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Biotech / Medical : VD's Model Portfolio & Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: poodle who wrote (5450)	8/10/1998 11:33:00 PM
From: Rocketman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9719

<<<<<Cyberken, let's stop this discussion here. This thread was started by Vector so let's follow the direction. (g)>>>>> Glad this was a grin. I'm rather enjoying this discussion, and my handle is on the first post, so I figure I can toss out my 2 cents. I do think it is relevant to global and US economics. It is interesting to me to hear the macro side of things discussed rather than only the microside of biotechs. As far as Cyberken's comments about SDI. I'm not sure I can buy the reasoning or the price tag, or the BS fixed results they've put forth to date. The biggest nuclear risk to the US (or anywhere else for that matter) is not missles, but small easily smuggled nukes that can readily be brought through our borders undetected. Talk about nasty car bombs! Nukes need be no larger than a satchel or an artillery shell. Hell, they could be set off in a boat in a harbor. Low tech delivery is more of a threat than high tech missile tech that leaves an obvious trail back to the source for retaliation. Why blow 100's of billions doing SDI defending against missiles when they can get around it by hiring a coyote to sneak it across the border? In Iraq, the SCUDS couldn't hit the broad side of a city, but there was such media and hence political heat that a big deal was made about defending against them. They were tactically useless and only strategically useful due to the hype. Hence the US spent lots of air resources trying to hunt down Scuds (mostly unsuccessfully). SDI was a bunch of BS and lies. For example, the whole shoot the missle with a laser concept was seriously flawed. Lasers will reflect off of mirrored surfaces. The perfect counter-defense to laser weapons is to mirror the surface of the missiles and reflect the laser meant to destroy the missle, but you never heard anyone ever bring that up. But, their neat diagrams showing how the aiming satellites would reflect the laser beam relied on mirrors. Dumb systems, whose only real purpose was to enrich the military-industrial complex at the expense of the taxpayer, and to drive the Soviets to bankruptcy mimicking it. Well it worked, it bankrupted the Soviets, now let's forget about this BS that doesn't work and move on to productive uses of our nation's capital and not on Reagan fantasies. Turns out that much of our nuke overproduction was due to our intelligence fantasies overstating the Soviet capability that we then had to out do. Nothing but boys playing with toys and lining their pockets for fun and profit. I worry more about some trigger happy US flunky launching missiles than the foreign ones. The biological threat is real and huge. It would be fairly easy to modify commonly transmitted organisms, like the flu for instance, to be really deadly. The equipment and supplies are readily available, and the sick muthafarquers to do it are definitely out there. It comes down to being really sick enough to do it. Hell, you could even immunize your own population against it (ala, the Swine Flu) and anyone who doesn't take the immunization doesn't trust the government enough to keep alive anyways, so who needs 'em. I always wondered about that Swine Flu shot....hmmmmm, what was our government REALLY up to??? Nothing more stimulating than a good conspiracy theory! Rocketman says, leave the missiles alone, they might be one of MY rockets.