An article by former NYT science reporter Donald McNeil suggests that the answer is likely yes:
Despite constantly rising biosafety levels, viruses we already know to be lethal, from smallpox to SARS, have repeatedly broken loose by accident.
Most leaks infect or kill just a few people before they are stopped by isolation and/or vaccination. But not all: scientists now believe that the H1N1 seasonal flu that killed thousands every year from 1977 to 2009 was influenza research gone feral. The strain first appeared in eastern Russia in 1977 and its genes were initially identical to a 1950 strain; that could have happened only if it had been in a freezer for 27 years. It also initially behaved as if it had been deliberately attenuated, or weakened. So scientists suspect it was a Russian effort to make a vaccine against a possible return of the 1918 flu. And then, they theorize, the vaccine virus, insufficiently weakened, began spreading.
The paper McNeil links to suggests that the discovery of this accident contributed to a moratorium on gain-of-function research, which was instituted in 2014. The ban was then lifted in December 2017. Will recent claims of a Chinese lab leak origin for Covid-19 lead to a new ban of gain-of-function research?
Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch has warned about the dangers of gain-of-function research for many years. He recently signed a letter that suggested the Covid-19 virus might have come from either a lab leak or a natural source. We don’t know. But even if there is only a one in three chance it came from a lab leak, then the expected value for lab leak deaths over the past year would be more than a million (probably much more.) So this is a risk that needs to be taken seriously.
It seem to me that scientists who disagree with Lipsitch need to describe their views in very precise terms:
1. Are they saying that gain-of-function research is not in fact dangerous, even if there were a lab leak? But in that case, why build BSL-4 level labs?
2. Are they saying that such research is potentially dangerous, but in practical terms it is not dangerous because such research is done in very secure labs where accidents will not occur? But in that case how do you explain the 1977-2009 H1N1 epidemic?
3. Are they saying this research is dangerous, but the benefits outweigh the costs? So why does Lipsitch say the benefits are small?
But Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, says that gain-of-function studies “have done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemics — yet they risked creating an accidental pandemic”. He argues that such experiments should not happen at all.
I’m genuinely confused on this issue. Obviously I’m not a scientist, and am not qualified to comment on purely scientific questions. But I am very interested in public health risks, and would like the scientific community to more clearly explain why they think gain-of-function research does not expose the world to a risk of a pandemic that could kills hundreds of millions of people. Why are Marc Lipsitch’s fears wrong?
BTW, after my previous post I was taken to task for hyperbolic language about nuclear bomb experiments and Frankenstein monsters. Thus this part of McNeil’s essay caught my eye:
Like nuclear bomb testing, the need for “gain of function” research is hotly contested.
Proponents argue that it is the only way to stay ahead of epidemics: in a world full of emerging diseases, if you can figure out which pathogens are only a few amino acids tweaks shy of disaster, you can develop and stockpile vaccines and antibodies against them.
Opponents say that, noble as that goal may be, it is inherently too dangerous to pursue by building Frankensteins and poking them to see how strong they are.
Maybe my analogies were not so far-fetched.
READER COMMENTS
A. C.
May 18 2021 at 4:37pm
Decades ago I heard a saying where I was working:
“One ‘oh, sh*t’ wipes out a thousand ‘atta boys!'”
It was a way of saying that no matter how outstandingly well you did your job, and no matter how much praise you got for doing it exactly right, a single error could make all the resulting good results and will and admiration of everyone around you vanish. You would be remembered for your mistake by many and for a longer time than you would have been remembered for all the time that you did your job perfectly. I think it’s very possible that the virus escaped in a single, brief “oh, sh*t” momentary error. Possibly even one that didn’t appear consequential at the time.
Your questions in the light of how brief a safety failure can be and its worldwide consequences really make your questions not very relevant.
Alan Goldhammer
May 18 2021 at 5:29pm
Back in the early days when recombinant DNA technology was first emerging there were concerns about the use of the tools and what bad outcomes might arise. A moritorium on research was accepted by scientists in the field and a conference on this was held that led to a series of recommendations and research proceeded cautiously using appropriate containment levels (at the time I was doing some research on whooping cough, trying to identify some of the lethal factors but no rDNA was used in my work but some of my colleagues at NIH were active in the field so I was tracking things). They came up with a review process for experiments and assigned four biosafety levels for research categories based on potential human harm. I don’t see that
I don’t know all the answers to what happened in Wuhan but gain of function experiments can be dangerous if working with human pathogens. I’ve seen stories indicating that coronavirus research was carried out at BS-L 2 (biosafety level 2) containment which strikes me as a too cavalier approach. I’m a biochemist by training and not a virologist but it strikes me that Lipsitsch is right in his reasoning. Certainly if such research is to proceed, higher containment levels should be mandated.
Whether we ever know the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is unknown. There are several pathways, including animal transmission which was thought to be the route early on. That the Chinese government is being less than candid is just wrong.
There needs to be a more open discussion of what types of basic virology research that will be permitted and the containment levels.
Alan Goldhammer
May 18 2021 at 5:32pm
I forgot to add to my comment above that the Chinese scientists are to be commended for the hard work put in trying to understand SARS-CoV-2 once the pandemic spread. When I was still writing my newsletter last year, there were numerous outstanding papers coming from Wuhan and other laboratories in China on the biochemistry, etiology, infectivity and possible therapeutic approaches
Ken P
May 18 2021 at 7:35pm
Gain of function research does not require rDNA. In fact, it is more efficient without it. No reason to try one intelligent design change at a time, when you can just let evolution pave the way and select mutations that worked.
rDNA can help, though. Chinese researchers have transgenic mice that express the ACE2 receptor in lung tissue. Some researchers have speculated that these transgenic mice were used to conduct the GoF research.
Alan Goldhammer
May 19 2021 at 7:39am
I agree but that was not the point of the citation. The issue is the safety of ‘gain of function’ research and what containment level should be employed. From my reading this exercise has not been carried out.
john hare
May 18 2021 at 6:08pm
Where the virus originated seems to me less important than the reactions that exacerbated the problem. The origination is important, however, the ability to handle the problem was clearly lacking.
IMO, the reaction was akin to panicking when the brakes fail in your car and you start whipping the steering wheel and hitting every pedal and switch in sight. A bad problem becomes a terrible one.
Scott Sumner
May 18 2021 at 6:57pm
I’m less interested in the question of where this or that virus came from than I am in the question of whether this research is too dangerous for us to be doing it at all.
robc
May 20 2021 at 9:26am
I think that is a dangerous path to go down. It is quite possible the risk from banning it is far worse than the risk from the research.
Slippery slope may be a logical fallacy, but it isn’t a political fallacy.
Scott Sumner
May 20 2021 at 12:12pm
Yes, that’s possible, just as banning private research on nuclear bombs might be a bad idea. But on balance I think both are good ideas.
robc
May 20 2021 at 1:19pm
The hard part of nuke bombs isn’t the nuclear side, its a timing issue. The initial bomb or whatever that brings the pieces together is the tricky part. And all of that research is totally okay to do.
The nuclear side was already being researched before the Manhattan project, just not in a swift enough way to win the war. At this point in time, the understanding of the fissile materials is good enough that that isn’t the issue.
You might be right about both, but I would err on the side of caution and not ban either. In general, rogue governments have killed far more people than rogue nukes or rogue viruses.
Jens
May 21 2021 at 6:11am
robc wrote:
You might be right about both, but I would err on the side of caution and not ban either. In general, rogue governments have killed far more people than rogue nukes or rogue viruses.
How does omission to ban rogue virus or rogue nuclear bomb research impede rogue governments from killing people?
Ken P
May 18 2021 at 8:04pm
This was a good thing, but it has no teeth. I’ve seen articles that claimed the research continued under an exception listed in a footnote. Also, the NIH seems to use a different definition for GoF than most scientists. There’s also the fungibility of funds. You can fund general experiments at a lab that is conducting GoF and claim you didn’t fund GoF.
Your questions:
There is a list of organisms that are classified as BSL4. Uncharacterized viruses that are similar to those on the list should be treated as similarly dangerous. BSL4 has nothing to do with GoF. Imagine using BSL-4 with animals.
Idk. Probably assuming stringent level of control will avoid mishaps.
I tend to agree with Lipsitch on low benefits but it’s a matter of opinion. It’s like economists debating the benefits of a stimulus bill.
Theoretically, the benefit is that this would allow pre-development of a vaccine before a particular mutation emerges. I find that highly unlikely, but suppose it worked. With the excessive regulatory burden, how would this vaccine be produced and distributed? We had vaccines shown to be reasonably safe and they produced a significant level of neutralizing antibodies. But we still allowed >1,000 people to die every day for months on end rather than allow the general population to have a vaccine without proven efficacy results.
Lizard Man
May 18 2021 at 10:14pm
With the new mRNA vaccine technology, how much more do we need to develop vaccine technology in order to be able to swiftly develop effective vaccines? And if most newly emerging viruses are zoonotic in origin, can’t we just try to develop vaccines for viruses in the most dangerous virus families for animals in order to prepare for newly emerging human viruses from those virus families?
Phil H
May 18 2021 at 11:40pm
One of the problems with a ban or moratorium on virus research is that the Chinese and Russians would ignore it. Consider the genetically engineered baby apparently born in a Chinese hospital a couple of years ago.
At this moment in history, science is a geopolitical competition. That has both positive and negative sides (cf. the bomb and the Apollo program). Past experience suggests that it won’t be stopped; it can only be done in a safer or less safe way.
Scott Sumner
May 19 2021 at 12:03pm
I don’t see why that makes a ban unwise. If we stop doing it, then there is less risk of an accident.
stoneybatter
May 19 2021 at 8:40am
I’m most interested in your third question. What are the benefits from gain-of function research, if any?
The point about being able to “develop and stockpile vaccines and antibodies” ahead of a future pandemic seems laughably unfeasible to me, especially after the last year. If there are smaller/less tangible benefits, the bar to banning this type of research would be even lower.
Capt. J Parker
May 19 2021 at 12:01pm
Dr. Sumner said:
Great to ask the question. However, when it comes to the PRC even if the answer is that it is too dangerous, don’t expect the PRC to comply with any restrictions.
PRC went to great lengths to discredit and obfuscate the lab-leak theory for the origin of SARS CoV 2. Why? The answer is that the Wuhan labs studying bat viruses were very likely engaging in activities that violated the international ban on bio-weapons research. Any scrutiny of the labs pursuant to determining the origin of SARS C0V 2 ran the risk of uncovering that violation and needed to be avoided at all costs. Even if those costs were millions of deaths worldwide.
Scott Sumner
May 19 2021 at 12:04pm
You said:
“The answer is that the Wuhan labs studying bat viruses were very likely engaging in activities that violated the international ban on bio-weapons research.”
No evidence has ever been presented to support that claim.
Capt. J Parker
May 19 2021 at 3:30pm
Dr. Sumner said:
I disagree, circumstantial evidence is still evidence. If you mean that there is not physical, documentary or eyewitness testimonial evidence then I agree. Simillarly, there is no evidence of the this latter type to support the type to support the claim that SARS CoV 2 escaped from a Wuhan lab.
Only one of two scenarios is true: Either SARS CoV 2 escaped from a Wuhan lab or it did not. If it did not, the PRC had everything to gain being totally transparent with WHO investigators. They were not. Why?
If SARS CoV 2 did escape from a Wuhan lab then, in addition to the global havoc and loss of life, PRC engaged in a series of lies trying to cover up that fact.
Either way the PRC looks very dirty. I’m betting the first scenario is the correct one because if it were the latter PRC would have held a trial to assign blame to some government official responsible for virology laboratory safety, executed him and told the rest of the world the matter was closed and they need to move on.
https://japan-forward.com/is-china-producing-biological-weapons-look-at-its-capabilities-and-international-compliance/
https://japan-forward.com/biological-weapons-the-focus-of-chinas-military-research-in-the-last-20-years/
Scott Sumner
May 19 2021 at 7:06pm
You’ve shifted from discussing the theory that it was weapons research to the unrelated claim that the virus escaped from a lab. I’ll take that as an admission that your previous accusation was unfounded.
Capt. J Parker
May 19 2021 at 11:51pm
Dr. Sumner said:
I have done no such thing. I have continued discussing the question of whether the PRC can be trusted to be truthful, cooperate with international regulatory agencies and adhere to the terms of international treaties. This question directly relates to your stated interest in determining the desirability of a ban on gain of function virus research.
All the evidence based on PRCs behavior suggests the PRC cannot be trusted. The evidence that PRC can’t be trusted is strong if you assume SARS CoV 2 escaped from a lab in Wuhan and it remains strong even if you assume there was no lab escape. In this latter instance, where the lab is blameless for releasing SARS CoV 2, the best explanitation for PRC not allowing full and comp!ete access to Wuhan lab facilites and records is that the lab was engaged in activity PRC wanted to hide from the world. Bio weapons research is the most probable thing they would want to hide.
(Please note here that I never made any claim that SARS CoV 2 was the product of bio weapons research as you seem to suggest when you wrote “the theory it was bio weapons research” without being clear what it is supposed to refer to in that sentence. I claim only that the Wuhan labs were conducting such research and that if SARS CoV 2 didn’t escape from a Wuhan lab, the need to hide bio weapons research in those labs best explains PRCs surreptitious behavior regarding the Wuhan labs)
So, the question of a ban on gain of function research is irrelevant when it comes to restricting PRC activities. The only way to keep PRC from doing biological research that would present an unacceptable risk to the rest of the world would be an international embargo on the sharing of bio technology with PRC and its citizens.
Scott Sumner
May 20 2021 at 12:15pm
Your logic escapes me. You think the PRC would be happy if the whole world thought the pandemic was caused by a lab accident when they were doing non-military “gain-of-function” research? That’s pretty far-fetched.
Capt J. Parker
May 20 2021 at 6:36pm
But you don’t think the lab accident scenario is likely so what would explain PRCs destruction of records and limiting access to the labs if there was indeed no lab accident AND no banned (i.e. bio weapons work) activity at the lab?
Andrew_FL
May 19 2021 at 2:40pm
Connecting the gain of function moratorium in 2014 to the 1977 flu pandemic in the above way seems to imply that it was only relatively recently discovered. But that’s not true-in fact it was known at the time:
Nakajima, K., Desselberger, U. & Palese, P. Recent human influenza A (H1N1) viruses are closely related genetically to strains isolated in 1950. Nature 274, 334–339 (1978).
Do you believe a ban on gain-of-function research is *only* justified if the “lab leak theory” is correct? I think your answer is probably “no” in which case I would avoid, if I were you, using an extremely unlikely theory with no genetic evidence in support of it as the crux of your argument.
Mark Bahner
May 19 2021 at 4:20pm
You’re saying that the theory that the 1977 flu pandemic was caused by a release of a 1950 strain is “…an extremely unlikely theory with no genetic evidence in support of it…”?
The Nature article to which you linked seems to support the theory (at least to me…I have zero expertise in this matter).
Scott Sumner
May 19 2021 at 7:11pm
I think he’s saying the China lab leak theory is unlikely.
Scott Sumner
May 19 2021 at 7:10pm
You said:
“Do you believe a ban on gain-of-function research is *only* justified if the “lab leak theory” is correct? I think your answer is probably “no” in which case I would avoid, if I were you, using an extremely unlikely theory with no genetic evidence in support of it as the crux of your argument.”
You misunderstood my point. I don’t believe the theory that the virus escaped from a Chinese lab (although I think that theory might be true), rather my worries about gain-of-function research are based on the fact that accidents are inevitable, and that we shouldn’t be doing research that might kill hundreds of millions of people. Whatever did or did not happen in Wuhan is essentially unrelated to this concern.
BTW, I do believe that the H1N1 virus escaped from a lab, although I’m not certain it was a Russian lab.
Grand Rapids Mike
May 20 2021 at 9:14pm
Interesting this coming out now. A year ago DJT was critized for calling it the China or Wuhan Virus. If Fuaci was involved in funding this research, Covid should the Fauci Virus.
MikeW
May 21 2021 at 12:31pm
This is a good article on some of the political issues:
https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-scientists-sacrificed-scepticism/
Michael Rulle
May 24 2021 at 9:31am
I just assume the world will never stop “gain of function” research. What a term. I can not tell the difference between this and bio-warfare research. In either case one does want to discover antidotes to potential killers. My guess is we are stuck with this forever. Maybe if it were pure bio-warfare research the methods would be different. But I am guessing we do the latter anyway. When has mankind ever restrained itself from increasing its capacity to kill? Fear of others, which seems ingrained in our nature, requires we do so—-or so it seems.
18 months after the fact, it is no longer a conspiracy theory to suggest it “might” have been a leak. I know it is impolite to bring politics into this topic, so I will end my political comment here.
We will never get a conclusive answer anyway. The real point is possible accidents can happen. More than nuke testing accidents? Don’t know.
Good topic—-I think we are stuck with ever increasing danger—-but balance of power concepts do seem to help.
Comments are closed.