7 ms·

Was it ‘crazy’ to re-create a virus that killed 50 million people?

59 points by givan 12y ago

smoyer 12y ago
Given what he's done I certainly hope he's not crazy. A better question is whether creating deadly viruses is ethical. EDIT: I should also note that I'm not judging whether what he's done is ethical (it's discussed at great length in the article) but if I had to take sides, I'm leaning towards being in favor of his work ... most research will have some degree of risk and in this case, I'm certain we'd rather not see another flu pandemic in the wild.
- hga 12y ago
  That's a very hard to answer question. The risk is obvious, and e.g. a pandemic strain which followed the Ford swine flu mess is thought to have originated from a Soviet bioweapons lab. But there's great risk in our not understanding just what the bleep made the 1918 flu pandemic so lethal for such unusual age groups. Either could result in 10s of millions needlessly dying.
  - MagicWishMonkey 12y ago
    And another pandemic will happen sooner or later, regardless. It would be nice if we had the foresight to plan ahead and maybe figure out a way to minimize loss of life before it's too late.
- JunkDNA 12y ago
  As a member of an academic institution, it is very likely his research had to go before the institutional review board that governs how to conduct research in an ethical manner. IRB's are far from perfect, but they are charged with weighing risk vs benefit to society.
opendais 12y ago
This seems link bait-y to me: "That said they created a life-threatening virus that is only 3 percent different from the 1918 Spanish flu" I bet the flu itself changed that much in nature between 1918 and now all on its own. For reference 4% difference is between humans and apes.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0831_050831_chimp_genes.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0831_050831_... I'm not saying creating a deadly virus is ethical. Personally, I think it is under sufficiently tight controls...since these things exist in nature and if we don't understand them, we risk a repeat of 1918.
- JunkDNA 12y ago
  This page has a nice, succinct definition of how the various kinds of mutations can contribute to influenza changes. In short, a percentage difference isn't that informative. It matters greatly what is actually different: http://nieman.harvard.edu/Microsites/NiemanGuideToCoveringPandemicFlu/TheScience/HowFluVirusesChange.aspx http://nieman.harvard.edu/Microsites/NiemanGuideToCoveringPa...
  - opendais 12y ago
    Cool. Thanks for the link. :)
- jsz0 12y ago
  Most people would read this article and be left with the impression that man made strains of influenza escaping from a lab are a greater risk than the natural processes that allow influenza to mutate so effectively in the wild. Hard to see that as anything more than taking advantage of people's ignorance. We are very lucky that it's been almost 100 years since we had to deal with a serious influenza pandemic.
TrainedMonkey 12y ago
You can be sure that some governments have significant amount of deadly viruses at their disposal [0]. I've heard anecdotes that Russian facilities storing black death amongst other bio weapons routinely lose power due to lack of funding [1]. So stockpiles of stuff are readily available, thus the question transforms from "Is it ethical to have this stuff?" into "Is it ethical for researchers to have access to this stuff?". I think that, with appropriate security measures being taken, it is imperative for researchers to access viruses that pruned significant portion of human population. If you look at this from evolutionary standpoint plagues killed everyone with immune system that was not prepared to deal with that infection, thus shaping the course of evolution of human species. TL:DR: To understand where we are evolutionary we need to understand where we came from. I think deadly viruses that wiped out significant portion of human population are important part of that evolutionary path. Moreover, even if a virus escapes, I do not think danger is significant, because infection already pruned some part of human population with immune system not capable of handling it. [0] "http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8267370/We-must-keep-smallpox-stocks-US-and-Russia-tells-World-Health-Organisation.html" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8267370/We-must... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vozrozhdeniya_island http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vozrozhdeniya_island
- didgeoridoo 12y ago
  I think the problem with Spanish flu is the fact that it selectively blows away populations with strong, healthy immune systems — i.e. the sorts of people who tend NOT to be "pruned" over the decades by infection.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - erkkie 12y ago
    Yes, it's purported to be a positive feedback loop in the immune system known as Cytokine storm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm#Role_in_pandemic_deaths http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm#Role_in_pandemic...).
- deleted 12y ago
RBerenguel 12y ago
"...is only 3 percent different from the 1918 Spanish flu, which likely killed more people than the Black Death." Well, Spanish flu killed, tops, 5% of world population, whereas Black Death is likely to have killed at least 20% of the world population. I think this is more significant than 100 million vs ~90 million.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - msane 12y ago
    Obviously that is the point.
- hga 12y ago
  Note that between these two events we, oh, learned the germ theory of disease, and hypothesized the rat -> flea -> human path of plague transmission; 1918 was pre-antibiotics but we'd still learned a whole bunch of things that radically improved medicine, public health, etc. Modern, or circa 1918 (after Typhoid Mary was permanently quarantined) public health measures alone could likely keep a plague epidemic from taking such a huge percentage of people. Note researchers are doing vaguely similar sorts of things WRT to the Black Death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death#DNA_evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death#DNA_evidence
- amckenna 12y ago
  I think the comparison was to draw attention to just how deadly the Spanish Flu was. In history class we were taught about the Black Death as this huge and earth shattering pandemic, yet we hear nothing about the Spanish Flu. A lot of people don't realize just how deadly it was.
mantrax5 12y ago
There are 7 billion of us, so we can take a hit of 50 million. Gimme a shot.
alexeisadeski3 12y ago
I thought that the "Spanish Flu" evolved from horses, not birds.
JunkDNA 12y ago
I went and pulled the original article. The characterization of recklessness is in my opinion unfair here. It's not like these researchers were cooking this up on their kitchen counters: "All experiments with 1918-related viruses were performed in biosafety level 3 (BSL3) agriculture containment laboratories. In vitro experiments were conducted in Class II biological safety cabinets, and transmission experiments were conducted in HEPA-filtered ferret isolators (Imai et al., 2012). The research program, procedures, occupational health plan, documentation, security, and facilities are reviewed annually by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Responsible Official and at regular intervals by the CDC and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) as part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Select Agent Program. More detailed information on biosecurity and biosafety is described in the Supplemental Experimental Procedures." Also, if you read the discussion, there's this point: "We found that a 1918-like avian virus exhibited pathogenicity in mice and ferrets higher than that of an authentic avian virus. Moreover, we demonstrated that acquisition of only a few amino acid substitutions can confer respiratory droplet transmission to 1918-like avian influenza viruses in a ferret model, suggesting that the potential exists for a 1918- like pandemic virus to emerge at any time from the avian virus gene pool." The body of the paper goes through all the details of which specific amino acid changes are needed. This is important information for understanding how these proteins function. What is it about those few amino acid changes that confers droplet transmission? Others can now study the individual proteins and build off this work. Reference: http://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/pdf/S1931-3128(14)00163-2.pdf http://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/pdf/S1931-3128(14)0016...
- hga 12y ago
  Do you really think BSL3 is enough for pandemic flu strains? My only experience was in 1977 at, say, BSL minus 2 or so ^_^ (e.g. mouth pipetted non-pathogenic E. Coli K-12, something that horrified a friend a decade later), but reviewing the Wikipedia entry the threshold for going from 3 to the rare and expensive 4 is said to be treatablity. It think it's a stretch to say pandemic flu is "treatable"....
  - Retric 12y ago
    It is treatable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm, but also normal flue treatment is vary helpful. Also, WWI had significant impact on yhe diseases evolution. In peacetime mild strains spread better as overly sick people tend to stay home, but you have little choices in trench warfare. PS: Actual fatality rates are hard to pin down as Aspirin poisoning was a significant issue.
ianstallings 12y ago
No crazier than people working on nuclear power. The field itself should be studied. But we should probably keep a close eye on it because of the possible danger to society. AFAIK the controls in place to contain deadly disease is pretty advanced and they take a lot of precautions.
gremlinsinc 12y ago
I've got a brilliant business idea.... Devise a highly deadly, highly contagious virus in a lab and the antivirus, unleash said virus... Let it run a month or so, then oh we just found the cure but it's gonna be expensive....
rwallace 12y ago
There is no security precaution adequate for something like this. Yes, of course naturally occurring viruses are a major ongoing threat and we need to keep studying that threat to find better ways to counter it. But there are plenty of things we can do in that regard that don't involve actually creating lethal viruses. I think we have far too many regulations on medical research. I think the current tangle of regulations costs many lives and should be dialed way down. But a free society depends on people voluntarily refraining from behaving like assholes. If we want a free society, we have to avoid behaving as though everything legal must be okay.
jsz0 12y ago
It would be crazy not to. We understand the potential for influenza to mutate rapidly and since there's no reason to believe the Spanish Flu was anything other than the result of this natural storm of mutations so we can conclude sooner or later influenza will hit the mutation jackpot again. We have to do everything possible to prepare for this in advance because once it hits there is precious little time left to save people. By most accounts the vast majority of deaths from the Spanish Flu occurred over a shockingly short period of about 12 weeks. Maybe modern public health standards can slow the next mutation down but I think we have to assume the worst is possible. If we don't do this research now there simply won't be time for any miracles to happen in 12 weeks.

59 points by givan 12y ago

Given what he's done I certainly hope he's not crazy. A better question is whether creating deadly viruses is ethical. EDIT: I should also note that I'm not judging whether what he's done is ethical (it's discussed at great length in the article) but if I had to take sides, I'm leaning towards being in favor of his work ... most research will have some degree of risk and in this case, I'm certain we'd rather not see another flu pandemic in the wild.

hga 12y ago
That's a very hard to answer question. The risk is obvious, and e.g. a pandemic strain which followed the Ford swine flu mess is thought to have originated from a Soviet bioweapons lab. But there's great risk in our not understanding just what the bleep made the 1918 flu pandemic so lethal for such unusual age groups. Either could result in 10s of millions needlessly dying.
- MagicWishMonkey 12y ago
  And another pandemic will happen sooner or later, regardless. It would be nice if we had the foresight to plan ahead and maybe figure out a way to minimize loss of life before it's too late.
JunkDNA 12y ago
As a member of an academic institution, it is very likely his research had to go before the institutional review board that governs how to conduct research in an ethical manner. IRB's are far from perfect, but they are charged with weighing risk vs benefit to society.

opendais 12y ago

This seems link bait-y to me: "That said they created a life-threatening virus that is only 3 percent different from the 1918 Spanish flu" I bet the flu itself changed that much in nature between 1918 and now all on its own. For reference 4% difference is between humans and apes.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0831_050831_chimp_genes.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0831_050831_... I'm not saying creating a deadly virus is ethical. Personally, I think it is under sufficiently tight controls...since these things exist in nature and if we don't understand them, we risk a repeat of 1918.

JunkDNA 12y ago
This page has a nice, succinct definition of how the various kinds of mutations can contribute to influenza changes. In short, a percentage difference isn't that informative. It matters greatly what is actually different: http://nieman.harvard.edu/Microsites/NiemanGuideToCoveringPandemicFlu/TheScience/HowFluVirusesChange.aspx http://nieman.harvard.edu/Microsites/NiemanGuideToCoveringPa...
- opendais 12y ago
  Cool. Thanks for the link. :)
jsz0 12y ago
Most people would read this article and be left with the impression that man made strains of influenza escaping from a lab are a greater risk than the natural processes that allow influenza to mutate so effectively in the wild. Hard to see that as anything more than taking advantage of people's ignorance. We are very lucky that it's been almost 100 years since we had to deal with a serious influenza pandemic.

TrainedMonkey 12y ago

You can be sure that some governments have significant amount of deadly viruses at their disposal [0]. I've heard anecdotes that Russian facilities storing black death amongst other bio weapons routinely lose power due to lack of funding [1]. So stockpiles of stuff are readily available, thus the question transforms from "Is it ethical to have this stuff?" into "Is it ethical for researchers to have access to this stuff?". I think that, with appropriate security measures being taken, it is imperative for researchers to access viruses that pruned significant portion of human population. If you look at this from evolutionary standpoint plagues killed everyone with immune system that was not prepared to deal with that infection, thus shaping the course of evolution of human species. TL:DR: To understand where we are evolutionary we need to understand where we came from. I think deadly viruses that wiped out significant portion of human population are important part of that evolutionary path. Moreover, even if a virus escapes, I do not think danger is significant, because infection already pruned some part of human population with immune system not capable of handling it. [0] "http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8267370/We-must-keep-smallpox-stocks-US-and-Russia-tells-World-Health-Organisation.html" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8267370/We-must... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vozrozhdeniya_island http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vozrozhdeniya_island

didgeoridoo 12y ago
I think the problem with Spanish flu is the fact that it selectively blows away populations with strong, healthy immune systems — i.e. the sorts of people who tend NOT to be "pruned" over the decades by infection.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- erkkie 12y ago
  Yes, it's purported to be a positive feedback loop in the immune system known as Cytokine storm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm#Role_in_pandemic_deaths http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm#Role_in_pandemic...).
deleted 12y ago

RBerenguel 12y ago

"...is only 3 percent different from the 1918 Spanish flu, which likely killed more people than the Black Death." Well, Spanish flu killed, tops, 5% of world population, whereas Black Death is likely to have killed at least 20% of the world population. I think this is more significant than 100 million vs ~90 million.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- msane 12y ago
  Obviously that is the point.
hga 12y ago
Note that between these two events we, oh, learned the germ theory of disease, and hypothesized the rat -> flea -> human path of plague transmission; 1918 was pre-antibiotics but we'd still learned a whole bunch of things that radically improved medicine, public health, etc. Modern, or circa 1918 (after Typhoid Mary was permanently quarantined) public health measures alone could likely keep a plague epidemic from taking such a huge percentage of people. Note researchers are doing vaguely similar sorts of things WRT to the Black Death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death#DNA_evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death#DNA_evidence
amckenna 12y ago
I think the comparison was to draw attention to just how deadly the Spanish Flu was. In history class we were taught about the Black Death as this huge and earth shattering pandemic, yet we hear nothing about the Spanish Flu. A lot of people don't realize just how deadly it was.

mantrax5 12y ago

There are 7 billion of us, so we can take a hit of 50 million. Gimme a shot.

alexeisadeski3 12y ago

I thought that the "Spanish Flu" evolved from horses, not birds.

JunkDNA 12y ago

I went and pulled the original article. The characterization of recklessness is in my opinion unfair here. It's not like these researchers were cooking this up on their kitchen counters: "All experiments with 1918-related viruses were performed in biosafety level 3 (BSL3) agriculture containment laboratories. In vitro experiments were conducted in Class II biological safety cabinets, and transmission experiments were conducted in HEPA-filtered ferret isolators (Imai et al., 2012). The research program, procedures, occupational health plan, documentation, security, and facilities are reviewed annually by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Responsible Official and at regular intervals by the CDC and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) as part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Select Agent Program. More detailed information on biosecurity and biosafety is described in the Supplemental Experimental Procedures." Also, if you read the discussion, there's this point: "We found that a 1918-like avian virus exhibited pathogenicity in mice and ferrets higher than that of an authentic avian virus. Moreover, we demonstrated that acquisition of only a few amino acid substitutions can confer respiratory droplet transmission to 1918-like avian influenza viruses in a ferret model, suggesting that the potential exists for a 1918- like pandemic virus to emerge at any time from the avian virus gene pool." The body of the paper goes through all the details of which specific amino acid changes are needed. This is important information for understanding how these proteins function. What is it about those few amino acid changes that confers droplet transmission? Others can now study the individual proteins and build off this work. Reference: http://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/pdf/S1931-3128(14)00163-2.pdf http://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/pdf/S1931-3128(14)0016...

hga 12y ago
Do you really think BSL3 is enough for pandemic flu strains? My only experience was in 1977 at, say, BSL minus 2 or so ^_^ (e.g. mouth pipetted non-pathogenic E. Coli K-12, something that horrified a friend a decade later), but reviewing the Wikipedia entry the threshold for going from 3 to the rare and expensive 4 is said to be treatablity. It think it's a stretch to say pandemic flu is "treatable"....
- Retric 12y ago
  It is treatable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm, but also normal flue treatment is vary helpful. Also, WWI had significant impact on yhe diseases evolution. In peacetime mild strains spread better as overly sick people tend to stay home, but you have little choices in trench warfare. PS: Actual fatality rates are hard to pin down as Aspirin poisoning was a significant issue.

ianstallings 12y ago

No crazier than people working on nuclear power. The field itself should be studied. But we should probably keep a close eye on it because of the possible danger to society. AFAIK the controls in place to contain deadly disease is pretty advanced and they take a lot of precautions.

gremlinsinc 12y ago

I've got a brilliant business idea.... Devise a highly deadly, highly contagious virus in a lab and the antivirus, unleash said virus... Let it run a month or so, then oh we just found the cure but it's gonna be expensive....

rwallace 12y ago

There is no security precaution adequate for something like this. Yes, of course naturally occurring viruses are a major ongoing threat and we need to keep studying that threat to find better ways to counter it. But there are plenty of things we can do in that regard that don't involve actually creating lethal viruses. I think we have far too many regulations on medical research. I think the current tangle of regulations costs many lives and should be dialed way down. But a free society depends on people voluntarily refraining from behaving like assholes. If we want a free society, we have to avoid behaving as though everything legal must be okay.

jsz0 12y ago

It would be crazy not to. We understand the potential for influenza to mutate rapidly and since there's no reason to believe the Spanish Flu was anything other than the result of this natural storm of mutations so we can conclude sooner or later influenza will hit the mutation jackpot again. We have to do everything possible to prepare for this in advance because once it hits there is precious little time left to save people. By most accounts the vast majority of deaths from the Spanish Flu occurred over a shockingly short period of about 12 weeks. Maybe modern public health standards can slow the next mutation down but I think we have to assume the worst is possible. If we don't do this research now there simply won't be time for any miracles to happen in 12 weeks.