@Lookout
I have been reading this sci-fi epic (currently on book 5 of the second part, first set was another 7)

So 12 books into the series and just last night reached the answer to what had happened to an earlier race , who's ruins were discovered not just in our galaxy but in several others.

They existed as an advanced species for millennia, spread across the known universe but then suddenly disappeared.

The revelation?

Confident in their mastery of the sciences they genetically engineered a virus, it extended their life spans many fold.

Right up until an unexpected mutation occurred, which dramatically reduced their population, then mutation 2 hit, which basically caused their genes to become so altered in a negative way, leading to sudden death in days.

A galactic civilization brought down by their arrogance.

Seems like we are on the same path, sans the Galactic Empire, we just gotta settle for the shit one we got that's doing a great imitation of the tail end of the Roman Empire.

Just thought that this as an odd bit of synchronicity so figured I'd share it.

What a dreadful web we weave when first we practice to conceive. (isn't it Frankenstein?) Our ignorance is only exceeded by our arrogance...like the story of jumping genes.

For much of the 20th century, genes were considered to be stable entities arranged in an orderly linear pattern on chromosomes, like beads on a string. In the late 1940s, Barbara McClintock challenged existing concepts of what genes were capable of when she discovered that some genes could be mobile. Her studies of chromosome breakage in maize led her to discover a chromosome-breaking locus that could change its position within a chromosome. McClintock went on to discover other such mobile elements, now known as transposons....

Of course she was denigrated and poo-pooed. However, she was later exonerated and awarded science people prizes...

By the 1970s the great strides made in molecular biology led to the discovery of transposons in other organisms, starting with viruses and bacteria. We now know that transposons constitute more than 65% of our genomes and approximately 85% of the maize genome. “Transposons are astonishingly abundant, comprising a majority of the DNA in some species,”

http://www.pnas.org/content/109/50/20198.full

There's a reason that Brazil got rid of Dilma and inserted Temer, the corporate stooge. What amazed me was the way the coup was conducted amidst the olympics. Those oligarchs are pretty clever manipulators of more than just genes.

Good to see you around, and interesting essay.

@Socialprogressive , read Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut.

Didn't these people watch Jurassic Park?

@Battle of Blair Mountain

I thought that the tax bill would be the issue that got people to rise up and say "no more." But no. The PTB are probably laughing at us because of all the shit they have thrown at us and we just keep taking it. Maybe it's going to be rescinding net neutrality. Maybe if enough people can't download their favorite tv shows and movies they will say enough.

I thought that the with the creation of the TSA people would say "hell no, I'm not jumping through your hoops and then after they kept adding more restrictions on what people can do just to get on a damn airplane that they would say enough. Still nope.

We violently rise up worldwide and destroy the capitalist insanity now.

@jim p

Really too tired again today to be commenting, but in case you're interested:

From the Corbett Report's Requiem for the Suicided series: the most pertinent bit regarding targeted genetic bio-weapons comes in at the end.

https://www.corbettreport.com/requiem-for-the-suicided-dr-david-kelly/

Requiem for the Suicided: Dr. David Kelly
Corbett • 05/17/2017

Famed microbiologist and UN weapons inspector Dr. David Kelly became the centre of a dispute between the BBC and the UK government over claims that the government had “sexed up” its dossier on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction in order to sell the Iraq war to the public. He was found dead on Harrowdown Hill on July 18, 2003. It was ruled a suicide. Today we look at the troubling discrepancies, inconsistencies and questions surrounding that official verdict, and broach the question of what secrets Dr. Kelly may have taken to the grave…

NOTE: This is a visualization of Episode 192 of The Corbett Report podcast, first released on June 25, 2011. This video was recently posted to The Corbett Report Extras YouTube channel as part of a project to make older Corbett Report audio podcasts and interviews available on YouTube. If you are interested in seeing more of this content in the future please SUBSCRIBE TO THE THE CORBETT REPORT EXTRAS CHANNEL.

Also, wondering about any potential relation between targeted genetic bio-weapons and terrifyingly numerous and enormous mass die-offs of wild-life populations within specific species occurring around the world, where entire vast populations may die within several days.

TPTB certainly couldn't seem more eager to kill off all life on the planet and various generally elderly billionaires have been entertaining Super-Tech fantasies, including some about how not only a brain transplant, but even a recording of their characteristics/brainwaves into a computer/robot, could give them an unliving immortality eternal existence, in that case not needing that required for life, apparently not realizing even that they'd still die in their bodies, whether or not the copy continued to exist, spouted their personal viewpoints and mimicked their programmed-in preferences and other traits... (Speaking of which fantasy type, I'm guessing that the latest animal head transplant to be promptly conducted by a surgeon in another country,[can't recall exactly when or many details but have the impression that it was to be soon after someone posted about it on-site, a while back] the last I'd heard about a publicized test case apparently previously scheduled to be conducted on a human, (initially last year,) likely didn't work out; didn't turn up any more hoopla on a search, at any rate.)

Came across this, from 2013, though:

https://listverse.com/2013/07/22/top-ten-disturbing-scientific-developme...

...10 Recent And Disturbing Scientific Developments

Scarlet July 22, 2013

Many of these scientific accomplishments are truly great and will undoubtedly be a great boon for the human race, but buried in each of them is something truly disturbing. For example . . ...

...7 War Robots

It is grievously apparent that members of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) do not watch science fiction movies. Why else would they model a war machine after a cheetah? So if it flips a switch and goes haywire, you can’t outrun it? Military robots are being designed to harness the natural abilities animals have developed over centuries of evolution. The cheetah robot is one of the latest models of war robots to join the ranks. It doesn’t look much like a cheetah, but it’s got the agility, speed, and locomotion of 28.3 mph for a 20-meter (65-ft) split to convince you that it’s as close as any robot has ever gotten. Just in case you’re unaware, that’s faster than Usain Bolt’s first-place universal record for running (although to be fair, the inclusion of a treadmill in the cheetah’s case meant that most of its strength went into swinging its legs, not into actual propulsion).

If a cheetah isn’t enough to worry about, it’s already been accompanied by a robot called Big Dog whose design originally imitated a pack mule. Of course, carrying weapons of mass destruction wasn’t a glorious enough feat for Big Dog, so Boston Dynamics went ahead and added a mechanical arm that enables it to lob cinder blocks at warehouses, and (I’m assuming) people. Big Dog is now voice-controlled, allowing soldiers to effortlessly deploy it on the battlefield. It can run along and use its prodigious strength to lift debris off fallen soldiers and hurl it at their loser, cheetah-less enemies.

6 Human Head Transplant
Not to be mistaken with a brain transplant, this procedure requires the entire, decapitated head of one person to be replaced on the decapitated body of another (preferably with consent from both parties, but you could go the evil scientist route as well). Effective head transplants were more of a theory than a possibility until recently, due to the obstacle of reattaching the fragile bonds of the spinal cord. Now the discovery of a nerve regeneration method has been revealed in the US, and scientists predict that human head transplants will soon be a viable option.

So far, successful transplants have been performed on rats, dogs, and monkeys, although without a means to reattach the spine at the times of the operations, the attached heads were unable to control their new bodies. If you’ve ever seen the twin-headed dogs, or the adult rats with baby rat heads screaming off their thighs, you might think it’s dubious to call this development in any way successful. In principle, it’s intended to help people who have incurable ailments or diseases, too many organ problems for surgical intervention to solve, or who are quadriplegic. Of course, since the procedure has never been tested on humans before, who knows what the implications might be. Will you even be the same person by the time you’re Frankenstein-ed back together? ...

The section entitled 'Google Glass' especially needs to be read - this is the Google intertwined so deeply with the Obama Admin that they/their various staff formed a inseparable/revolving-door corporate partnership, by all accounts. So, yeah, why shouldn't the combined lot of them kill off the relative Poors along with other Earth life which they plan not to need, place psychopathic billionaire brains in robotic bodies - and they've paid for and created pure hell for themselves, especially as they rapidly deteriorate/glitch/stagnate without the complex supply of far more than simple nutrition which the biological brain requires - something they're hoping to maintain themselves in forever. Or maybe they just won't be capable of realizing and at least be useful as perhaps idiot but obedient and useful robotic-with-replaceable-'meat-mind'-processing slaves.

But this lot can't plan to de-live themselves in the hope of never dying and let live the rest of life, and they aren't even physically Terminator robots yet... (And they also probably think that controls couldn't be implanted into them, of course... betcha.)

All this seems to me sorta like a little kid announcing that he can now play the trumpet before producing a series of farting noises at his rapt parents - only with unseen and unnoticed slow-acting poison gas emitted from the business end of the trumpet gradually killing all concerned shortly after the performance, because the kid didn't know anything about some weird thing he'd picked up and dropped into his Dad's instrument because he could, and being imaginative, thought it might give him cool magical skills to blow Dad's horn. But that mental image which somehow sprang to my mind is of some disaster limited at least to a room, and would be understandable in a small child.

The problem was, of course, initiated with whoever released such as that deadly hazard into the world for the ignorant to play around with for personal benefit, as with the US government handing over GM tech to ruthless and greed-blinded polluting industry to be commercialized and scattered freely into the to-be-genetically and petrochemically damaged and poisoned environment, food supply and entire chain of global life to all ultimately be made incapable of any longer breeding true. Kinda makes you wonder who Monsanto was, and what his connections really were, doesn't it?

And another from that article's listings which I'll briefly quote from, with the note that studies of the results of genetic modification - including those regarding artificially created biological replacement organs also covered in the article - are always secret/suppressed/downplayed and independent studies/tracking forbidden/discouraged for a reason:

https://listverse.com/2013/07/22/top-ten-disturbing-scientific-developme...

...Genetically Modified Babies

...And yet, genetically modified babies have already been brought to life. These children have inherited extra genes—one from a man, and two from women—among other aberrations. Consequences were soon to follow, and things weren’t as sunny as the scientists would have liked.

By the time the children were teenagers, reports began to sprout of how the additional genetic trait might express itself either in the individual, or in the individual’s subsequent children. A frequent rise in autism seemed to be one of the ramifications noted. Unfortunately, many of the babies born this way weren’t properly evaluated or followed up on, making a safe conclusion impossible. The FDA is leaning toward a ban on so-called designer babies, doubtless to appease the rabble. While many argue that the GM children are growing up just fine, a brief glance at some of the controversial results genetically modified foods have already been accused of exhibiting will probably make you glad for the FDA’s final ruling. Perhaps we should perfect plant engineering before taking on genetic intervention in human life. ...

But they already have taken on genetic intervention in human life; the food's been engineered with a viral capacity to invade other cells and various profitable and highly toxic, inimical-to-health/life chemicals the tech's used to sell, (as well as to set up food monopolies also useful for the control of large populations,) alters basic body functions, in at least one instance inhibiting mineral uptake essential for biological function and life, that being how it kills weeds and anything else not specifically engineered to withstand it, this gained at the cost of cells damaged by gene insertion, the introduction of genetic material intended to regulate and reproduce entirely different organisms having different origins, life cycles, manner of reproduction, biochemistry and a further list of different mechanisms, signaling and...everything else, too long to list even if I could recall them all... but it ends also in the organism's loss of its own genetic heritage and ability to breed true.

They're trying to play the role of a man-created simplistic god with incredibly complex natural processes developed over, essentially, billions of years of refinement from a very generally simple stage retained for a very long time until, finally, viable and increasingly complex life could not only result but survive to become the various ancestors of many more animals to come, these often adapting various physiological sections for entirely different uses than were inherent in their forebears - all of which these manipulators don't care to understand, because those who seemingly often prize machines - tools - over life, as 'better at doing certain things', understand a craving for unlimited power and control and apparently not much else.

And they'll kill off life itself for the (defective) fantasy of achieving it.

Edited to clarify the specific reference intended in a sentence. And again for one typo caught, but can't see straight, so the rest that I've undoubtedly missed will have to rot where they lie, lol.

There simply is no way to map out how this can cause mutations, jump species, know the consequences to ecologies…

Either insanity or some alien race trying to "Alien Form" the Earth to their liking are the only options here.

And who's to say the PNAC types who proposed "genetic bioweapons to target specific populations" won't work with this kind of thing?

@Alligator Ed

Imagine if all the peoples could shuck off our yokes that the PTB have saddled us with and find a way to live with one another in peace. I think that most people do just want peace, it's the sociopathic people who have the power that want wars. I can't understand why they can't offer money for country's resources instead of invading them or overthrowing governments and taking what they want.

Looking into one citation led to another, yielding a most desirable method, if only realizable:

It is imperative that we forge a new system that restores harmony with nature and among human beings. And in order for there to be balance with nature, there must first be equity among human beings. We propose to the peoples of the world the recovery, revalorization, and strengthening of the knowledge, wisdom, and ancestral practices of Indigenous Peoples, which are affirmed in the thought and practices of “Living Well,” recognizing Mother Earth as a living being with which we have an indivisible, interdependent, complementary and spiritual relationship.

* harmony and balance among all and with all things;
* complementarity, solidarity, and equality;
* collective well-being and the satisfaction of the basic necessities of all;
* people in harmony with nature;
* recognition of human beings for what they are, not what they own;
* elimination of all forms of colonialism, imperialism and interventionism;
* peace among the peoples and with Mother Earth.

The indigenous peoples often had it correct. But owing to their beliefs were often unprepared for the rapaciousness of intrusiveness of foreign cultures (now most exemplified by USA! USA!). Hence defeated both in battle and by disease, they were either severely debilitated (and still are) or exterminated outright.

It is thus apparent that, like AI (artificial intelligence), gene drives will almost certainly have wide-spread but as yet unknown lethal consequences. A certain balance of nature has been achieved over about 2 billion years (including 4 or 5 great extinctions). To introduce in what is a nanosecond of time relative to life on earth, dramatic changes to the ecosystem, such genetic modification on steroids, is bound to have disastrous effects. The nature of unintended consequences is that they are also unpredictable as to their particulars.

Regardless of the alleged purpose of such changes, the results will be disastrous. One does not resuscitate a hypothermic individual rapidly. One does not replenish a massive sodium deficit rapidly. Both of these conditions which occur relatively gradually on a human time scale (days to weeks) must be reversed more slowly than their onset. To "reset" global biosphere parameters will do no one good--including Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos in their New Zealand isolation.

A strange paradox often afflicts those whose material success exceeds their self-knowledge: they become arrogant and by that arrogance self-destructive--taking along with themselves others who wanted no part in the experiments.

@Snode

I remember how cool I thought it was back when I first heard advances in genetic science publicized, at least in mention - until I almost immediately discovered that the idiots had been releasing altered organisms into the environment in open-air experimental fields and had plans to release it into the freaking food supply, as was done far earlier than was admitted.

Any idiot could instantly see how insane this was, even just on the basis of any organism being released into a previously stable environment in which it'd had no niche, because we knew better such a very, very long time ago, due to consistently disastrous ecological/species results.

I'd had visions of scholarly experiments conducted in secure labs with interesting and enlightening results, of a pursuit of knowledge, an increase in biological understanding, of this being useful also in such as medical advance, especially the study of disease progression and identification of causal factors, etc., rather than the pursuit of profit and power at all cost by some. Silly me...

My kid was pretty excited when this was announce. This is the best quote I could find that sort of said what said.

“Genome editing started with just a few big labs putting in lots of effort, trying something 1,000 times for one or two successes,” says Hank Greely, a bioethicist at Stanford. “Now it’s something that someone with a BS and a couple thousand dollars’ worth of equipment can do. What was impractical is now almost everyday. That’s a big deal.”

One of the scientists attempting to come up with ethical guidelines wouldn't even give examples of what he was afraid of, that he would not give voice to his fears and would take them to his grave. This seems J Robert Oppenheimer level stuff.