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Pros: You would have to inoculate the target just once, thereby decreasing chances of detection. It could be airborne or foodborne (or, if you don't count that as physical contact, sexually transmited . Once inside the host, it would self-perpetuate, without the need to more actions from the killer. He could just sit back and enjoy.

In the case of viruses, doctors wouldn’t be able to detect them, because they would be new viruses. They would only be found if the doctors knew what viral antigens they should be looking for.

But even if they did diagnose accurately those infections, that doesn’t mean they could treat them. Viral infections are extremely difficult to treat. And you could genetically engineer your bacteria with antibiotic-resistance plasmids.

Cons I can’t think of any. This would be my method, if I would be able to choose.

Pros: You would have to inoculate the target just once, thereby decreasing chances of detection. It could be airborne or foodborne (or, if you don't count that as physical contact, sexually transmited - just hire and inoculate a prostitute). Once inside the host, the microbe would self-perpetuate, without the need for more actions from the killer. You could just sit back and enjoy.

In the case of viruses, doctors wouldn’t be able to detect them, because they would be new viruses. They would only be found if the doctors knew a priori what viral antigens they should be looking for.

Cons Theoretically, a doctor could eventually detect the infection.

Pro pro But even if they did diagnose accurately those infections, that doesn’t mean they could treat them. Viral infections are extremely difficult to treat. And you could genetically engineer your bacteria with antibiotic-resistance plasmids.

But there is a way that you can make radiation find your target. Unfortunately kingledion has beat me to the punch with that. Just make the person ingest substances containing radiation releasing isotopes. They will decay at regular intervals and innoculate a dose of radiation at each interval.

For example, the only place on our body that uses iodine is only on the thyroid. Doctors use 131 iodine as a means to concentrate radiation on the thyroid.

Kingledion mentioned strontium 90, which is analogous to calcium, which would concentrate the radiation on the bone. This would be helpful, because the bone marrow is the place where you produce the blood, is a place with a high celular turnover and therefore, very sensitive to cancer induction (leukemias, etc...)

Cons: Radiation may be detected.

It is true that immunosupression may lead to cancer, because then there will be no immune cells to detect cancer cells. However, that level of immunosupression would be hard to induce without extremely high doses of myelotoxics or radiation. Furthermore, it would be easily detected before inducing cancer… because the target would contract many infectious diseases beforehand, that would make him/her see a doctor, which would easily detect the immunosupression with a blood test.

Epigenetics means that we may turn on or off a gene, by adding molecule radicals (namely methyl radicals) to the DNA immediately prior to that gene.

So, if a cancer is promoted by a mutated gene, we could epigenetically turn it off. And vice-versa… we could epigenetically turn on genes that would increase the likelihood of cancer.

At this time, we don’t have a way to manipulate epigenetics at our will. Every epigenetic drug that I know of has failed on clinical trials. But it is not a stretch to believe that this technology will be available in a couple of years.

Cons: You would need to develop this drug on highly specialized laboratories. Either you make a drug that just tampers with all your epigenetic make-up (and so the consequences will be unpredictable)… or you develop a drug that epigenetically focuses just on one gene, but then you will have a problem. Because you will need to make that drug available to the target on a sufficient dose. Since you can’t make physical contact with him, it means you can’t innoculate the drug. So the drug should be able to traverse the digestive system without being digested and be absorbed on a sufficient dose to achieve the effect. I don’t think this is feasible for a stealthy assassination.

Processed meat is a carcinogen, but who can live without that yummy hamburger? You just need to have it. Just one won’t make a difference, right?

Just make sure that you couple your carcinogen with an addictive substance or behavior. Thereby you will ensure that the target will be exposed to the carcinogen on continuous and regular doses. The target will BEG you for the carcinogen.

Heck, at a certain time, you can even forget about stealth. The target will be crawling up to you. If he asks for their councillors help, he/she will stop getting the drug. He/She will not have that!

Helicobacter pylori is a bacterium that infects nearly half of the world’s population and it increases the risk of gastric cancer. We know there are strains that are more cancerigenous than others. Taint the food with a genetically altered H. pylori and you’re good to go.

Or why not alter a non-cancerigenous bacteria that is ubiquitous on our intestinal flora, like an E. coli?

Pros: You would have to inoculate the target just once, thereby decreasing chances of detection. It could be airborne or foodborne. Once inside the host, it would self-perpetuate, without the need to more actions from the killer. He could just sit back and enjoy.

But there is a way that you can make radiation find your target. Kingledion has beat me to the punch with that. Just make the person ingest substances containing radiation releasing isotopes. They will decay at regular intervals and innoculate a dose of radiation at each interval.

For example, the only place on our body that uses iodine is the thyroid. Doctors use 131 iodine as a means to concentrate radiation on the thyroid.

Kingledion mentioned strontium 90, which is analogous to calcium, which would concentrate the radiation on the bone. This would be helpful, because the bone marrow (the place where you produce the blood) is a place with a high celular division rate and therefore, very sensitive to cancer induction (leukemias, etc...)

Cons: Radiation may be detected,as kingledion as mentioned.

It is true that immunosupression may lead to cancer, because then there will be no immune cells to detect cancer cells and destroy them. However, that level of immunosupression would be hard to induce without extremely high doses of myelotoxics or radiation. Furthermore, it would be easily detected before inducing cancer... because the target would contract many infectious diseases beforehand, that would make him/her see a doctor, which would easily detect the immunosupression with a blood test.

Epigenetics means that we may turn on or off a gene, by adding molecule radicals (namely methyl radicals) to the DNA sequence immediately preceding that gene.

So, if a cancer is promoted by a mutated gene, we could epigenetically turn it off. And vice-versa... we could epigenetically turn on genes that would increase the likelihood of cancer.

At this time, we don’t have a way to manipulate epigenetics at our will. Every anticancer epigenetic drug that I know of has failed on clinical trials. But it is not a stretch to believe that this technology will be available in a couple of years.

Cons: You would need to develop this drug on highly specialized laboratories. Either you make a drug that just tampers with all your epigenetic make-up (and so the consequences will be unpredictable)... or you develop a drug that epigenetically focuses just on one gene, but then you will have a problem. Because you will need to make that drug available to the target on a sufficient dose. Since you can’t make physical contact with him, it means you can’t innoculate the drug. So the drug should be able to traverse the digestive system without being digested and be absorbed on a sufficient dose to achieve the effect. I don’t think this is feasible for a stealthy assassination.

Processed meat is a carcinogen, but who can live without that yummy hamburger? You just need to have it. Just one won’t make a difference, right? Cancer just happens to the others, right? You can stop whenever you want, right?

Just make sure that you couple your carcinogen with an addictive substance or behavior. Thereby you will ensure that the target will be exposed to the carcinogen on continuous and regular doses. The target will BEG you for the carcinogen.

This is easy. Every neurological substance that induces addiction may induce (sometimes fatal) abstinence syndromes.

Heck, at a certain time, you can even forget about stealth. The target will be crawling up to you. If he asks for anyone else's help, he/she will stop getting the drug. He/She will not have that, especially if he/she is a dictator that won't have anyone deny him/her something.

Just make your evil chemists develop a carcinogen and highly addictive neurotransmitter, like nicotine.

Helicobacter pylori is a bacterium that infects nearly half of the world’s population and it increases the risk of gastric cancer. We know there are strains that are more cancerigenous than others. Taint the food with a genetically altered H. pylori and you’re good to go.

Or why not alter a non-cancerigenous bacteria that is ubiquitous on our intestinal flora, like an E. coli?

Pros: You would have to inoculate the target just once, thereby decreasing chances of detection. It could be airborne or foodborne (or, if you don't count that as physical contact, sexually transmited . Once inside the host, it would self-perpetuate, without the need to more actions from the killer. He could just sit back and enjoy.

Even radiotherapy, with significantly higher radiation doses, will not increase this risk with great orders of magnitude. But radiotherapy is more limited in time.

But still, you would need very high doses of radiation AND you would need them to be focused on a very concentrated and constant spot in the body. Even today, radioncologists need to make "armors" and "masks" that imobilize the patient and need to recallibrate constantly the machine in order to be certain that the beam is always affecting the same área, or else the therapeutic benefit gets compromised.

There is just no way to achieve this on a moving target with current technology, without using such a dose of radiation that would affect all the neighborhood, increasing the chances of detection. detection.

And carcinogen induces DNA mutations, either directly or indirectly.

Even radiotherapy, with significantly higher radiation doses, will not increase this risk with great orders of magnitude, even though radiotherapy is more limited in time and is fine-tuned to reduce the risk of radiation-induced cancer to the max.

But still, you would need very high doses of radiation AND you would need them to be focused on a very concentrated and constant spot in the body. Even today, radioncologists need to make "armors" and "masks" that completely imobilize the patient and need to constantly recallibrate the machine in order to be certain that the beam is always affecting the same area, or else the therapeutic benefit gets compromised.

There is just no way to achieve this on a moving target with current technology, without using such a dose of radiation that would affect all the neighborhood, increasing the chances of detection.