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> the most alarming aspect of the lab leak hypothesis is that gain-of-function research is STILL being done, and that the same thing could happen AGAIN. This r

> the most alarming aspect of the lab leak hypothesis is that gain-of-function research is STILL being done, and that the same thing could happen AGAIN. This right here is an example of why we can’t have reasoned discussion around the topic. You can explain one of the many reasons why gain of function research is necessary: anticipating next year’s version of the flu, designing drugs and vaccines such that resistance mutations reduce evolutionary fitness. You can explain how it is done: lots of computational simulations, and some benchtop with results feeding back into computational methods. You can explain some of the safeguards in place: BSL 3/4 facilities, regulatory / institutional oversight, security services, etc. And then someone will stand up on a chair and yell “SUPER VIRUS!” Anyway from my perspective, the “lab leak” theory tends to be people pushing an unsubstantiated theory to either (1) blame China for an “act of god/nature” or (2) argue for a moratorium on infectious disease / vaccine / therapeutic research. Please note that no one here is calling you a racist. But I think calling parts of your comment uninformed or misinformed is fair game for discussion.

stormfather 3y ago
> the “lab leak” theory tends to be people pushing an unsubstantiated theory to either For me it's just common sense. It probably came from the coronavirus lab with a bad safety record it popped up next to. Duh. And I "push" it because I value the truth and want to live in a rational society where the truth isn't gamed for emotional or political reasons. And that's probably the same for most of us.
- shlant 3y ago
  > For me it's just common sense > Duh This is the kind of argument one makes when they don't have an argument
  - stormfather 3y ago
    It's so obvious that an appeal to common sense is all that's necessary. How many markets do you think are in China? 100,000? 1,000,000? And how many of those are within driving distance of the one lab where: - They study novel coronaviruses - They sampled the same regions where the closest relatives to the virus were found - They applied to put a furin cleavage site in a coronavirus before the pandemic - They were cited in diplomatic cables for poor safety standards - The database containing records of the viral sequences was taken down right before the pandemic - A scientist working at the lab at the time of the origin disappeared - A scientist who patented a coronavirus vaccine a few months into the pandemic "jumped off the roof"? Does a lab accident not immediately jump out as the obvious leading possibility to you?
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      'Common sense' says that the thing which has occurred periodically throughout human history (plagues and epidemics) completely naturally and is occurring around the same period after the last one ('Spanish' flu of 1918-20) would have the same causes as those before it, but with accelerated time frames due to ease of travel and population density.
      - randomperson01 3y ago
        from the WHO in 2006, page 236 on SARS: "the risk of a laboratory source is potentially greater" https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/207501
        Eisenstein 3y ago
        That's great. I am countering the notion that evidence is not required because it is 'common sense'.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        stormfather 3y ago
        Actually you just said that common sense would indicate a natural origin, which was, at least in the case of SARS, just refuted.
        Eisenstein 3y ago
        No, I am saying that relying on 'common sense' is stupid because it can take you in any direction you want since you aren't going past a surface level evaluation. You just proved it by having to dig a little to try and refute my 'common sense' take.
      - stormfather 3y ago
        There have been plenty of lab leaks in history too.
- oneshtein 3y ago
  There is significant delay between lab leak in mid-September-mid-October 2019 and start of epidemic in December in Wuhan. Can such contagious virus as SARS-CoV-2 cross the distance between lab in Wuhan and wet market in Wuhan in few days? Of course. In few months? No way.
  - baja_blast 3y ago
    Yes, covid was in the US months before we bothered to check and count cases. There were rumors of a virus spreading months before it was officially acknowledged
    - oneshtein 3y ago
      Most likely, Covid19 was introduced into USA from World Military Games[0], or from Russia in October-November 2019. If someone went to Novosibirsk to check situation after blast at BSL4 lab "Vector", then (IMHO!) he may contracted the virus and spreaded it in USA after return, which (IMHO!) explains why USA three letter agency covers that blast. [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7813667/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7813667/
  - neffy 3y ago
    fwiw... there were posts floating around at the beginning of 2020 claiming that the epidemic was well established in Wuhan by December, and that cases were seen back to September, October. It's unfortunate in so many way - admit a mistake was made, acknowledge the problem, and clean it up is so much more respectful of everybody's time and resources. Between Asian traditions of saving face, and US traditions of lawyers suing anything that moves, that approach never stood a chance of course.
    - oneshtein 3y ago
      Yes, there is correlation between World Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019 and Covid[0]. Also, Russian media informed about spike of pneumonia cases in November 2019[1]. [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7813667/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7813667/ Note: This page below crashes my browser (Firefox at Fedora Linux) even when requested from Wayback archive. Beware! [1]: http://web.archive.org/web/20191119113457/https://www.1tv.ru/news/2019-11-19/375932-vspyshka_pnevmonii_zafiksirovana_v_orenburgskoy_oblasti http://web.archive.org/web/20191119113457/https://www.1tv.ru...
- snowwrestler 3y ago
  It’s absolutely not common sense, we have tens of thousands of years of evidence that viruses can evolve to cause human illness, and zero documented examples of a man-made novel virus doing so. It would be an extraordinarily rare and noteworthy event in human history. The bar to prove that it happened to cause COVID is very high and the direct evidence (not circumstantial) for it is so far very low.
  - wizofaus 3y ago
    Did GP imply if a virus was leaked it must be man-made? Obviously the fact that the exact virus hadn't been seen before is suggestive of that but it's not inconceivable the lab happened to have samples of a never-before-seen naturally occurring virus that they were planning to do research on. That wasn't the same lab that released the first genome sequencing of the virus though (I gather it was in Shanghai). Not sure how virus research is usually done but I would have thought genome sequencing would be one of the first procedures you'd undertake, and there's no suggestion the Wuhan lab had done such sequencing (implying if they had, it was covered up).
    - wizofaus 3y ago
      Btw this seems to be a pretty thorough and technical overview of the various hypotheses: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.00583-23 https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.00583-23 It concludes zoonotic origin to be the most likely, though certainly doesn't rule out other alternatives.
      - randomperson01 3y ago
        Imperiale, the last author is a known gain of function proponent with a history of downplaying the possibility of a lab leak https://twitter.com/emilyakopp/status/1620884457032155136?t=K8fZgENvXyj5X96kgQB0SA&s=19 https://twitter.com/emilyakopp/status/1620884457032155136?t=...
    - snowwrestler 3y ago
      > Did GP imply if a virus was leaked it must be man-made? This is what the “lab leak” theory is. It’s why every conversation of lab leak is tied up with comments about gain of function, etc. The interesting thing about SARS-COV-2 is that it can infect humans and cause illness (unlike the vast majority of known viruses). When people talk about the origin of the pandemic, it is the origin of this property specifically that they mean. The lab leak theory is that this property originated in a lab.
bitemaja 3y ago
I think real risk is testing these chimera viruses on mice with humanized cells. Letting viruses evolve in-vivo is the problem especially when they are so viral. There needs to be limitations on what R is allowed to be produced in-vivo, even more so because calculating the risk of virality of the outbreak is trivial if in-vitro studies are done.
- pfisherman 3y ago
  Chimera virus. You mean like a spike protein expressing VSV? Do you think that (pseudo virus) requires a higher or lower BSL certification to work with than bonafide Coronavirus? Why? And why are you worried about humanized mice and not human cell lines like HEK or CALU? Why not primary cells or organoids? Somewhere the “Outbreak” monkey is crying. I admit that I am being a bit snarky and passive aggressive here; but for the past few years I have watched people butcher bioscience in online discussions. Imagine being a classically trained pianist and having to watch people misattribute all of Mozart’s work to Brahms. It is enough to drive anyone mad.
  - baja_blast 3y ago
    A classically trained pianist's profession does not carry the risk of killing millions of people! There is zero proof outside of circumstantial conjecture that SARS2 has a natural origin. Up to 20 million people have died due to an animal virus modified to be highly infectious towards humans and you expect everyone to just take your word for it? I mean it sucks if it hurts your career or impacts your profession, but highly dangerous work needs to be reviewed and banned if need be! Humanity > Your personal career
migro23 3y ago
To be fair, vaccines can be created in a matter of days now so the benefit of gain of function research to anticipate the virus that will cause the next pandemic is modest at best. Temper this proposed modest benefit with the potential cost in terms of human adapted viruses being accidentially/intentionally released in the wild given the vagaries of both biolab security protocols in the labs accross the world conducting this kind of research and individual human psychology makes the justification of such research a pretty hard sell.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ochoseis 3y ago
I think a lot of it comes down to: if it has happened once, it is likely to happen again. If it was indeed a leak from WIV, which ended up killing millions, then what can we do to prevent that kind of thing from happening again in the future? Surely some more transparency would be helpful toward that goal.
naasking 3y ago
> You can explain one of the many reasons why gain of function research is necessary: anticipating next year’s version of the flu, designing drugs and vaccines such that resistance mutations reduce evolutionary fitness. None of these require gain of function research. > You can explain some of the safeguards in place: BSL 3/4 facilities, regulatory / institutional oversight, security services, etc. All of these have a long history of failures [1,2]. And those are just the acknowledged, some have actually been covered up [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity... [2] https://www.amazon.ca/Pandoras-Gamble-Leaks-Pandemics-World/dp/1546002936/ https://www.amazon.ca/Pandoras-Gamble-Leaks-Pandemics-World/... [3] https://health.wusf.usf.edu/health-news-florida/2023-04-25/did-a-military-lab-spill-anthrax-into-public-waterways-book-reveals-details-of-a-us-leak https://health.wusf.usf.edu/health-news-florida/2023-04-25/d...
- pfisherman 3y ago
  > None of these require gain of function research. Please elaborate on this. How should I go about anticipating which mutations in which genes / protein will result in resistance to a candidate therapy / molecule / mechanism that I am considering advancing into phase 1 trials?
  - PM_me_your_math 3y ago
    It is dangerous to play bio-engineer, and then handle what you create like Gomer Pyle.
aero-deck 3y ago
It's really arrogant to think that any argument for a moratorium must be based in lack of information.
ifyoubuildit 3y ago
> You can explain one of the many reasons why gain of function research is necessary: anticipating next year’s version of the flu, designing drugs and vaccines such that resistance mutations reduce evolutionary fitness. If this research indeed caused the pandemic (and might cause more), do those things make the juice worth the squeeze? A chance at a better flu vaccine doesn't seem like enough reward for what we all went through.
- P_I_Staker 3y ago
  The answer is simple: yes.
thatguy0900 3y ago
I'm honestly under the impression that people are just too irresponsible to do some things. People are not machines who go into a bsl 4 lab and do proper safety precautions each and every day without slipping or becoming lax. If you have a lab making viruses, eventually, it will escape. If the viruses they are making are capable of shutting the whole world down for a year, then we really need to ask whether we should have them.its not a question of "is doing this useful?", because I'm sure it is. It is a question of is this worth doing even though we know it will inevitably go bad? You can talk about all the precautions and regulations you want, if people are involved then eventually someone or a group of someones will do something idiotic or malicious and break everything. There's literally an entire Wikipedia page about lab outbreaks. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecuri...
baja_blast 3y ago
> You can explain one of the many reasons why gain of function research is necessary: anticipating next year’s version of the flu, designing drugs and vaccines such that resistance mutations reduce evolutionary fitness A few problems with this. First modifying wild animal viruses to be infectious towards humans is different than modifying human viruses to model potential mutations. Modifying animal viruses to be infectious towards humans has done nothing but cause risks. Despite this research being conducted for almost a decade it has yet to predict or prevent any pandemic and probably started this one. Additionally the idea that modifying animal viruses to easily transmit towards humans will allow us to develop vaccines is absurd. You can't test a vaccine that is not circulating in humans, so trails can not start until the pandemic has already started. So yes, there should be moratorium on research that modifies infectious diseases! The public has a right to consent on whether such research is worth the risks.
- kosievdmerwe 3y ago
  I frankly can't think of a more dangerous thing humanity can be doing than gain of function research. Especially if done near population centers.
tengbretson 3y ago
By this standard, the only people sufficiently qualified to make policy regarding this research are the people currently cashing checks to perform this research. See any issues there?

stormfather 3y ago

> the “lab leak” theory tends to be people pushing an unsubstantiated theory to either For me it's just common sense. It probably came from the coronavirus lab with a bad safety record it popped up next to. Duh. And I "push" it because I value the truth and want to live in a rational society where the truth isn't gamed for emotional or political reasons. And that's probably the same for most of us.

shlant 3y ago
> For me it's just common sense > Duh This is the kind of argument one makes when they don't have an argument
- stormfather 3y ago
  It's so obvious that an appeal to common sense is all that's necessary. How many markets do you think are in China? 100,000? 1,000,000? And how many of those are within driving distance of the one lab where: - They study novel coronaviruses - They sampled the same regions where the closest relatives to the virus were found - They applied to put a furin cleavage site in a coronavirus before the pandemic - They were cited in diplomatic cables for poor safety standards - The database containing records of the viral sequences was taken down right before the pandemic - A scientist working at the lab at the time of the origin disappeared - A scientist who patented a coronavirus vaccine a few months into the pandemic "jumped off the roof"? Does a lab accident not immediately jump out as the obvious leading possibility to you?
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    'Common sense' says that the thing which has occurred periodically throughout human history (plagues and epidemics) completely naturally and is occurring around the same period after the last one ('Spanish' flu of 1918-20) would have the same causes as those before it, but with accelerated time frames due to ease of travel and population density.
    - randomperson01 3y ago
      from the WHO in 2006, page 236 on SARS: "the risk of a laboratory source is potentially greater" https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/207501
      - Eisenstein 3y ago
        That's great. I am countering the notion that evidence is not required because it is 'common sense'.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        stormfather 3y ago
        Actually you just said that common sense would indicate a natural origin, which was, at least in the case of SARS, just refuted.
        Eisenstein 3y ago
        No, I am saying that relying on 'common sense' is stupid because it can take you in any direction you want since you aren't going past a surface level evaluation. You just proved it by having to dig a little to try and refute my 'common sense' take.
    - stormfather 3y ago
      There have been plenty of lab leaks in history too.
oneshtein 3y ago
There is significant delay between lab leak in mid-September-mid-October 2019 and start of epidemic in December in Wuhan. Can such contagious virus as SARS-CoV-2 cross the distance between lab in Wuhan and wet market in Wuhan in few days? Of course. In few months? No way.
- baja_blast 3y ago
  Yes, covid was in the US months before we bothered to check and count cases. There were rumors of a virus spreading months before it was officially acknowledged
  - oneshtein 3y ago
    Most likely, Covid19 was introduced into USA from World Military Games[0], or from Russia in October-November 2019. If someone went to Novosibirsk to check situation after blast at BSL4 lab "Vector", then (IMHO!) he may contracted the virus and spreaded it in USA after return, which (IMHO!) explains why USA three letter agency covers that blast. [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7813667/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7813667/
- neffy 3y ago
  fwiw... there were posts floating around at the beginning of 2020 claiming that the epidemic was well established in Wuhan by December, and that cases were seen back to September, October. It's unfortunate in so many way - admit a mistake was made, acknowledge the problem, and clean it up is so much more respectful of everybody's time and resources. Between Asian traditions of saving face, and US traditions of lawyers suing anything that moves, that approach never stood a chance of course.
  - oneshtein 3y ago
    Yes, there is correlation between World Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019 and Covid[0]. Also, Russian media informed about spike of pneumonia cases in November 2019[1]. [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7813667/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7813667/ Note: This page below crashes my browser (Firefox at Fedora Linux) even when requested from Wayback archive. Beware! [1]: http://web.archive.org/web/20191119113457/https://www.1tv.ru/news/2019-11-19/375932-vspyshka_pnevmonii_zafiksirovana_v_orenburgskoy_oblasti http://web.archive.org/web/20191119113457/https://www.1tv.ru...
snowwrestler 3y ago
It’s absolutely not common sense, we have tens of thousands of years of evidence that viruses can evolve to cause human illness, and zero documented examples of a man-made novel virus doing so. It would be an extraordinarily rare and noteworthy event in human history. The bar to prove that it happened to cause COVID is very high and the direct evidence (not circumstantial) for it is so far very low.
- wizofaus 3y ago
  Did GP imply if a virus was leaked it must be man-made? Obviously the fact that the exact virus hadn't been seen before is suggestive of that but it's not inconceivable the lab happened to have samples of a never-before-seen naturally occurring virus that they were planning to do research on. That wasn't the same lab that released the first genome sequencing of the virus though (I gather it was in Shanghai). Not sure how virus research is usually done but I would have thought genome sequencing would be one of the first procedures you'd undertake, and there's no suggestion the Wuhan lab had done such sequencing (implying if they had, it was covered up).
  - wizofaus 3y ago
    Btw this seems to be a pretty thorough and technical overview of the various hypotheses: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.00583-23 https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.00583-23 It concludes zoonotic origin to be the most likely, though certainly doesn't rule out other alternatives.
    - randomperson01 3y ago
      Imperiale, the last author is a known gain of function proponent with a history of downplaying the possibility of a lab leak https://twitter.com/emilyakopp/status/1620884457032155136?t=K8fZgENvXyj5X96kgQB0SA&s=19 https://twitter.com/emilyakopp/status/1620884457032155136?t=...
  - snowwrestler 3y ago
    > Did GP imply if a virus was leaked it must be man-made? This is what the “lab leak” theory is. It’s why every conversation of lab leak is tied up with comments about gain of function, etc. The interesting thing about SARS-COV-2 is that it can infect humans and cause illness (unlike the vast majority of known viruses). When people talk about the origin of the pandemic, it is the origin of this property specifically that they mean. The lab leak theory is that this property originated in a lab.

bitemaja 3y ago

I think real risk is testing these chimera viruses on mice with humanized cells. Letting viruses evolve in-vivo is the problem especially when they are so viral. There needs to be limitations on what R is allowed to be produced in-vivo, even more so because calculating the risk of virality of the outbreak is trivial if in-vitro studies are done.

pfisherman 3y ago
Chimera virus. You mean like a spike protein expressing VSV? Do you think that (pseudo virus) requires a higher or lower BSL certification to work with than bonafide Coronavirus? Why? And why are you worried about humanized mice and not human cell lines like HEK or CALU? Why not primary cells or organoids? Somewhere the “Outbreak” monkey is crying. I admit that I am being a bit snarky and passive aggressive here; but for the past few years I have watched people butcher bioscience in online discussions. Imagine being a classically trained pianist and having to watch people misattribute all of Mozart’s work to Brahms. It is enough to drive anyone mad.
- baja_blast 3y ago
  A classically trained pianist's profession does not carry the risk of killing millions of people! There is zero proof outside of circumstantial conjecture that SARS2 has a natural origin. Up to 20 million people have died due to an animal virus modified to be highly infectious towards humans and you expect everyone to just take your word for it? I mean it sucks if it hurts your career or impacts your profession, but highly dangerous work needs to be reviewed and banned if need be! Humanity > Your personal career

migro23 3y ago

To be fair, vaccines can be created in a matter of days now so the benefit of gain of function research to anticipate the virus that will cause the next pandemic is modest at best. Temper this proposed modest benefit with the potential cost in terms of human adapted viruses being accidentially/intentionally released in the wild given the vagaries of both biolab security protocols in the labs accross the world conducting this kind of research and individual human psychology makes the justification of such research a pretty hard sell.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ochoseis 3y ago

I think a lot of it comes down to: if it has happened once, it is likely to happen again. If it was indeed a leak from WIV, which ended up killing millions, then what can we do to prevent that kind of thing from happening again in the future? Surely some more transparency would be helpful toward that goal.

naasking 3y ago

> You can explain one of the many reasons why gain of function research is necessary: anticipating next year’s version of the flu, designing drugs and vaccines such that resistance mutations reduce evolutionary fitness. None of these require gain of function research. > You can explain some of the safeguards in place: BSL 3/4 facilities, regulatory / institutional oversight, security services, etc. All of these have a long history of failures [1,2]. And those are just the acknowledged, some have actually been covered up [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity... [2] https://www.amazon.ca/Pandoras-Gamble-Leaks-Pandemics-World/dp/1546002936/ https://www.amazon.ca/Pandoras-Gamble-Leaks-Pandemics-World/... [3] https://health.wusf.usf.edu/health-news-florida/2023-04-25/did-a-military-lab-spill-anthrax-into-public-waterways-book-reveals-details-of-a-us-leak https://health.wusf.usf.edu/health-news-florida/2023-04-25/d...

pfisherman 3y ago
> None of these require gain of function research. Please elaborate on this. How should I go about anticipating which mutations in which genes / protein will result in resistance to a candidate therapy / molecule / mechanism that I am considering advancing into phase 1 trials?
- PM_me_your_math 3y ago
  It is dangerous to play bio-engineer, and then handle what you create like Gomer Pyle.

aero-deck 3y ago

It's really arrogant to think that any argument for a moratorium must be based in lack of information.

ifyoubuildit 3y ago

> You can explain one of the many reasons why gain of function research is necessary: anticipating next year’s version of the flu, designing drugs and vaccines such that resistance mutations reduce evolutionary fitness. If this research indeed caused the pandemic (and might cause more), do those things make the juice worth the squeeze? A chance at a better flu vaccine doesn't seem like enough reward for what we all went through.

P_I_Staker 3y ago
The answer is simple: yes.

thatguy0900 3y ago

I'm honestly under the impression that people are just too irresponsible to do some things. People are not machines who go into a bsl 4 lab and do proper safety precautions each and every day without slipping or becoming lax. If you have a lab making viruses, eventually, it will escape. If the viruses they are making are capable of shutting the whole world down for a year, then we really need to ask whether we should have them.its not a question of "is doing this useful?", because I'm sure it is. It is a question of is this worth doing even though we know it will inevitably go bad? You can talk about all the precautions and regulations you want, if people are involved then eventually someone or a group of someones will do something idiotic or malicious and break everything. There's literally an entire Wikipedia page about lab outbreaks. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecuri...

baja_blast 3y ago

> You can explain one of the many reasons why gain of function research is necessary: anticipating next year’s version of the flu, designing drugs and vaccines such that resistance mutations reduce evolutionary fitness A few problems with this. First modifying wild animal viruses to be infectious towards humans is different than modifying human viruses to model potential mutations. Modifying animal viruses to be infectious towards humans has done nothing but cause risks. Despite this research being conducted for almost a decade it has yet to predict or prevent any pandemic and probably started this one. Additionally the idea that modifying animal viruses to easily transmit towards humans will allow us to develop vaccines is absurd. You can't test a vaccine that is not circulating in humans, so trails can not start until the pandemic has already started. So yes, there should be moratorium on research that modifies infectious diseases! The public has a right to consent on whether such research is worth the risks.

kosievdmerwe 3y ago
I frankly can't think of a more dangerous thing humanity can be doing than gain of function research. Especially if done near population centers.

tengbretson 3y ago

By this standard, the only people sufficiently qualified to make policy regarding this research are the people currently cashing checks to perform this research. See any issues there?