Â
A year ago, the federal government began working on a way to program genetic codes to protect people, especially military service members and first responders, from the flu and other dangerous pathogens, reports Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
Now a research agency for the government has chosen five teams "to develop a range of new medical interventions that temporarily and reversibly modulate the expression of protective genes to guard against acute threats."
It's called the PREPARE program, for Preemptive Expression of Protective Alleles and Response Elements, run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
"The program builds from the understanding that the human body has innate defenses against many types of health threats, but that the body does not always activate these defenses quickly or robustly enough to block the worst damage," the agency's announcement this week said.
"To augment existing physiological responses, PREPARE technologies would provide a programmable capability to up- or down-regulate gene expression on demand, providing timely, scalable defenses that are proportional to anticipated threats. Service members and first responders could administer these interventions prior to threat exposure or therapeutically after exposure to mitigate the risk of harm or death."
The experts have explained that pathogens, especially those with pandemic potential, toxic chemicals and radioactive materials all can quickly overwhelm the body's innate defenses.
And the ordinary drugs, vaccines and biologics sometimes are limited in their "effectiveness and availability" during emergencies.
Therefore, the effort to find programmable gene responses.
"Researchers working within the PREPARE program seek to improve rates of survival and recovery in catastrophic scenarios for which reliable and scalable countermeasures don't currently exist," said Renee Wegrzyn, a program manager in the effort.
For the rest of this report, and more, please go to Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.