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How to Maintain Lab Safety While Making Viruses Deadlier

Posted by timothy on from the this-one-goes-to-11 dept.

Lasrick (2629253) writes "A scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison published an article in June revealing that he had taken genes from the deadly human 1918 Spanish Flu and inserted them into the H5N1 avian flu to make a new virus—one which was both far deadlier and far more capable of spreading than the original avian strain. In July it was revealed that the same scientist was conducting another study in which he genetically altered the 2009 strain of flu to enable it to evade immune responses, 'effectively making the human population defenseless against re-emergence.' In the U.S. alone, biosafety incidents involving pathogens happen more than twice per week. These 'gain-of-function' experiments are accidents waiting to happen, with the possibility of starting deadly pandemics that could kill millions. It isn't as if it hasn't happened before: in 2009, a group of Chinese scientists created a viral strain of flu virus that escaped the lab and created a pandemic, killing thousands of people. 'Against this backdrop, the growing use of gain-of-function approaches for research requires more careful examination. And the potential consequences keep getting more catastrophic.' This article explores the history of lab-created pandemics and outlines recommendations for a safer approach to this type of research."

13 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Homeland security would like a word... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Someone put this scientist on the no fly list. That's some Twelve Monkeys shit he's pulling right there.

    1. Re:Homeland security would like a word... by mellon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The thing that boggles my mind about this is that apparently nobody in the chain of command at the university thinks there's anything wrong with what this brilliant idiot has done. If I were the prosecutor here, I would charge everybody who know about the experiment with a billion counts of attempted murder (just a back-of-the-envelope estimate), and throw the fuckers in the can for life. Unbelievable.

    2. Re:Homeland security would like a word... by mellon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You are correct—this isn't attempted murder. But IMHO it's in the same moral category. I think you are basically right that it's a failure to think outside of the immediate problem space, but what a failure. Imagine if 40-60% of the people you have ever met or heard of, as well as those you don't, died within a month. The 1918 flu left emotional scars that persisted for generations. And that had a 2% mortality rate. The amount of suffering this person could have caused through his narrow thinking is more than has ever been experienced in all of history.

  2. So ... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They essentially are making biological weapons in violation of international treaties, but they're saying it's all OK because it's for research?

    Sorry, but what? If someone in Iran was doing this people would be calling for airstrikes.

    The hubris of thinking "it's OK, I'm a trained professional, nothing bad can happen" is mind boggling.

    How is it even legal to be making deadlier strains of viruses?

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    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:So ... by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes that has to be it. It couldn't possibly be because biological research is amazingly difficult, and of the tools we have to study cells (few) we have even fewer to study viruses.

      The entire point of gain-of-function studies is that you need to do them in order to confirm a hypothesis about what genes in a virus are actually doing. If you don't do them, you can't know. Knock-out studies aren't enough - you can easily break a certain system, but it doesn't tell you that you actually understand how it functions.

      Sensationalist articles like this are incredibly stupid and dangerous to boot. We only have the slim number of effective anti-viral drugs we do because of research like this. How else do you think they figure out which biological pathways are worth targeting to shutdown a virus?

      And that's not all: the other side of gain-of-function is of course to try and predict future vectors. Since treating the common flu is usually a losing prospect at the moment, and it takes time to manufacture things, its important to determine if any given species could trivially gain extra functionality which would make it dangerous - since that affects decisions about what strains to grow up for the yearly flu vaccine.

    2. Re:So ... by theshowmecanuck · · Score: 1, Insightful

      We already know nature can create deadlier viruses. These are a bunch of irresponsible geeks seeing if they can make the most deadly strain for the mental masturbation and bragging rights. They don't need to do this to plan for disaster. And the only way their biology is likely to be of use is if their own strain escapes. Nature will make its own version which they will need to analyze for possible treatments. You don't need to create a potential civilization killer to learn those techniques either. Hubris is the right word for this.

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      -- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
    3. Re:So ... by Goldsmith · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not fair at all to link opposition to gain in function research to an "anti-science" mindset. You should be ashamed that you're resorting to that argument.

      This is something which is seriously debated in the pages of serious journals, at scientific conferences and by government program managers. To link valid concerns to an "anti-science" crowd is political bullshit maneuvering.

      There is a very real and valid cost/benefit analysis to be done on pursuing this work. As biology catches up to the physical sciences in scope and function, you're going to deal with the same issues we have dealt with (I am a physicist). One of those lessons is that scientists don't get to decide the purpose of our work. It doesn't matter what you write in your paper, or what the program manager tells you the purpose of the work is. It doesn't matter WHY someone does the work, all that matters is WHAT the work is. It's extremely naÃve to think an abstract in a research paper can properly define the purpose of a piece of research.

      There are experiments and research paths we do not follow because the intellectual benefit does not outweigh the very real possibilities for misuse. You asked how you expect people to validate these hypothesis without the work? Take a page from physical science and learn to use computer modeling and limited experimental work in lieu of full studies. Do some tool development. Don't just throw up your hands and insist this is the only way. It's not.

      This will require a cultural change, and there will be lots of hand-wringing over whether new results are valid, but biology will be a more mature field for it.

    4. Re: So ... by MmmmAqua · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Okay, I hope I've misunderstood you. I work in genomics research, and your post seems, on its face, misinformed at best. Are you seriously suggesting that the computer modeling common to physics and chemistry can be applied to biological systems? Even in the case of something as "simple" as a virus (which may consist of tens to hundreds of thousands of kb pairs, specifying dozens or hundreds of RNA transcripts), simply modeling the virus is meaningless. You would also have to completely model host organisms and their immediate environments. Not even the NSA has that kind of compute power. You're dealing with emergent behaviors in interdependent systems far beyond the scope of what computer modeling can handle. There is no "model it as a simple sphere" approach in biology that can yield meaningful results at this level. Until we can phone up whatever god you happen to believe in (if any), the only way to find out what changing a virus will do to the virus, is to change the virus. The information gained is valuable enough that it is worth the minor risk involved in gaining it.

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      Arr! The laws of physics be a harsh mistress!
    5. Re:So ... by Jason+Levine · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because nature does that sort of thing all the time. If we do it in a controlled, lab environment, we can understand what happens when genes get switched up and how to stop viruses. The alternative is sitting around until a lethal virus appears and then trying to quickly do research on it while people die. If the story was about some guy who did this research and didn't exercise proper safeguards on the viruses, I'd agree that this was stupid, but as long as proper safety protocols are followed, the risk of the virus getting out can be pushed to nearly zero.

      Before someone says "but it's not zero and until there's zero risk you shouldn't do this", that's the same argument that the anti-vaxxers use against vaccines. "They aren't 100% safe so until they are we shouldn't use them." In the case of vaccines, the small risk of the vaccine causing some harm is dwarfed by the huge risk of the disease it prevents. In the case of this virus research, the tiny risk of the virus escaping is dwarfed by the benefit of knowing just how viruses work and how to defeat them.

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      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    6. Re: So ... by gizmo2199 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Until one day the Level 1 vial ends up in the incinerator, and the Level 4 vial ends up in the trash can, because, you know, shit happens; end result, millions dead.

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      This Sig does not Exist.
  3. Re:The solution is quite simple... by Alejux · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No one made the Spanish Flu, yet it appeared and killed millions of people. This type of study, while dangerous if not done safely, will help protect us from future occurrences of similar types of virus. The best way we can protect ourselves from an enemy, if to understand them. This is much needed research.

  4. Re:Huh by Rob+Riggs · · Score: 3, Insightful

    http://thebulletin.org/making-viruses-lab-deadlier-and-more-able-spread-accident-waiting-happen7374

    Reading comprehension is such a lost art these days. It was the H1N1 virus that caused the pandemic, which the Chinese scientists used in their research; not the results of the Chinese research that caused the pandemic.

    From the cited article:

    a team of Chinese scientists to create a hybrid viral strain between the H5N1 avian influenza virus and the H1N1 human flu virus that triggered a pandemic in 2009 and claimed several thousand lives.

    For those challenged individuals, this sentence fragment should be parsed as:

    (a team of Chinese scientists) ... (create a hybrid viral strain) (BETWEEN) (the H5N1 avian influenza virus) AND (the H1N1 human flu virus that triggered a pandemic in 2009 and claimed several thousand lives).

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    the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
  5. Risk vs Reward by joocemann · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The inherent risks in producing excessive virulence via human synthesis, not nature, are very high. The reward of studying these types of phenomenon are very low. The virulence factors can be studied in their natural forms, or individually. Studying the impact of excessive synthetic virulence may give some useful insights, but the risks are far too high. I personally would like to see an internationally agreed ban in the following way:

    - It is illegal, and criminal, to knowingly increase the virulence of live or replicating versions of bacterial, fungal, or viral forms. Even under the most stringent biosafety level facilities and care, a deliberate increase in virulence is criminally punishable.

    As people we should hold this very serious. A person with a mere bachelor's degree in molecular biology can initiate extremely dangerous things. I am a cell biologist and I have experience in immunity and have personally engaged in the application of individual virulence factors for research purposes. I have seen what the application of even one virulence factor can do to cell immunity. I am extremely fearful of people gluing these factors together. I consider their work ego driven and not very helpful in the scope of human health research.