X-Message-Number: 1028 From: (Timothy Freeman) Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.med,sci.cryonics Subject: Re: Better Living through DNA Encryption Message-ID: <> Date: 20 Jul 92 17:19:50 GMT References: <> In article <> (Peter Alexander Merel) writes: I figure that key generation would work a little like this: the sperm and the egg contain only unencrypted DNA. We could arrange for them to carry cipher DNA and a copy of their public key, but that doesn't seem to me to improve security since we're going to generate a new secret key anyway. Oh, but it does increase security. With unencrypted sperm, the sperm need to travel some distance during which they'll be vulnerable to viruses and so forth. With encrypted sperm, the virus can only attack the magic box that combines the encrypted genes of the parents to generate the encrypted genes of the child. The result of this process is that every human on the planet will have a different encryption key for their DNA, so even in the extremely unlikely event that some warped genius manages to design a virus that can successfully patch the DNA of one human, it won't be able to affect anyone else. Unless it attacks the unencrypted sperms and eggs, or it attacks the box that creates the child's encrypted genes. This only stops the viruses that need to splice themselves into the DNA to reproduce. If a virus can self-reproduce entirely as RNA, it gets to keep going in your scheme. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1028