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Do you actually need GoF research to prevent animal spillovers? Did GoF research help us develop the COVID vaccines? Or does GoF research mostly demonstrate the

Do you actually need GoF research to prevent animal spillovers? Did GoF research help us develop the COVID vaccines? Or does GoF research mostly demonstrate the risks of spillover? Because I think we're now well aware of the risks, and ought to avoid poking the bear any further.

chaostheory 3y ago
Humans would need less animal contact. To end this, you’d have to end the animal agriculture industry. I am not a vegan.
kosievdmerwe 3y ago
I literally can't think of a more dangerous kind of research that we could be doing as a species than messing around and making viruses more dangerous. If we really have to do it, then we can do it in the middle of a desert with quarantine procedures instead of near/in population centers.
- cbsmith 3y ago
  > I literally can't think of a more dangerous kind of research that we could be doing as a species than messing around and making viruses more dangerous. You have a very limited imagination. ;-) I assure you that extensive research into biological (not involving viruses), chemical, and nuclear weapons... and really a wide variety of weapons research is easily more dangerous. There's plenty of opportunity in other areas like materials science, genetics, etc., as well. > If we really have to do it, then we can do it in the middle of a desert with quarantine procedures instead of near/in population centers. Now you'll want to have an ultra-secure means of transporting highly dangerous biological samples, not to mention research teams & observers, at very high speeds to the middle of a desert. Are you sure you've improved the risk profile?
  - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
    I assume the biological samples need to get transported at some point anyway. The researchers would need to live on-site. Yes this would dramatically increase the cost. Personally, I think we just shouldn't do this at all.
    - cbsmith 3y ago
      > I assume the biological samples need to get transported at some point anyway. The researchers would need to live on-site. Yes this would dramatically increase the cost. If you're worried about lab contamination, the risk is from the researchers moving amongst the population. I agree that you'd rather not, but I don't agree that regularly putting them on planes to and from major population centers really reduces the risk. > Personally, I think we just shouldn't do this at all. [Shrugs]. Some people are pro-pandemic.
      - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
        > I don't agree that regularly putting [gain of function researchers] on planes to and from major population centers really reduces the risk. This would have to not happen regularly. The researchers would need to stay for many months at a time, and undergo a separate quarantine before they re-enter society.
        cbsmith 3y ago
        > This would have to not happen regularly. The researchers would need to stay for many months at a time, and undergo a separate quarantine before they re-enter society. So you would add months of delay, significantly impaired observability, and far less agility to our response to emerging threats. Congratulations, you've just increased risk.
        peteradio 3y ago
        Are researchers acting as result couriers? Your responses come across as very daft and fighting for status quo of everything as it relates to virology research.. why?
  - kosievdmerwe 3y ago
    > I assure you that extensive research into biological (not involving viruses), chemical, and nuclear weapons... and really a wide variety of weapons research is easily more dangerous. They very much are not. Viruses and bacteria are unique in the fact that they can harm the whole globe as opposed to chemical and other disasters that will likely only harm the immediate area. And harming the whole globe is all the more certain for infectious diseases if you put them in the middle of a large city with lots of air travel. > Now you'll want to have an ultra-secure means of transporting highly dangerous biological samples, not to mention research teams & observers, at very high speeds to the middle of a desert. Are you sure you've improved the risk profile? Why would you need to transport things at high speed for speculative research involving newly generated viruses/bacteria? I never said anything about analysing things involving people who are actively infected, but there the disease is already out in the public, so the risk profile is completely different.
    - cbsmith 3y ago
      > Viruses and bacteria are unique in the fact that they can harm the whole globe as opposed to chemical and other disasters that will likely only harm the immediate area. First of all, you added in bacteria, which are not viruses. However, this statement isn't a useful statement "X is unique because it can harm the whole world, as opposed to Y that will likely only harm the immediate area". The implication is that X will almost always harm the whole world, and Y will almost always impact the immediate area, but that's not necessarily true. (I would remind you the "1% chance we'll ignite the entire atmosphere" of the Manhattan Project. Fortunately, any future nuclear weapons we might develop will almost certainly be less powerful... oh wait.) It also implies that the risk of X and the risk of Y doing harm are equivalent, and that's undoubtedly not true. It's ignoring the reality that nature is already doing X all the time, and primarily in high population centers. > And harming the whole globe is all the more certain for infectious diseases if you put them in the middle of a large city with lots of air travel. I would think it'd be all the more certain if you're regularly putting the researchers working in the lab, along with any biological samples they might have, on flights to and from such large cities. Pandemic risk is a systemic problem and has to be evaluated as such. Controls/mitigations you have in place generally have way more impact than where the experiments are run, and it's really not as simple as "well if the lab is away from people that reduces the risk". > Why would you need to transport things at high speed for speculative research involving newly generated viruses/bacteria? Because this research is not isolated from reality. Much of what they do is take samples from the real world, observe virology in the real world (both human and non-human populations), and work with front line healthcare workers who are usually the first to see new viral threats. Without that you pretty much eliminate the value of the research entirely. > I never said anything about analysing things involving people who are actively infected, but there the disease is already out in the public, so the risk profile is completely different. The threat doesn't come directly from a virus that is already out in the public. It comes from how a virus that is already out there might evolve. You appear to believe that nature is conducting fewer and less significant experiments in evolving viruses than people in labs. I don't think that is supported by the evidence. The pandemic risk profile with a virus that is already out in the public is that it might evolve into something that has never been out in public before. Nature is conducting these experiments every day, all day. I'd be more worried about the outcomes of those experiments than anything going on in a lab.
shadowgovt 3y ago
This paper at least [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8490979 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8490979] argues that GoF research (in particular done in 2015 regarding transplantation of spike proteins into SARS-CoV-1) was instrumental in prediction of the rate of mutation of the spike protein, which factors into models of virulence, reinfection, immunity, whether the spike is a viable target for creation of a vaccine at all, etc. It also therefore informs research spending; the hard data on being able to say "Hey, if this bat virus gene mixes with this human virus we're gonna have a bad time" can inform the kind of virology research we focus on, and the hard data on "We cultured a virus like this years before COVID-19 happened; here's how it behaved in the lab" informs what vaccination and detection approaches might be viable. I hate to say it (because I agree the risks are significant), but I suspect the need to use this as a tool to model both probable futures and not-yet-understood behaviors of viral mutation may be arguments in favor of continued GoF research, despite the risk. I concur with other commenters that maybe we should be putting this stuff in the wilderness behind service providers that must undergo quarantine procedure before returning to densely-populated areas.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  > instrumental in prediction of the rate of mutation of the spike protein The research must have been pretty misleading then, because all the experts appeared to be taken by surprise by the fact that it mutated at all, given their original plan was "two shots and done". Something that has now become promoting infinity boosters to a world that has stopped listening (uptake of the current round is extremely low). But again, why should we listen to claims about virology? People who have been living in ivory caves may not realize this, but it's been proven beyond all doubt that the entire profession engaged in a conspiracy against the public to mislead people about the likelihood of a lab experiment gone wrong. Not just the many authors of the proximal origins paper, but so the other scientists who saw this coverup happening in public and said nothing.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    Arguing over the origins was completely orthogonal discussion to figuring out how to mitigate spread and severity, and I think most virologists made the wise decision to stay out of a fundamentally political argument. It doesn't matter if the virus came from the moon as long as we can quarantine and vaccinate against it. And I'm sorry you feel misinformed, but nothing I read ever suggested anyone was taken by surprise by its mutagenic rate. To the extent experts thought it might be a "two shots and done" virus, they were overly optimistic about policy and vaccination uptake; were the vaccine manufactured and rolled out quickly enough and deployed globally, it could have been cut off from human reservoirs and died out, but a combination of logistics and public distrust meant we missed that window and now it's endemic. Its mutation rate pretty much guarantees it'll be with us indefinitely as long as the public has the stomach to tolerate that.
matthewdgreen 3y ago
I don’t research viruses, so I can’t tell you if GoF is the right tool to fight a future pandemic or not. What I do know is that if a deadly virus with a 30% CFR is spreading rapidly, I want the experts fighting it to have every tool at their disposal. I don’t want them artificially handcuffed in finding a cure/vaccine by the feelings of some Hacker News posters like me and you. Happy to stipulate that this should be an emergency capability, but frankly I don’t know enough about the value of preemptive GoF research to determine whether that’s a good balance.
theGnuMe 3y ago
Yes because despite the known risks we need to understand these viruses and what causes across species transmission so that we can prepare for future pandemics (even those caused by spillover mistakes) and what we learn may also prove useful in other applications. Otherwise we are in the dark with unknown unknowns which is not a good place. So the risk here of doing research is manageable.
- ifyoubuildit 3y ago
  Then why wasn't it managed?

chaostheory 3y ago

Humans would need less animal contact. To end this, you’d have to end the animal agriculture industry. I am not a vegan.

kosievdmerwe 3y ago

I literally can't think of a more dangerous kind of research that we could be doing as a species than messing around and making viruses more dangerous. If we really have to do it, then we can do it in the middle of a desert with quarantine procedures instead of near/in population centers.

cbsmith 3y ago
> I literally can't think of a more dangerous kind of research that we could be doing as a species than messing around and making viruses more dangerous. You have a very limited imagination. ;-) I assure you that extensive research into biological (not involving viruses), chemical, and nuclear weapons... and really a wide variety of weapons research is easily more dangerous. There's plenty of opportunity in other areas like materials science, genetics, etc., as well. > If we really have to do it, then we can do it in the middle of a desert with quarantine procedures instead of near/in population centers. Now you'll want to have an ultra-secure means of transporting highly dangerous biological samples, not to mention research teams & observers, at very high speeds to the middle of a desert. Are you sure you've improved the risk profile?
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago
  I assume the biological samples need to get transported at some point anyway. The researchers would need to live on-site. Yes this would dramatically increase the cost. Personally, I think we just shouldn't do this at all.
  - cbsmith 3y ago
    > I assume the biological samples need to get transported at some point anyway. The researchers would need to live on-site. Yes this would dramatically increase the cost. If you're worried about lab contamination, the risk is from the researchers moving amongst the population. I agree that you'd rather not, but I don't agree that regularly putting them on planes to and from major population centers really reduces the risk. > Personally, I think we just shouldn't do this at all. [Shrugs]. Some people are pro-pandemic.
    - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
      > I don't agree that regularly putting [gain of function researchers] on planes to and from major population centers really reduces the risk. This would have to not happen regularly. The researchers would need to stay for many months at a time, and undergo a separate quarantine before they re-enter society.
      - cbsmith 3y ago
        > This would have to not happen regularly. The researchers would need to stay for many months at a time, and undergo a separate quarantine before they re-enter society. So you would add months of delay, significantly impaired observability, and far less agility to our response to emerging threats. Congratulations, you've just increased risk.
        peteradio 3y ago
        Are researchers acting as result couriers? Your responses come across as very daft and fighting for status quo of everything as it relates to virology research.. why?
- kosievdmerwe 3y ago
  > I assure you that extensive research into biological (not involving viruses), chemical, and nuclear weapons... and really a wide variety of weapons research is easily more dangerous. They very much are not. Viruses and bacteria are unique in the fact that they can harm the whole globe as opposed to chemical and other disasters that will likely only harm the immediate area. And harming the whole globe is all the more certain for infectious diseases if you put them in the middle of a large city with lots of air travel. > Now you'll want to have an ultra-secure means of transporting highly dangerous biological samples, not to mention research teams & observers, at very high speeds to the middle of a desert. Are you sure you've improved the risk profile? Why would you need to transport things at high speed for speculative research involving newly generated viruses/bacteria? I never said anything about analysing things involving people who are actively infected, but there the disease is already out in the public, so the risk profile is completely different.
  - cbsmith 3y ago
    > Viruses and bacteria are unique in the fact that they can harm the whole globe as opposed to chemical and other disasters that will likely only harm the immediate area. First of all, you added in bacteria, which are not viruses. However, this statement isn't a useful statement "X is unique because it can harm the whole world, as opposed to Y that will likely only harm the immediate area". The implication is that X will almost always harm the whole world, and Y will almost always impact the immediate area, but that's not necessarily true. (I would remind you the "1% chance we'll ignite the entire atmosphere" of the Manhattan Project. Fortunately, any future nuclear weapons we might develop will almost certainly be less powerful... oh wait.) It also implies that the risk of X and the risk of Y doing harm are equivalent, and that's undoubtedly not true. It's ignoring the reality that nature is already doing X all the time, and primarily in high population centers. > And harming the whole globe is all the more certain for infectious diseases if you put them in the middle of a large city with lots of air travel. I would think it'd be all the more certain if you're regularly putting the researchers working in the lab, along with any biological samples they might have, on flights to and from such large cities. Pandemic risk is a systemic problem and has to be evaluated as such. Controls/mitigations you have in place generally have way more impact than where the experiments are run, and it's really not as simple as "well if the lab is away from people that reduces the risk". > Why would you need to transport things at high speed for speculative research involving newly generated viruses/bacteria? Because this research is not isolated from reality. Much of what they do is take samples from the real world, observe virology in the real world (both human and non-human populations), and work with front line healthcare workers who are usually the first to see new viral threats. Without that you pretty much eliminate the value of the research entirely. > I never said anything about analysing things involving people who are actively infected, but there the disease is already out in the public, so the risk profile is completely different. The threat doesn't come directly from a virus that is already out in the public. It comes from how a virus that is already out there might evolve. You appear to believe that nature is conducting fewer and less significant experiments in evolving viruses than people in labs. I don't think that is supported by the evidence. The pandemic risk profile with a virus that is already out in the public is that it might evolve into something that has never been out in public before. Nature is conducting these experiments every day, all day. I'd be more worried about the outcomes of those experiments than anything going on in a lab.

shadowgovt 3y ago

This paper at least [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8490979 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8490979] argues that GoF research (in particular done in 2015 regarding transplantation of spike proteins into SARS-CoV-1) was instrumental in prediction of the rate of mutation of the spike protein, which factors into models of virulence, reinfection, immunity, whether the spike is a viable target for creation of a vaccine at all, etc. It also therefore informs research spending; the hard data on being able to say "Hey, if this bat virus gene mixes with this human virus we're gonna have a bad time" can inform the kind of virology research we focus on, and the hard data on "We cultured a virus like this years before COVID-19 happened; here's how it behaved in the lab" informs what vaccination and detection approaches might be viable. I hate to say it (because I agree the risks are significant), but I suspect the need to use this as a tool to model both probable futures and not-yet-understood behaviors of viral mutation may be arguments in favor of continued GoF research, despite the risk. I concur with other commenters that maybe we should be putting this stuff in the wilderness behind service providers that must undergo quarantine procedure before returning to densely-populated areas.

nvm0n2 3y ago
> instrumental in prediction of the rate of mutation of the spike protein The research must have been pretty misleading then, because all the experts appeared to be taken by surprise by the fact that it mutated at all, given their original plan was "two shots and done". Something that has now become promoting infinity boosters to a world that has stopped listening (uptake of the current round is extremely low). But again, why should we listen to claims about virology? People who have been living in ivory caves may not realize this, but it's been proven beyond all doubt that the entire profession engaged in a conspiracy against the public to mislead people about the likelihood of a lab experiment gone wrong. Not just the many authors of the proximal origins paper, but so the other scientists who saw this coverup happening in public and said nothing.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  Arguing over the origins was completely orthogonal discussion to figuring out how to mitigate spread and severity, and I think most virologists made the wise decision to stay out of a fundamentally political argument. It doesn't matter if the virus came from the moon as long as we can quarantine and vaccinate against it. And I'm sorry you feel misinformed, but nothing I read ever suggested anyone was taken by surprise by its mutagenic rate. To the extent experts thought it might be a "two shots and done" virus, they were overly optimistic about policy and vaccination uptake; were the vaccine manufactured and rolled out quickly enough and deployed globally, it could have been cut off from human reservoirs and died out, but a combination of logistics and public distrust meant we missed that window and now it's endemic. Its mutation rate pretty much guarantees it'll be with us indefinitely as long as the public has the stomach to tolerate that.

matthewdgreen 3y ago

I don’t research viruses, so I can’t tell you if GoF is the right tool to fight a future pandemic or not. What I do know is that if a deadly virus with a 30% CFR is spreading rapidly, I want the experts fighting it to have every tool at their disposal. I don’t want them artificially handcuffed in finding a cure/vaccine by the feelings of some Hacker News posters like me and you. Happy to stipulate that this should be an emergency capability, but frankly I don’t know enough about the value of preemptive GoF research to determine whether that’s a good balance.

theGnuMe 3y ago

Yes because despite the known risks we need to understand these viruses and what causes across species transmission so that we can prepare for future pandemics (even those caused by spillover mistakes) and what we learn may also prove useful in other applications. Otherwise we are in the dark with unknown unknowns which is not a good place. So the risk here of doing research is manageable.

ifyoubuildit 3y ago
Then why wasn't it managed?