the way of doing this, I'm honestly happy that researchers are open to sharing the info they find.
Okay but maybe don't give people the knowledge on how to make a superbug out of the stuff in their fridge.
@@exdeath64 why not? People that want to, will find out anyways. Witholding information is never a solution, just an ugly band aid fix that leads to inflamation later on
I don't think what's being suggested here is that different from how searching for bomb making instructions probably puts you on a list somewhere.
@@exdeath64 Remember when everyone was going crazy about accessible 3d printing and how everyone will make guns and other weapons at home ?
"new batshit virus discovered" thank you animator for your hard work
All I have to say is that locking information about these pathogens that can potentially and very improbably be used for malicious purposes is not a good idea.
scientist:i found a new virus
me:CAN YOU STOP TRYING TO FIND THINGS THAT CAN KILL US
most wholesome outro ever :') love you Kurzgesagt, thank you for everything you do and for putting all your heart, soul and so much brain into it
Considering who sponsors Kurtzgesagt, this video can be taken as something between predictive programming and a threat.
They are slowly preparing people. The unspecified virus of unknown origin was simply a test run to see what they can get away with.
what does this mean 😭 elaborate please
6:41
"No researcher would think to share data on how to turn common laboratory equipment into bomb making machines on the internet"
Chemistry youtube: Am I a joke to you?
Dr. Bombastic?! 😂
I love it how its incredibly simplified but you can still recognize wikihow at
I am a PhD student in essentially virology. This video is shallow, imprecise, fear-mongering and got quite a few important things inaccurately or incorrectly. Here are the few points I noticed:
1. It’s probably impossible to do this DNA order tracing - people can just order short pieces and stitch them together like how high school students can learn to do.
2. It’s really quite difficult to make a virus more deadly/infectious in lab. Most people just experiment with a few point mutations, which almost never result in a virus that is more fit to replicate in humans. Even doing recombinations don’t work most of the times. You talking about this loosely also make scientists that do well-meaning and very important experiments being attacked by the public. I remember listening to a TWiV episode and hearing a scientist receiving extremely derogatory emails from the public for doing some standard experiments with SARS-CoV-2 that are very important to help understanding how Omicron is more infectious.
3. Vaccine development is just slow. It was lucky for SARS-CoV-2 we had some very important findings from trying to develop a vaccine for SARS-CoV-1 over a decade ago (mostly those two proline mutations in the spike). It was not intuitive and may simple need longer for other vaccines to develop. Clinical trials also just has to take that long. I am not an expert in that but I can’t imagine the whole process being shortened to just a few months - to see the short term safety effects it just takes time.
I think you might have gotten the idea for the video from some old advisory letter to Obama or something like it. It was OK and makes a lot of sense to us who study the subject, but talking about it to the public should require a lot more understanding than what this video presented to avoid confusions.
Edit: From some comments: I see that my wording was way too strong for point 1. The point being that there are sequences that we can control to at least greatly reduce reckless behaviors. It should be relatively easy to set up since the DNA synthesis companies are already sorting their customers based on origins.
2. What ? So making a virus isn't just like ordering Lego bricks and sticking them together ? No way
/sarcasm (I agree with you)
@@randoguy7488 technically, you can kind of do that to a wild-type virus, but it’s very unlikely for one to make a more harmful one like that without very deep understanding of the virus
@@randoguy7488basically, gene sequences and gene expression are very complicated and barely understood, so you can plug and play genes, but you won't know what it would do.
"It's probably impossible"? Very scientific of you... Just because something is "quite hard" doesn't mean it hasn't been replicated and used for evil already.
Also a PhD student (neuroscience) and I agree on most points. But the problem is that things will get worse with advancements in gain-of-function research. If there's an AI model in the not-so-distant future that can tell a terrorist organisation exactly how to synthesise smallpox variants, obviously we're doomed at that point. Or at least many millions of people would die. The problem gets worse the better we get at making deadlier viruses.
Your points 1 and 3 make this much worse.
The animation quality improved! Keep the good work up Kurzgesagt!