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How to Maintain Lab Safety While Making Viruses Deadlier
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."
It's not just for electronics and code anymore.
Someone put this scientist on the no fly list. That's some Twelve Monkeys shit he's pulling right there.
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?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Hell, common sense MIA.
I thought for a minute that this was an 'Ask Slashdot' article and that we as a species were screwed.
Link to Chinese lab incidenrt?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Why should anyone take this seriously when the lede itself contains conspiracy fodder? The 2009 swiine flu outbreak started in Mexico - it wasn't some lab virus and it certainly didn't escape from China.
in 2009, a group of Chinese scientists created a viral strain of flu virus
a viral strain of flu virus
Well, at least it wasn't a... eukaryotic strain of flu virus?
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
http://thebulletin.org/making-...
Madness...as if Ebola was not enough.
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.
The best way to protect the human race from future occurrences of deadly pathogens, such as ebola and Spanish flu, is to study them and understand why they are so deadly so we can find ways we can counteract them if similar epidemics occur in the future.
Seems pretty obvious you didn't try and click through to the freely available abstract, which explains exactly why they did this. It's linked in the article in the OP (who notably also probably didn't read it).
They just mean that everyone on Twitter and Youtube shared it :D #goviral #yolo
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Why? Because it kills before it spreads. That is why Ebola is not particularly scary.
The real 'dangerous' virus kill about 20% of the time, and in the rest of the population it just makes sick - so it can be passed along to other people.
Now, there are exceptions. Prime examples are diseases that spread by air and can also reproduce in non-humans. Another prime example is a disease with a long incubation and minimal symptoms until it kills. Aids is a good example of this. It suffers from the difficulty in transmission, but otherwise is dangerous.
But back to the original dangerous virus. Something that kills 20% of the time, but otherwise lives in you without killing you. This is really nasty. Think of one out of every five people you know being killed by something they caught from YOU.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The safest approach is to not fscking do this kind of insanity in the first place.
Certainly. If the research is likely to have a public health benefit (likely, not tenuous connection), and there is NO other way to obtain the benefit, then I could see room for debate and careful consideration.
Short of that, this is just playing with fire. It seems like we have more controls over using primates in experiments than creating civilization-destroying viruses...
not trying to create fucking deadly viruses in the first place?
Absolutely agree. This is just bio weapons research under a different name and I'll bet you anything it's funded by DARPA.
This is NOT a fcking biological warfare research! For fucksake, read about the research! It's about understanding why the Spanish Flu was so deadly. This research helped us identify the genes which made that disease so deadly in the first place, so we have a better fighting chance to prevent other similar diseases from killing millions of people like that one did.
Most countries that ratified the Bioweapons Convention just moved all their offensive research under the umbrella of defensive programs.
The difference between "we're making this stuff to kill people" and "we're making this stuff to design defenses against killing people" is one of semantics.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Well, at least it wasn't a... eukaryotic strain of flu virus?
Thank you. Now I don't have to post this.
Interesting, but completely off-topic.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
There is potential benefit. The problem is that the costs appear to outweigh the benefit by many orders of magnitude.
The introduction above is full of errors. First, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS) piece falsely claims that the Watanabe paper describes taking "genes from the deadly human 1918 Spanish Flu and insert[ing] them into the H5N1 avian flu to make a new virus." Rather the paper, with the title "Circulating Avian Influenza Viruses Closely Related to the 1918 Virus Have Pandemic Potential", describes assembling a new virus from genes similar (displaying homology) to the 1918 virus. This may be scary in itself, but it is nothing like what either the BAS or the slashdot piece describe. Second, the slashdot post asserts that "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." To my knowledge, this is A) completely wrong, and B) appears to be based on a misunderstanding of the BAS text. The Dando and Novossiolova piece in BAS uses the following verbiage "a team of Chinese scientists [created] 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." The naturally occurring H1N1(2009) strain killed people; the laboratory hybrid did not. Again, creating that hybrid might be scary, but the slashdot post gets the facts completely wrong.
Any of these kinds of experiments/research should be done on spacestations (or maybe deepsea-stations) where it isn't a threath to populations and enviroments.. Scientists are crazy to even try these kinds of experiments..
Except if there's ever an accidental release, it's going to matter very little what their intentions were in creating the strain.
This Sig does not Exist.
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.
The Spanish Flu killed upwards of 5 percent of the world's population in one year in a world with much slower travel. Do you really think something like this, purposely designed to be far more lethal, would be counteracted in time to to help? If this gets out, the *remaining* five percent will understand why the other ninety-five died. Keep in mind, it it escapes, the researchers will be the first to go.
Here.
The title of the paper is "Circulating Avian Influenza Viruses Closely Related to the 1918 Virus Have Pandemic Potential" and only talks about CURRENTLY CIRCULATING viruses. I have not read the paper, only the abstract, but even the abstract indicates that all they are doing is studying the behavior of currently circulating viruses that are similar to the Spanish Flu of 1918. Sensationalizing a random paper is a great way to make headlines, but the truth will always out. In this case, the sooner the better. This is not to say we don't need to be careful and follow the suggestion to seriously review all "gain-of-function" virus research and don't do it if it can be avoided. But this article is quite flamboyant and inflammatory, probably just to draw attention to this risk. However, credibility has been sacrificed. Too bad.
Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints.
Seems pretty obvious you didn't try and click through....
Welcome to Slashdot.
Do you have ESP?
Good things definitely can, and have, come out of this kind of research. But it's walking along close to the edge of a high cliff. Sometims it feels as if they are seeing how close to the edge they can walk without falling over.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You are certainly the fool who thinks that we should do something just for the sake of doing it...: "The entire point of gain-of-function studies is that you need to do them in order to confirm a hypothesis" Ok so, you hypothesize that people will drop like flies if I do 'THIS' DON'T DO IT, And don't put thoughts in other peoples heads that its so great or easy to do it. A meaner idiot will do this and send you a copy. Hey.. its ok.. it just had to be done. This is truly the worst case of pandoras box.
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
The parent needs to be modded up and Timothy needs to mod himself down for allowing such an inflammatory, unfounded submission blaming the Chinese.
It is no wonder readership is down over the last 10 years.
10 years ago, there were regularly 800-1000 comments on articles. Now, a highly commented article gets around 200.
It's a shame that the editors have stopped doing their jobs and post anything without checking it (at best!). But this isn't the first time I've seen it.
This submission is obviously false, and it needs to be pulled down or with the inflammatory and false sentence deleted. Since it's been up for hours, and there are numerous posts above that debunk the submission, it leads me to believe that Slashdot wants the clickbait and is leaving it up on purpose.
Do the right thing. Pull the article. Save what's left of your reputation, Slashdot.
My guess is that the problem is that they sold out.
Simple fact is that the type of person Slashdot used to appeal to is like 1% of the population. The moment a web site catering to 1% of the population decides to become profitable, it's faced with a choice: Continue to serve that 1%, or change your content and appeal to a different but larger 2%, and after that, change it even more and appeal to 4% of the population. Never mind that you lost that original 1%, since you're only in it for the money.
Can't say I blame them. If I had a cool web site, and got to choose between having a cool web site or having a lot of money, I'd probably choose the money too. Of course, I'd probably also just go make another cool web site so that I could have both. It'd be nice if the Slashdot editors would do that so that the small portion of that original 1% which remains here can stop reading BS like this and just read their new site. It probably wouldn't even be any extra work for them, they could just take the Slashdot submissions they normally discard for being too intellectual and insufficiently emotional and just post them to their own site at the end of the day.
The Spanish Flu killed upwards of 5 percent of the world's population in one year in a world ...
Repeating this bullshit 100 times on this article does not make it true.
The spanish flu killed 3 - 8% of the infected people, depending on source. The more agreed consent is: 50 million dead out of 500 million infected.
Some judge up to 25% (70 - 100 million out of roughly 500 million infected). In nations like germany the infection rate was about 60% of the population, but the death toll was relatively low.
The fact how much that is regarding the world population is irrelevant as 3/4th of the world population luckily never got infected!
In our days with planes and such, very unlikely. If a new kind of flu brakes out we easy can have hundreds of infection nests all over the planet in less than a week. Before anyone even notices what is going on.
Good luck
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The difference between "we're making this stuff to kill people" and "we're making this stuff to design defenses against killing people" is one of semantics.
Not really. To make a weapon you need a carrier.
A simple bomb does not work. So you need suicide assassins that 'poison' the target. Would probably work for brain washed 'islamists', or not.
Or you have to do real weapons research and figure how to distribute it with a 'bomb'.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
How can an outbreak that killed only thousands be considered a pandemic? It was quite worldwide but thousands spread over billions just isn't an epidemic or pandemic or whatever.
By that reasoning we probably have yearly common cold pandemics.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Richard Preston wrote a book called, "Demon in the Freezer". Read it...
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