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."

Comments

Homeland security would like a word...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Homeland security would like a word...

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientists do this all the time. My buddy once worked in a lab in Maryland that engineered extremely virulent (in some cases deadly) rhinoviruses. Killer colds!

They do this to understand what makes a virus more dangerous, or what makes it more contagious. It's part of the scientific method. If you have a theory that gene Z can make a virus more deadly, the best way to _test_ that hypothesis is to add gene Z to the virus and compare its effects to a control. You're not doing it to make a deadly virus; you're doing it so you can detect deadly viruses in the wild. Over time this has allowed us to estimate the future damage of viral epidemics with increasing accuracy.

Of course, "best" is relative. It's best in the sense that it provides the most sound scientific data. But the potential non-scientific externalities come into play in a big way. The "best" way to test the radiological effects of nuclear fall-out is to drop a bomb on a population, but obviously that's a tad unethical.

Re:Homeland security would like a word...

[mellon]

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.

So ...

[gstoddart]

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?

Re:So ...

[Electricity Likes Me]

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.

Re:So ...

[Electricity Likes Me]

I mean seriously. Skip the stupid article and actually read the abstract:

Wild birds harbor a large gene pool of influenza A viruses that have the potential to cause influenza pandemics. Foreseeing and understanding this potential is important for effective surveillance. Our phylogenetic and geographic analyses revealed the global prevalence of avian influenza virus genes whose proteins differ only a few amino acids from the 1918 pandemic influenza virus, suggesting that 1918-like pandemic viruses may emerge in the future. To assess this risk, we generated and characterized a virus composed of avian influenza viral segments with high homology to the 1918 virus. This virus exhibited pathogenicity in mice and ferrets higher than that in an authentic avian influenza virus. Further, acquisition of seven amino acid substitutions in the viral polymerases and the hemagglutinin surface glycoprotein conferred respiratory droplet transmission to the 1918-like avian virus in ferrets, demonstrating that contemporary avian influenza viruses with 1918 virus-like proteins may have pandemic potential.

The entire point of this research was to test whether we're at risk of something like the 1918 flu virus reoccurring, since the current avian flu virus is strikingly similar. This strikes me as kind of an important thing to know, since it informs almost every aspect of disease-response planning.

The research was about taking avian flu, performing some fairly likely gene splicing of the type we know can happen during viral replication or incubation, and seeing if the observations of similarity are a problem. Turns out they are. But that also suggests that we might be able to make drugs which target the specific genes which confer the worst effects.

Unless of course we do something really stupid, like letting sensationalist bullshit convince people to go all anti-science.

Re:So ...

[Goldsmith]

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.

Redundancy or illiterate attempt at intensifiers?

[Samantha Wright]

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?

Re:The solution is quite simple...

[Alejux]

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.

Re:Haven't they read The Stand???

[Electricity Likes Me]

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).