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There's a real possibility that a gain-of-function experiment created SARS-CoV-2: "Lipsitch’s activists (calling themselves the Cambridge Working Group) sent a
by mkolodny 6y ago
There's a real possibility that a gain-of-function experiment created SARS-CoV-2:
"Lipsitch’s activists (calling themselves the Cambridge Working Group) sent around a strong statement on the perils of research with “Potential Pandemic Pathogens,” signed by more than a hundred scientists. The work might “trigger outbreaks that would be difficult or impossible to control,” the signers said. Fauci reconsidered, and the White House in 2014 announced that there would be a “pause” in the funding of new influenza, SARS, and MERS gain-of-function research." [0]
In December 2017, the US began funding gain-of-function research on these deadly diseases again. This research creates deadly diseases that may not have existed otherwise.
This pandemic has been enough for me to strongly believe that there should be a global ban on gain-of-function experiments on deadly viruses and bacteria. I'd like to help prevent a future pandemic, and that's one clear way we can help.
[0] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca...
- rlt 6y ago> This research creates deadly diseases that may not have existed otherwise. This seems like a supremely bad idea.
- alasdair_ 6y agoPersonally, I kind of like the idea that we could know in advance if a tiny mutation could turn a known disease into something that wipes us all out. Only inside level four labs, of course. But early warning (and this work on mitigation) seems important.
- JenniferRM 6y agoMaybe in BSL-5 labs? Must be in rural isolation, NOT a city. The administrators and janitors and everyone has to sleep inside the fence. Getting out requires spending 40 days in a quarantine hotel in a different nearby fenced area. Armed guards patrol the fence. (EDIT: To be clear. BSL-5 doesn't exist yet... but it should.)
- kaczordon 6y agoI agree. We should treat this as the existential threat that it is.
- spoonjim 6y agoYou’re not going to get any good researchers to live in a quarantine bubble for their whole lives.
- ant6n 6y agoDo the good researchers themselves need to be near the viruses? Debt they just need some people to handle the work?
- Griffinsauce 6y agoThen don't do it.
- newsclues 6y agoThe point isn’t to live there their whole lives, but periods where they can get a lot of work done safely.
- spyder 6y agoYes, just like no researcher will travel to Mars. /s
- galkk 6y agoMaybe a fully underground, enclosed facility where scientists work and live. Oh, wait...
- josefx 6y agoThe lock down in the first Resident Evil movie seemed quite effective, until the response team reset the security system to get out.
- pts_ 6y agoOnly to be defeated by a rubber gasket eating mutation. Anyway Murphy's law is always applicable and we need the capability to fight fires even more.
- Guthur 6y agoI'm definitely no expert but it seems to me that the sheer number of biological variables means that even if you know something could potentially get bad it wouldn't really give you much of a head start as any vaccine you might develop is not so likely to be viable. Testing the impact on living organisms would also have so many ethical issues as to be pretty much a non starter. I'd genuinely like to know what we would get out of it that would warrant such risk taking?
- jfoster 6y agoSuppose you find that hypothetical mutation. What next? What would you do to prevent the current situation?
- coddle-hark 6y agoStart working on a vaccine.
- erichocean 6y agoIt took two days to create a vaccine for COVID-19. How much more lead time do we need?
- himlion 6y agoOk, start clinical trial immediately after vaccine creation. At least until the point where it's safe for humans to use the new vaccine.
- jfoster 6y agoHas this ever been done in response to gain of function research?
- ajdegol 6y agoThere was some considerable progress recently using AI to predict possible mutations. I wish I could find the link. That seems like a better way to go.
- ttul 6y agoNot if your point is to understand what can go wrong when viruses mutate.
- brippalcharrid 6y agoThat certainly doesn't preclude research that's useful (and essential) to developing new pathogens; all of these things are by nature dual-use technologies.
- bondarchuk 6y agoSimilarly smallpox has been completely eradicated, but USA and Russia like to keep around a few live samples, "for research". Whatever will wipe us all out in the end, we probably had it coming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_virus_retention_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_virus_retention_debat...
- bbatha 6y agoIt’s substantially more complicated than that smallpox samples keep turning up in the US [1][2]. Who knows how many samples were lost in the chaos of the fall of the Soviet Union. Smallpox was in every country on earth until relatively recently simply destroying samples isn’t enough. Hanging onto them in case we need a new vaccine is absolutely prudent. https://www.wired.com/2014/07/cdc-found-pox/ https://www.wired.com/2014/07/cdc-found-pox/ https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/blog/scab-story https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/blog/scab-story
- bondarchuk 6y agoIf there is an actual outbreak that we need a vaccine for, we can just get new samples from the infected, right?
- raverbashing 6y agoIt could be. But that I find extremely unlikely A failed experiment? Maybe a bit more likely, but still I don't think so Sars-Cov-2 looks like pretty much what it is: a zoonotic virus that "doesn't know what's going on" Hence why only the recent mutations made its transmission more efficient. Now, if it escaped unbeknownst from a research lab, that I would put on the plausible category. Would be more possible if it wouldn't have had a perfect virus breeding ground right next to it.
- lucas_membrane 6y agoHow about this possibility: (1) You've got this lab that uses a lot of animals and does experiments. (2) There is a 'wet' market nearby that deals in animals from A to Z. (3) Maybe some animal from the lab carrying a zoonotic virus (origin unknown) somehow got disposed of for cash in the market? How could WHO or anyone uncover such an occurrence a year or more later? Would it be possible that such a thing had happened and no one ever had had any idea that it had happened?
- raverbashing 6y agoYes there are several possibilities. And no, I don't think anybody could figure something like that out. What you can do is follow chains of mutations and infections and try to get somewhere.
- tim333 6y ago>Sars-Cov-2 looks like pretty much what it is: a zoonotic virus that "doesn't know what's going on" It was actually remarkably stable in the early days suggesting it was used to reproducing in human cells. Or so Professor Petrovsky says https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8356751/How-COVID-19s-unique-structure-means-man-made.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8356751/How-COVID-1... As how that could have happened lab wise here's Daszak saying they routinely infect human cells with coronavirus in the lab https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1701&v=IdYDL_RK--w&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1701&v=IdYDL_RK--w&feature=y... Or maybe it was in humans a bit before it took off. I see Daszak's kind of changed his tune a bit these days to not mention anything like that lab stuff.
- bhawks 6y agoAlthough I am there with you in spirit, a global ban is effectively meaningless. It is unenforceable from the start. All the major world powers would continue their research (perhaps slightly less openly) simply from a MAD angle (it is irresponsible to ignore the value of a pathogen that no one else has seen and you have the antibiotics for). We are living in dark times in terms of our technological capability and the aggressiveness of state actors. I would argue that the only chance we have is to reign in the behaviours of our states. Crazy and seemingly impossible, but stopping science/tech is far beyond reach.
- tim333 6y agoMost of the gain of function research is either well meaning to understand disease or part of normal science published in journals. Banning it would reduce the amount done greatly.
- mkolodny 6y agoEven if these researchers have good intentions, they're human, and humans make mistakes. If someone doing gain-of-function research lets a new deadly virus or bacteria out into the wild by mistake, their mistake can can cause a pandemic like the one we're currently suffering from. I don't think there's anything that we could learn from gain-of-function research on deadly viruses and bacteria that would be worth risking millions of deaths.
- mkolodny 6y agoTo be clear, I would guess that if SARS-CoV-2 was created in a lab in Wuhan, it was created with good intentions, and escaped from the lab by mistake. And rather than figuring out where to point fingers, we can work together to prevent future pandemics by preventing research that creates deadly diseases.
- StanislavPetrov 6y ago>Most of the gain of function research is either well meaning It doesn't matter how good your intentions are when your behavior is extremely dangerous and can (and possibly did) result in a global pandemic that kills millions of people. Risk/reward calculations should be performed without regard to intent. >Banning it would reduce the amount done greatly. It would also reduce the risk of a man-made virus killing millions of people.
- tal8d 6y agoIt is an absolutely braindead thing for a nuclear power to do - bio/chem weapon R&D. The reason why the US abandoned that course so long ago had nothing to do with morality - somebody in the DoD simply realized that they were furthering the state of the art in dirt cheap WMDs. If you already have nukes, you want to keep the cost of doomsday devices as high as possible - limiting the number of potential rivals.
- Aeolos 6y ago> The reason why the US abandoned that course so long ago had nothing to do with morality - somebody in the DoD simply realized that they were furthering the state of the art in dirt cheap WMDs Is there a reliable reference that the US is no longer researching biochemical weapons? Wikipedia claims: "Both the U.S. bio-weapons ban and the Biological Weapons Convention restricted any work in the area of biological warfare to defensive in nature. In reality, this gives BWC member-states wide latitude to conduct biological weapons research because the BWC contains no provisions for monitoring or enforcement.[74][75] The treaty, essentially, is a gentlemen's agreement amongst members backed by the long-prevailing thought that biological warfare should not be used in battle.[74]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_biological_weapons_program#Current_(post-1969)_bio-defense_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_biological_weapo...
- PeterStuer 6y ago"the US abandoned that course so long ago " How do you know this?
- tal8d 6y agoThe very public shuttering of facilities, the absence of military doctrine, etc. Yes, there could be secret congressional funding for a secret research lab serving a secret component of the military that secretly maintains readiness to do something that is strategically counterproductive and categorically denied. Do I really need to go on with how silly that line of thought is?
- 6y ago
- tremon 6y agothere should be a global ban on gain-of-function experiments on deadly viruses and bacteria. Would you make the same argument for software vulnerability research? I think the arguments against both are the same, and with the same result: white-hat researchers will halt their work, leaving more of the field available to black-hat researcers.
- silvestrov 6y agoIt is much easier to contain bad software than it is to contain an virus that spreads using aerosols. It is also much easier to stop bad software than bad biology. Software is much simpler than the human body.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- diabeticApe 6y agoMaybe so but i would assume the barrier to entry for creating a synthetic pathogen is likely to be much higher than somebody tinkering with a Kali Linux VM. I dont know much about gain of function experiments and limited working infosec knowledge so take that with a grain of salt.