On October 9, 2018 the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Secuirty released a report highlighting 15 emerging technologies or categories of technologies, with further scientific attention and investment, as well as attention to accompanying legal, regulatory, ethical, policy, and operational issues have the potential to reduce global catastrophic biological risks (GCBR), as they present “potentially transformative” technologies which would “complement traditional approaches to prevention, preparedness, and response”. GCBRs is a concept defined in July 2017. The technologies include Self-Spreading Vaccines and Self-Amplifying mRNA Vaccines, and Micro-needle vaccine Patch. [1, 2, 3, 4]
This report highlights 15 technologies or categories of technologies that, with further scientific attention and investment, as well as attention to accompanying legal, regulatory, ethical, policy, and operational issues, could help make the world better prepared and equipped to prevent future infectious disease outbreaks from becoming catastrophic events.
“This report looks at technologies that are already available but have not been applied to an emergency situation before or are so new that they are still in development”, and “admits there are “substantial technical challenges” in genetically engineering a vaccine but technology such as the Crispr gene editing tool should make the job easier.”
2020 was too early for the self-spreading vaccines, but they are planned to be used for existing infectious diseases!! The WHO knowingly allowed this to occur for polio – they call it vaccine-derived polio!