Illun

The models from the avian flu scare demonstrated pretty clearly what this will look like if it goes horribly wrong. Worst case scenario, none of the precautions work, and billions die. That said, the computer analogy is fairly good. As millions of people write new code, thousands of *expletive* write malicious code, and by and large, the millions come out ahead by writing fixes to stop the exploits. Yes, a lot of people may die in the process, but it's a lot harder to crack down on something before it causes a disaster. People aren't going to cooperate willingly when they think they can cure cancer in their garage and don't believe your predictions of doom, and these will be run underground where there's less regulation if a misguided law tried to put a stop to it.

As much as I hate to put it this way, we need a disaster before we can prevent a disaster.