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>> and responsible conduct of this type of research in a manner that maximizes the benefits to public health. What exactly is the benefit to public health? Ser

>> and responsible conduct of this type of research in a manner that maximizes the benefits to public health. What exactly is the benefit to public health? Serious question.

aeternum 4y ago
[flagged]
- remarkEon 4y ago
  Honest question: is this actually possible in a non "Michael Crichton science fiction" kind of way? Even if it were possible to design a virus to target a specific person, wouldn't that virus just mutate eventually, and start infecting other people? Seems like a very risky, crude, and ultimately unwise way to plan an assassination. If you can get close enough to expose someone to the virus-assassin, why not just poison them? It doesn't make any sense to me.
  - actually_a_dog 4y ago
    No. That's not even remotely possible. In theory, the closest you could get is if you could design a virus that only really harmed people with some rare genetic variant, and that variant happened to be one that a person you wanted to target had. That's still pretty far out in terms of actual practice, but it's not so far out that it's crazy. Designer viruses that target one, single person is just crazy talk.
  - aeternum 4y ago
    This is heavily censored in the US, but is quite the popular theory in Russia: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/03/01/2-in-3-russians-believe-coronavirus-is-a-bioweapon-poll-a73101 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/03/01/2-in-3-russians-be... It does seem pretty far-fetched, but both countries have their propaganda machines in full force on this which at least makes it an interesting theory.
- kmlx 4y ago
  > Targeting Putin for example could improve the public health of many Ukrainians. i think this is naive to say the least. only place i’ve seen this kind of messaging is in the west.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    This is true, for me, in the trivial sense that the only place I’ve seen that kind of messaging is in the grandparent post, and I’ve seen a lot of hot takes from every side of the Russia/Ukraine war.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  “Infect everyone with a disease that needs to spread and live through enough generations to reach the target, giving it plenty of opportunity to mutate” as an assassination weapon, is–and this is skipping over a lot of other problems practical, moral, and legal problems to focus on this one–a great way to accidentally produce a plague which wipes out a lot of the wrong people.
Jemm 4y ago
Apparently it is pure research. The history books will say, "They did it because they could."
SilverBirch 4y ago
Viruses will mutate. And we don’t understand them well enough, so one method to study them is gain of function research - you modify the virus and then you have a lab version you can design against. The risk is you risk releasing a new virus entirely unnecessarily, the benefit is you can study how to combat viruses that don’t yet exist. Imagine the counter example of covid. What if a covid type virus mutates in the wild but we already have a great vaccine sitting on ice ready to go.
- haihaibye 4y ago
  The mRNA vaccine took only a few days to design. So you'd save a few days, if the GoF virus happened to be exactly the same as the wild type. There is no way to rush the rest of the process, unless you want to deliberately expose people to artificially created viruses that don't exist in the wild. Small upside vs large downside of potentially creating a global pandemic. Covid appeared on the Wuhan institute of virologies doorstep, with exactly the modification proposed in their grants. You would think this would be their time to shine but where was their help? Right when the world needed the info they took all of their databases off-line and have never opened them again
  - llamaLord 4y ago
    "Covid appeared on the Wuhan institute of virologies doorstep, with exactly the modification proposed in their grants. You would think this would be their time to shine but where was their help? Right when the world needed the info they took all of their databases off-line and have never opened them again" This is by far the best take on this topic I've seen IMO. I've been so busy thinking about whether or not the WHV was ground zero for the pandemic, I forgot that the whole point of GOF SHOULD have made it ground zero for the cure.
  - mcbits 4y ago
    The vaccines, while "better than nothing" and much cheaper than giving everyone a 6-month supply of N95 masks, were mostly a flop. We have a long way to go before we can just print up vaccines to head off emerging epidemics, but hopefully the lessons learned through this failure will lead to faster progress.
AbrahamParangi 4y ago
Pandemics are really very good for public health funding! (this is a joke) In seriousness though, there's a strong evolutionary incentive that acts on organizations to not eliminate their raison d'être. Perhaps gain-of-function is some version of that because it ensures that there's something to do even when there's nothing to do.

>> and responsible conduct of this type of research in a manner that maximizes the benefits to public health. What exactly is the benefit to public health? Serious question.

aeternum 4y ago

[flagged]

remarkEon 4y ago
Honest question: is this actually possible in a non "Michael Crichton science fiction" kind of way? Even if it were possible to design a virus to target a specific person, wouldn't that virus just mutate eventually, and start infecting other people? Seems like a very risky, crude, and ultimately unwise way to plan an assassination. If you can get close enough to expose someone to the virus-assassin, why not just poison them? It doesn't make any sense to me.
- actually_a_dog 4y ago
  No. That's not even remotely possible. In theory, the closest you could get is if you could design a virus that only really harmed people with some rare genetic variant, and that variant happened to be one that a person you wanted to target had. That's still pretty far out in terms of actual practice, but it's not so far out that it's crazy. Designer viruses that target one, single person is just crazy talk.
- aeternum 4y ago
  This is heavily censored in the US, but is quite the popular theory in Russia: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/03/01/2-in-3-russians-believe-coronavirus-is-a-bioweapon-poll-a73101 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/03/01/2-in-3-russians-be... It does seem pretty far-fetched, but both countries have their propaganda machines in full force on this which at least makes it an interesting theory.
kmlx 4y ago
> Targeting Putin for example could improve the public health of many Ukrainians. i think this is naive to say the least. only place i’ve seen this kind of messaging is in the west.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  This is true, for me, in the trivial sense that the only place I’ve seen that kind of messaging is in the grandparent post, and I’ve seen a lot of hot takes from every side of the Russia/Ukraine war.
dragonwriter 4y ago
“Infect everyone with a disease that needs to spread and live through enough generations to reach the target, giving it plenty of opportunity to mutate” as an assassination weapon, is–and this is skipping over a lot of other problems practical, moral, and legal problems to focus on this one–a great way to accidentally produce a plague which wipes out a lot of the wrong people.

Jemm 4y ago

Apparently it is pure research. The history books will say, "They did it because they could."

SilverBirch 4y ago

Viruses will mutate. And we don’t understand them well enough, so one method to study them is gain of function research - you modify the virus and then you have a lab version you can design against. The risk is you risk releasing a new virus entirely unnecessarily, the benefit is you can study how to combat viruses that don’t yet exist. Imagine the counter example of covid. What if a covid type virus mutates in the wild but we already have a great vaccine sitting on ice ready to go.

haihaibye 4y ago
The mRNA vaccine took only a few days to design. So you'd save a few days, if the GoF virus happened to be exactly the same as the wild type. There is no way to rush the rest of the process, unless you want to deliberately expose people to artificially created viruses that don't exist in the wild. Small upside vs large downside of potentially creating a global pandemic. Covid appeared on the Wuhan institute of virologies doorstep, with exactly the modification proposed in their grants. You would think this would be their time to shine but where was their help? Right when the world needed the info they took all of their databases off-line and have never opened them again
- llamaLord 4y ago
  "Covid appeared on the Wuhan institute of virologies doorstep, with exactly the modification proposed in their grants. You would think this would be their time to shine but where was their help? Right when the world needed the info they took all of their databases off-line and have never opened them again" This is by far the best take on this topic I've seen IMO. I've been so busy thinking about whether or not the WHV was ground zero for the pandemic, I forgot that the whole point of GOF SHOULD have made it ground zero for the cure.
- mcbits 4y ago
  The vaccines, while "better than nothing" and much cheaper than giving everyone a 6-month supply of N95 masks, were mostly a flop. We have a long way to go before we can just print up vaccines to head off emerging epidemics, but hopefully the lessons learned through this failure will lead to faster progress.

AbrahamParangi 4y ago

Pandemics are really very good for public health funding! (this is a joke) In seriousness though, there's a strong evolutionary incentive that acts on organizations to not eliminate their raison d'être. Perhaps gain-of-function is some version of that because it ensures that there's something to do even when there's nothing to do.