5 ms·

Why US outsourced bat virus research to Wuhan

27 points by Donckele 7y ago

api 7y ago
What is the point of doing actual GOF research? We already know viruses can gain function. We already know that bat viruses can infect humans. Is this backdoor bioweapon research framed to avoid breaking the letter of treaties banning it? But if that's the case, outsourcing it seems totally insane.
- Traster 7y ago
  Well one way to put it is: We already know these viruses can gain function. If we can simulate that in the lab and then study the results we can plan how to deal with the situation if it arises in the wild. It's worth noting that this article isn't being completely transparent about the moratorium, it wasn't just a decision by the US to no longer do that sort of reseach, they were just pausing whilst they reconsidered how they evaluate whether to allow & fund that research. There was no real question of completely banning GOF research. They released that report in 2016[1]. Secondly, they cite a weird website called nationalfile.com for the claim Fauci funded the Chinese lab (in an article written now, not at the time the funding was claimed to be made) - I don't believe that. If you actually look at the NIH website what they're passing off as Fauci fundign the Chinese lab, is a 2018 article about collaboration with the lab in studying an outbreak of a disease in pig farms in Guangdong. Which is not exactly the shooting up bats with SARS is it, and it's certainly not the type of research that was effected by the GOF moratorium. >The Wuhan lab is now at the center of scrutiny for possibly releasing the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and causing the global Covid-19 pandemic. This is entirely speculation. There's no evidence of this being the case. Basically what I'm saying is that this website is a fake news site. It's citing other fake news sites, spreading misinformation and mis-representing government reports. The controversial claims are baseless - and often uncited, and the citations that are there are either to other misinformation sites- literally, waht is the nationalfile.com? [1]:https://osp.od.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/NSABB_Final_Report_Recommendations_Evaluation_Oversight_Proposed_Gain_of_Function_Research.pdf https://osp.od.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/NSABB_Fina...
  - api 7y ago
    I can see that, but it still seems risky and of dubious value. I am not convinced any vaccine research is going to transfer from a synthetic virus to humans, and animal studies also have issues transferring. Good high risk research is high risk high payoff. This seems very high risk low payoff to me. Then there is smallpox. The idea of doing anything with smallpox samples other than placing them in an ultra high temperature autoclave is horrifying. That stuff is extinct in the wild. It should be extinct from the timeline entirely. I am suspicious of Asia Times, but also of the drive to blame this on China. I raised my question in the abstract since so far I see no concrete evidence that COVID-19 originated in anyone's lab whether Chinese or American.
    - Traster 7y ago
      Absolutely true, it's risky, and that's why we have strong government regulations about what research to do and how to do it. I think we can reasonably argue about whether those regulations are strong enough, but I actually think the process (in the US atleast) is working. They were allowing this research under strict conditions, they found out that actually mistakes were more likely to happen after some incidents, so they took a full 2 years to completely re-evaulate, produce a full report and a new regime designed by experts.
acqq 7y ago
I like the following two paragraphs appearing exactly in this order in the text: "If evidence is found that Covid-19 is a biological weapon, some pundits such as Fox News host Lou Dobbs have called for the US to declare war on China. Nonetheless, it is unclear what the legal ramifications would be if the virus was indeed leaked from a Chinese lab, but as a result of a research project that was outsourced and funded by the US government."
- op03 7y ago
  Well its turning into the united states of pundits and podcasters. All other work is outsourced.
- roenxi 7y ago
  It is people being silly. COVID-19 is a terrible biological weapon. As in ineffective. And prone to misfiring.
  - tromp 7y ago
    It's very effective at causing massive economical damage...
mehrdadn 7y ago
> Republican lawmakers such as Senator Tom Cotton and Representative Dan Crenshaw have also introduced legislation that would allow Americans to sue China in federal court over the deaths and economic damage wrought by the virus. Does the notion of ex-post-facto not apply to foreigners? (Although the concept of a domestic lawsuit against foreigners is itself weird to me.)
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Does the notion of ex-post-facto not apply to foreigners? Ex post facto is a term of art for retroactive criminalization, this addresses civil suits.
- Arnt 7y ago
  Has happened before — if the court finds that it has jurisdiction then it won't mind that one party is absent. If you sign a contract in country X, the courts in country X will hold you to it. But that legislation sounds weird. I wonder whether those republicans have any idea what Westphalia is or what was agreed there.
teruakohatu 7y ago
> It is understandable that the Chinese lab likely struggled with safety issues given the fact US labs share similar problems This line is what makes me think I am reading propoganda. It starts as a news story but continues as a opinion piece. It is never understandable that a lab of this nature, regardless of country, has safety issues. I don't think Chinese authorities nor US authorities would agree it is understandable. Or at least I hope they wouldn't.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  The part of it that stuck out to me wasn't the "understandable" part in itself, but the fact that it said the US labs "share similar problems", since these "problems" appeared to be just cases of people mishandling these viruses (i.e. negligence?), rather than cases of the viruses being too difficult to handle even when protocols are properly followed. A problem arising due to negligence doesn't seem like something I'd characterize as "struggling" with safety.
  - james_s_tayler 7y ago
    >A problem arising due to negligence doesn't seem like something I'd characterize as "struggling" with safety. Why not? If safety relies on negligence not occuring then negligence compromises safety. If safety is regularly comprised that would be considered "struggling with safety".
  - roenxi 7y ago
    It is a fairly reasonable characterisation. Obviously if there is any potential for a virus to escape even if everything is done correctly then it is far, far too dangerous study. Safety systems are there to catch when people make mistakes and/or don't do things they should do. There is a level of negligence that no system can cope with but up to that point they safe systems should be able to cope with mistakes.
- throw373 7y ago
  Why is it in large metropolitan area? If safety is important, this seems like a huge red flag.
andrewclunn 7y ago
Thanks Obama.
guiriduro 7y ago
The first time this article was posted, it was flagged (I might dispute its content and sourcing, but not the free-speech aspect to discussing it.) My earlier comment: So what is the source of this info? Turns out it is the Daily Mail, a right-wing UK rag of highly questionable quality and history of economy with the truth. In the referenced DM article, the only attribution we hear about are "documents obtained by the Mail"... Fake FB news are also documents obtainable by the Mail. Post originals or it didn't happen.
- krona 7y ago
  It was the The Mail on Sunday, actually.
Traster 7y ago
I'm actually going to flag this, since basically it seems to be working quite hard to pretend that the US was funding Gain of Function research in Wuhan, when that doesn't seem to actually be the case. There has been joint research about outbreaks in the wild - which is where the funding link seems to come from, and also the claim that there was a moratorium on GOF research is horribly misrepresented. I spent some time looking at where the factual claims come from and I've sort of come to the conclusion that what we have here is an eco-system of sites that are publishing more and more articles, citing each other slowly moving further and further away from the core facts each time. Until you're entirely removed the facts and the whole thing is just a web of speculation. The closest I could get to any real claims about the lab was this Daily Mail article[1], but again, it's things like >The news that COVID-19 bats were under research there means that a leak from the Wuhan laboratory can no longer be completely ruled out. and > According to one unverified claim, scientists at the institute could have become infected You see, its this reporting of completely unverified speculation, that gets laundered through site after site until you end up with >The Wuhan lab is now at the center of scrutiny for possibly releasing the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and causing the global Covid-19 pandemic. Well, yeah, it's the center of scrutiny because you and your buddies decided to make it the centre of scrutiny with no evidence. Here's a wild thought: Maybe it's necessary to do research on diseases near to the source of the disease. It's not a conspiracy when the lab studying mad cow disease is located in the UK either. [1]:https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8211291/U-S-government-gave-3-7million-grant-Wuhan-lab-experimented-coronavirus-source-bats.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8211291/U-S-governm...
chvid 7y ago
"The virus is created in a lab" is a conspiracy theory that is being kept alive because of the way American politics work. People asume that all this writing is "organic". It is not. It is orchestrated and coordinated. Basically the current US administration gains politically by keeping war rhetorics; the "maybe the virus is created in lab, maybe released by accident, maybe on purpose, we don't know, China is not being transparent" is a key part. Accepting the virus as a natural phenomenon puts the focus on the actual policy response and that is much less of a winner.
- pritovido 7y ago
  "The virus is created in a lab" is not a conspiracy theory, it is just a plausible possibility that we should study. There is no "conspiracy" in the theory in fact. The most probable cause is an accident. Nobody is going to create it as a weapon without creating the vaccine first. We should not be "accepting" any prejudice, the one that "favors" US administration, or the opposite one, but we should be studding and working around evidence. By the way, if it actually was an accident, accepting that it was a natural phenomenon favors the interest of China administration too. It can't be natural, even accepting China's side's theory of the market, it would be made by human intervention mixing in the market bats with Armadillos.
  - chvid 7y ago
    But it has been examined and the virus traces back to animals and earlier strains which were not as contagious. This is one of the many papers on the subject: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 So why are we still discussing this? Because we are being manipulated.
    - papermachete 7y ago
      You don't just publish a study and have it cemented as fact to end all other studies.
      - 7y ago

27 points by Donckele 7y ago

api 7y ago

What is the point of doing actual GOF research? We already know viruses can gain function. We already know that bat viruses can infect humans. Is this backdoor bioweapon research framed to avoid breaking the letter of treaties banning it? But if that's the case, outsourcing it seems totally insane.

Traster 7y ago
Well one way to put it is: We already know these viruses can gain function. If we can simulate that in the lab and then study the results we can plan how to deal with the situation if it arises in the wild. It's worth noting that this article isn't being completely transparent about the moratorium, it wasn't just a decision by the US to no longer do that sort of reseach, they were just pausing whilst they reconsidered how they evaluate whether to allow & fund that research. There was no real question of completely banning GOF research. They released that report in 2016[1]. Secondly, they cite a weird website called nationalfile.com for the claim Fauci funded the Chinese lab (in an article written now, not at the time the funding was claimed to be made) - I don't believe that. If you actually look at the NIH website what they're passing off as Fauci fundign the Chinese lab, is a 2018 article about collaboration with the lab in studying an outbreak of a disease in pig farms in Guangdong. Which is not exactly the shooting up bats with SARS is it, and it's certainly not the type of research that was effected by the GOF moratorium. >The Wuhan lab is now at the center of scrutiny for possibly releasing the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and causing the global Covid-19 pandemic. This is entirely speculation. There's no evidence of this being the case. Basically what I'm saying is that this website is a fake news site. It's citing other fake news sites, spreading misinformation and mis-representing government reports. The controversial claims are baseless - and often uncited, and the citations that are there are either to other misinformation sites- literally, waht is the nationalfile.com? [1]:https://osp.od.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/NSABB_Final_Report_Recommendations_Evaluation_Oversight_Proposed_Gain_of_Function_Research.pdf https://osp.od.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/NSABB_Fina...
- api 7y ago
  I can see that, but it still seems risky and of dubious value. I am not convinced any vaccine research is going to transfer from a synthetic virus to humans, and animal studies also have issues transferring. Good high risk research is high risk high payoff. This seems very high risk low payoff to me. Then there is smallpox. The idea of doing anything with smallpox samples other than placing them in an ultra high temperature autoclave is horrifying. That stuff is extinct in the wild. It should be extinct from the timeline entirely. I am suspicious of Asia Times, but also of the drive to blame this on China. I raised my question in the abstract since so far I see no concrete evidence that COVID-19 originated in anyone's lab whether Chinese or American.
  - Traster 7y ago
    Absolutely true, it's risky, and that's why we have strong government regulations about what research to do and how to do it. I think we can reasonably argue about whether those regulations are strong enough, but I actually think the process (in the US atleast) is working. They were allowing this research under strict conditions, they found out that actually mistakes were more likely to happen after some incidents, so they took a full 2 years to completely re-evaulate, produce a full report and a new regime designed by experts.

acqq 7y ago

I like the following two paragraphs appearing exactly in this order in the text: "If evidence is found that Covid-19 is a biological weapon, some pundits such as Fox News host Lou Dobbs have called for the US to declare war on China. Nonetheless, it is unclear what the legal ramifications would be if the virus was indeed leaked from a Chinese lab, but as a result of a research project that was outsourced and funded by the US government."

op03 7y ago
Well its turning into the united states of pundits and podcasters. All other work is outsourced.
roenxi 7y ago
It is people being silly. COVID-19 is a terrible biological weapon. As in ineffective. And prone to misfiring.
- tromp 7y ago
  It's very effective at causing massive economical damage...

mehrdadn 7y ago

> Republican lawmakers such as Senator Tom Cotton and Representative Dan Crenshaw have also introduced legislation that would allow Americans to sue China in federal court over the deaths and economic damage wrought by the virus. Does the notion of ex-post-facto not apply to foreigners? (Although the concept of a domestic lawsuit against foreigners is itself weird to me.)

dragonwriter 7y ago
> Does the notion of ex-post-facto not apply to foreigners? Ex post facto is a term of art for retroactive criminalization, this addresses civil suits.
Arnt 7y ago
Has happened before — if the court finds that it has jurisdiction then it won't mind that one party is absent. If you sign a contract in country X, the courts in country X will hold you to it. But that legislation sounds weird. I wonder whether those republicans have any idea what Westphalia is or what was agreed there.

teruakohatu 7y ago

> It is understandable that the Chinese lab likely struggled with safety issues given the fact US labs share similar problems This line is what makes me think I am reading propoganda. It starts as a news story but continues as a opinion piece. It is never understandable that a lab of this nature, regardless of country, has safety issues. I don't think Chinese authorities nor US authorities would agree it is understandable. Or at least I hope they wouldn't.

mehrdadn 7y ago
The part of it that stuck out to me wasn't the "understandable" part in itself, but the fact that it said the US labs "share similar problems", since these "problems" appeared to be just cases of people mishandling these viruses (i.e. negligence?), rather than cases of the viruses being too difficult to handle even when protocols are properly followed. A problem arising due to negligence doesn't seem like something I'd characterize as "struggling" with safety.
- james_s_tayler 7y ago
  >A problem arising due to negligence doesn't seem like something I'd characterize as "struggling" with safety. Why not? If safety relies on negligence not occuring then negligence compromises safety. If safety is regularly comprised that would be considered "struggling with safety".
- roenxi 7y ago
  It is a fairly reasonable characterisation. Obviously if there is any potential for a virus to escape even if everything is done correctly then it is far, far too dangerous study. Safety systems are there to catch when people make mistakes and/or don't do things they should do. There is a level of negligence that no system can cope with but up to that point they safe systems should be able to cope with mistakes.
throw373 7y ago
Why is it in large metropolitan area? If safety is important, this seems like a huge red flag.

andrewclunn 7y ago

Thanks Obama.

guiriduro 7y ago

The first time this article was posted, it was flagged (I might dispute its content and sourcing, but not the free-speech aspect to discussing it.) My earlier comment: So what is the source of this info? Turns out it is the Daily Mail, a right-wing UK rag of highly questionable quality and history of economy with the truth. In the referenced DM article, the only attribution we hear about are "documents obtained by the Mail"... Fake FB news are also documents obtainable by the Mail. Post originals or it didn't happen.

krona 7y ago
It was the The Mail on Sunday, actually.

Traster 7y ago

I'm actually going to flag this, since basically it seems to be working quite hard to pretend that the US was funding Gain of Function research in Wuhan, when that doesn't seem to actually be the case. There has been joint research about outbreaks in the wild - which is where the funding link seems to come from, and also the claim that there was a moratorium on GOF research is horribly misrepresented. I spent some time looking at where the factual claims come from and I've sort of come to the conclusion that what we have here is an eco-system of sites that are publishing more and more articles, citing each other slowly moving further and further away from the core facts each time. Until you're entirely removed the facts and the whole thing is just a web of speculation. The closest I could get to any real claims about the lab was this Daily Mail article[1], but again, it's things like >The news that COVID-19 bats were under research there means that a leak from the Wuhan laboratory can no longer be completely ruled out. and > According to one unverified claim, scientists at the institute could have become infected You see, its this reporting of completely unverified speculation, that gets laundered through site after site until you end up with >The Wuhan lab is now at the center of scrutiny for possibly releasing the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and causing the global Covid-19 pandemic. Well, yeah, it's the center of scrutiny because you and your buddies decided to make it the centre of scrutiny with no evidence. Here's a wild thought: Maybe it's necessary to do research on diseases near to the source of the disease. It's not a conspiracy when the lab studying mad cow disease is located in the UK either. [1]:https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8211291/U-S-government-gave-3-7million-grant-Wuhan-lab-experimented-coronavirus-source-bats.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8211291/U-S-governm...

chvid 7y ago

"The virus is created in a lab" is a conspiracy theory that is being kept alive because of the way American politics work. People asume that all this writing is "organic". It is not. It is orchestrated and coordinated. Basically the current US administration gains politically by keeping war rhetorics; the "maybe the virus is created in lab, maybe released by accident, maybe on purpose, we don't know, China is not being transparent" is a key part. Accepting the virus as a natural phenomenon puts the focus on the actual policy response and that is much less of a winner.

pritovido 7y ago
"The virus is created in a lab" is not a conspiracy theory, it is just a plausible possibility that we should study. There is no "conspiracy" in the theory in fact. The most probable cause is an accident. Nobody is going to create it as a weapon without creating the vaccine first. We should not be "accepting" any prejudice, the one that "favors" US administration, or the opposite one, but we should be studding and working around evidence. By the way, if it actually was an accident, accepting that it was a natural phenomenon favors the interest of China administration too. It can't be natural, even accepting China's side's theory of the market, it would be made by human intervention mixing in the market bats with Armadillos.
- chvid 7y ago
  But it has been examined and the virus traces back to animals and earlier strains which were not as contagious. This is one of the many papers on the subject: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 So why are we still discussing this? Because we are being manipulated.
  - papermachete 7y ago
    You don't just publish a study and have it cemented as fact to end all other studies.
    - 7y ago