8 ms·
The NIH ordered me to stop my 'dangerous' gain-of-function research
- CalChris 1y agohttps://archive.is/AKFIv https://archive.is/AKFIv
- pazimzadeh 1y agoIf what they are describing (marking strains using kanamycin) and creating deletion mutants really is what the NIH now considers gain-of-function research (nevermind dangerous) then all microbiology research has to stop immediately.
- pazimzadeh 1y ago*kanamycin resistance cassette
- kedihacker 1y agoWell letting tb evolve over time and infect everyone is a lot more dangerous
- chaostheory 1y agoBecause gain of function research is dangerous. It’s also what likely turned Covid into a pandemic. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0755498223000040 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S07554... https://www.newsweek.com/controversial-wuhan-lab-experiments-that-may-have-started-coronavirus-pandemic-1500503 https://www.newsweek.com/controversial-wuhan-lab-experiments... https://www.newsweek.com/covid-lab-leak-china-virus-nuclear-war-1787390 https://www.newsweek.com/covid-lab-leak-china-virus-nuclear-... https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/10/covid-origins-investigation-wuhan-lab?srsltid=AfmBOoppF2nLlpe0F5TizIddSU-5P60pFw3gfLOf2KaXat0YMYvbBhqO https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/10/covid-origins-invest... https://www.propublica.org/article/senate-report-covid-19-origin-wuhan-lab https://www.propublica.org/article/senate-report-covid-19-or... https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bies.202000240 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bies.202000...
- fabian2k 1y agoThe article explains pretty well why this particular research isn't dangerous. It's technically gain of function, but if you prohibit any research that adds antibiotic resistance to bacteria you eliminated essentially all of microbiology research.
- polotics 1y agoBoth of the article's technique can much better be described as "removal-of-function" research IMHO.
- JV00 1y agoPerhaps it would be better to address the issues that can lead to an incident rather than stopping all research. Even counting the COVID-19 pandemic, the overall impact of gain-of-function research on health is still positive.
- jbstack 1y agoKnives are dangerous if used dangerously. Let's ban knives.
- jjgreen 1y agoWelcome to the UK.
- solid_fuel 1y agoSomeone compiled a virus, compilation is dangerous, let's ban compilers.
- JV00 1y agoSad to see a new era of obscurantism, after studying it as a thing of the past, sure it was never to return.
- yeahrightthere 1y ago[flagged]
- throwawayqqq11 1y agoEven if it was true: 1) It would be lacking bio safety, not GoF research. There are plenty of dangerous viruses stored away for research, which could escape too. Would you like to ban storage aswell? 2) Viruses mutate even if we stop GoF research. So why not try to stay ahead of the curve. 3) Many people died because conspiracy fueled rejection from vaccines even up to masks. Or would you like to elaborate how many millions died because of the new mRNA vaccine?
- tentacleuno 1y agoHas that ever been proved? All sources I can find are riddled in ambiguity. It's "one of two scenarios". I suppose we'll never really know for certain.
- solid_fuel 1y agoIt has never been proven, it's just a conspiracy theory and a convenient way to blame China. The truth is that viruses are constantly evolving in nature, and pandemics are a fairly regular occurrence as a result.
- hackingonempty 1y agoIt is scary to see the President and Health Secretary and their appointees acting on conspiracy theories. The evidence for zoonotic origin of SARS-COV2 is very strong[0] and the conspiracy theorists as usual have little more than speculation. [0] https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-virology-093022-013037 https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annur...
- BryantD 1y agoQuite strong: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-r... https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-the-5d7 https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comment...
- elcritch 1y agoGreat links and even briefly skimming them makes me lean more towards zoonosis myself. However, @hackingonempty's comment shows how dangerous over politicising these topics can be. Claiming lab-accident origin as a conspiracy theory stifles debates like the one linked. Take a report from the first link where experts in the field still give a 21% chance to lab leak definitely takes it out of the range of conspiracy theories. The only reason it was "removed" as a plausible origin was politics. > asked how likely it is that COVID-19 originated from natural zoonosis, experts gave an average likelihood of 77% (median=90%). In fact, four out of five experts stated that a natural zoonotic origin was more than 50% likely. > However, consensus was not complete. Across all experts, the average likelihood they gave for a research-related accident origin was 21%. Overall, one out of five experts reported a 50% or greater chance for an origin other than natural zoonosis.
- BryantD 1y agoYeah, this is both true and tricky. My belief is that the original sin was politicizing the question soon after the beginning of the pandemic; both the Chinese and US governments are at fault here (destroying all the raccoon dogs seems like a very stupid action to me, for example). I further believe that a lot of people overreacted to the rush to judgement. It is correct to say "we don't know yet" and in March/April 2020 it was wrong to say "this has to be a lab leak." But it's also wrong to overcorrect and say "it couldn't be a lab leak." That's both a political reaction and a human reaction.
- ggm 1y agoIt's passing the task to others. Work will continue in other economies.
- SilverElfin 1y agoReminder that the Obama administration banned gain of function research due to its dangers. Only for Fauci to perform it through EcoHealth and WIV while claiming he’s not funding it.
- Quarrel 1y agoThey paused funding actual dangerous gain-of-function (as the article makes the distinction), while developing new guidelines for how it should be managed. They then released the new framework of multi-layered review to clearly define the tradeoffs and how they were managed, and resumed funding for those that could meet the improved criteria. ie it was standard research advancing regulatory risk management.
- fergie 1y agoTo me, a total outsider, developing antibiotic resistant strains of TB sounds at least "gain of function"-adjacent. Are there any experts here who would like to hazard a judgement?
- ulrikrasmussen 1y agoI thought the point of the article was that it was indeed adjacent, but that in their particular case there was no risk because (1) the mutated bacteria are actually less virulent, and (2) the mutated bacteria are resistant to one particular type of antibiotic which is not in use due to safety issues, but they are not resistant to any of the drugs that are actually used in humans to treat TB.
- fabian2k 1y agoAs the article states, it is technically a gain of function experiment. But what is actually prohibited are dangerous gain of function experiments. This specific use of antibiotics resistance is also extremely common. Pretty much every single microbiology experiment starts this way, and every time you want to genetically modify bacteria you do this. This includes every time you want to produce any protein, because you need genetically modified bacteria for that. This is a large part of all labwork in this field. As the article notes, the antiobiotic used is one that isn't used for humans. So there is not significant additional danger due to that modification. The bacterium itself is much more dangerous than most that are handled in the lab, but that's why they're in a BSL-3 lab.
- solid_fuel 1y agoI did this kind of work in a community college biotech program (literally biotech 102, we used E. Coli just to learn the technique). They are not engineering a new, deadlier strain of bacteria, they are using antibiotic resistance to solve a very simple problem: genetic modification is a probabilistic process, you have Gene A and need to get it into bacteria, but Gene A doesn't make the bacteria different externally in any easily detectable way. So, after the process of inserting Gene A into a batch of bacteria you need to figure out which of the bacteria actually picked up Gene A so you can proceed to the next step of your experiment. So, what you do is you pair Gene A with Gene B, which is a very light resistance to a very specific antibiotic. Now, after you perform the electroporation, you plate the bacteria on agarose gel, let colonies start to develop, and then lightly dose the gel with the antibiotic. The surviving bacterial colonies are those which have incorporated both Gene A and Gene B (because they are paired). It's just a way of filtering bacteria after electroporation so you can do further work. It's not dangerous to people because A) this antibiotic resistance was already found in nature, B) it's a resistance to a very specific antibiotic, not all antibiotics, and C) you're doing this in a protected lab. This is an incredibly standard process, to the point where - again - I did this in a Biotech 102 program at community college. You could sign up for a classes where you learn to do this, right now.
- timschmidt 1y agoThere's some debate in these comments about the origins of Covid, so I figured it'd be worth dropping the following testimony on the topic which I found eye opening: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Testimony-Quay-2024-06-18.pdf https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Testimony-Qu... It references a great deal of information from https://project-evidence.github.io/ https://project-evidence.github.io/ And I've found Jamie Metzl's collection of resources interesting as well: https://jamiemetzl.com/origins-of-sars-cov-2/ https://jamiemetzl.com/origins-of-sars-cov-2/
- rhubarbtree 1y agoThat’s a very interesting read. What were the arguments against? Was this dismissed?
- tim333 1y agoThe debate goes on and both sides are fairly fixed in their views. I think the evidence is strong in favour of a lab origin but wikipedia still is against https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_SARS-CoV-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_SARS-CoV-2
- rhubarbtree 1y agoWell, the Wikipedia article is clearly incorrect - the lab leak hypothesis is supported by evidence. Even if you don’t think it’s true, you have to agree that there is at least some supporting evidence that adds weight to the hypothesis. Not a great advert for Wikipedia. The absolutist statement clearly indicates political bias rather than objective enquiry. I knew that some people still think the market hypothesis is true (despite the lack of good evidence), I was more interested in the response to this particular testimonial? For example, did anyone push back on specific points? I ran the doc through AI and asked it to form the strongest counter arguments it could muster. It didn’t do well and concluded lab leak was more likely than market.
- tim333 1y ago