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4 THE POTENTIAL FOR LARGE-SCALE EFFECTS
Pages 19-22

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From page 19...
... While the risk of large-scale effects is low, the consequences are potentially serious. Therefore, unless and until sufficient knowledge of Mars and its environment is available such that assessment of the risk of pathogenesis, environmental disruption, or other harmful effects resulting from the inadvertent contamination of Earth with hypothetical martian microbes can be effectively reduced to zero, due caution and care should be exercised in handling materials returned to Earth from Mars.
From page 20...
... Samples returned from the martian surface, unless returned from sites specifically targeted as possible oases, are unlikely to harbor extant life as we know it, and there may be some pressure to reduce planetary protection requirements on subsequent sample-return missions if prior samples are found to be sterile. Presumably, however, subsequent missions will be directed toward locations on Mars where extant life is more plausible based on data acquired from an integrated exploration program, including prior sample-return missions.
From page 21...
... Living organisms defend themselves mechanically and chemically in diverse ways against agents that are themselves constantly changing. The chances that invasive properties would have evolved in putative martian microbes in the absence of evolutionary selection pressure for such properties is vanishingly small.
From page 22...
... It is especially unlikely that putative martian organisms could be agents of infectious disease. Such a capability requires specific adaptations, for which there would be no selection pressure on Mars, to overcome the elaborate defenses against invasion possessed by terrestrial organisms.


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