Attitudes to life extension via genetic engineering

[Anders Sandberg]

Peter Merel wrote:
>A couple of years ago I proposed a scheme to prevent _all_ existing viral 
>diseases from using humans as a vector. The idea is fairly simple; we encrypt
>human DNA with a computationally inexpensive cipher, and build the decryption
>algorithm into the ribosome. Since viral DNA will not be replicated by such
>a ribosome we should be able to give ourselves several million years breathing
>space until new viruses are able to evolve.

I see a problem in the otherwise sound idea: dormant retroviruses. It is known
that some viruses insert their genomes into our genome, and would be encrypted
along with the rest. They usually lie dormant until certain conditions are
met, and then become active. We might need to scan the genome before encrypting
it, to remove threats like this.

--
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Anders Sandberg			 	  	     Towards Ascension!
nv91-asa at hemul.nada.kth.se   http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y


-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg			 	  	     Towards Ascension!
nv91-asa at hemul.nada.kth.se   http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y