"Lipsitch’s activists (calling themselves the Cambridge Working Group) sent around a strong statement on the perils of research with “Potential Pandemic Pathogens,” signed by more than a hundred scientists. The work might “trigger outbreaks that would be difficult or impossible to control,” the signers said. Fauci reconsidered, and the White House in 2014 announced that there would be a “pause” in the funding of new influenza, SARS, and MERS gain-of-function research." [0]
In December 2017, the US began funding gain-of-function research on these deadly diseases again. This research creates deadly diseases that may not have existed otherwise.
This pandemic has been enough for me to strongly believe that there should be a global ban on gain-of-function experiments on deadly viruses and bacteria. I'd like to help prevent a future pandemic, and that's one clear way we can help.
[0] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca...
This seems like a supremely bad idea.
Only inside level four labs, of course. But early warning (and this work on mitigation) seems important.
Must be in rural isolation, NOT a city.
The administrators and janitors and everyone has to sleep inside the fence.
Getting out requires spending 40 days in a quarantine hotel in a different nearby fenced area.
Armed guards patrol the fence.
(EDIT: To be clear. BSL-5 doesn't exist yet... but it should.)
I'd genuinely like to know what we would get out of it that would warrant such risk taking?
A failed experiment? Maybe a bit more likely, but still I don't think so
Sars-Cov-2 looks like pretty much what it is: a zoonotic virus that "doesn't know what's going on"
Hence why only the recent mutations made its transmission more efficient.
Now, if it escaped unbeknownst from a research lab, that I would put on the plausible category. Would be more possible if it wouldn't have had a perfect virus breeding ground right next to it.
It is unenforceable from the start. All the major world powers would continue their research (perhaps slightly less openly) simply from a MAD angle (it is irresponsible to ignore the value of a pathogen that no one else has seen and you have the antibiotics for).
We are living in dark times in terms of our technological capability and the aggressiveness of state actors.
I would argue that the only chance we have is to reign in the behaviours of our states. Crazy and seemingly impossible, but stopping science/tech is far beyond reach.
What you can do is follow chains of mutations and infections and try to get somewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_virus_retention_debat...
So, while it may not be 100% foolproof, it would be quite meaningful.
It was actually remarkably stable in the early days suggesting it was used to reproducing in human cells. Or so Professor Petrovsky says https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8356751/How-COVID-1...
As how that could have happened lab wise here's Daszak saying they routinely infect human cells with coronavirus in the lab https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1701&v=IdYDL_RK--w&feature=y...
Or maybe it was in humans a bit before it took off. I see Daszak's kind of changed his tune a bit these days to not mention anything like that lab stuff.
The common Flu can infect horses and even chickens. "stability in human cells" means pretty much nothing
Would you make the same argument for software vulnerability research? I think the arguments against both are the same, and with the same result: white-hat researchers will halt their work, leaving more of the field available to black-hat researcers.
Anyway Murphy's law is always applicable and we need the capability to fight fires even more.
It is also much easier to stop bad software than bad biology. Software is much simpler than the human body.
Is there a reliable reference that the US is no longer researching biochemical weapons?
Wikipedia claims: "Both the U.S. bio-weapons ban and the Biological Weapons Convention restricted any work in the area of biological warfare to defensive in nature. In reality, this gives BWC member-states wide latitude to conduct biological weapons research because the BWC contains no provisions for monitoring or enforcement.[74][75] The treaty, essentially, is a gentlemen's agreement amongst members backed by the long-prevailing thought that biological warfare should not be used in battle.[74]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_biological_weapo...
As an RE geek, and a biologist, the Movies were so f'ing awful... I'm playing the new reboot of the Outbreak series, my favorite of all, RE: Resistance and its pretty awesome and still does way more with genre of survival horror in what was simply an add-on DLC cash-in to sell an updated RE3 then all the horrible movies combined. Online play was always more fun, but now that you're the villainous 'master mind' behind the plot kill the subjects for your own gain is absolutely brilliant, something sorely lacking the same Raccoon City Outbreak universe.
They simply did what Hollywood always does: make shit up and refused to speak about the Cyberpunk-esque undertones of Umbrella and the T virus in any adequate way. This works for comic book stuff because it's audience is so self-serving, but it's also why it's so boring and suffers from the repeated one dimensional story telling.
Instead of following the manga-style adaptions they have in Japanese cinema Hollywood made a series of mindless 2 hour brain drains of of zombie shooting banality, and then made up characters the main character (Jovovich) doesn't even exist in the lore, they deviated so far from the plot that they even managed to get Jill's character so bad I literately pissed of my date when we went I was nerd-raging so hard about how bad it was and how much a missed opportunity it was to inspire more like me to enter into biology--we were both freshman in University and I was at my peak of biopunk naivety and advocacy.
The animated series were way better, as is the case with Batman stuff and shows how gritty and dire these subjects are when properly told from the right platform and setting.
As for COVID, I witnessed how resurgance of the yellow movement in HK was being quelled by the CCP and PLA since that Summer, and I personally feel the theory that an accidental leaked gain of function virus makes sense but that nothing 'damning' will ever be uncovered as the floods that impacted Wuhan provided perfect cover to do any successful form of epidemiology, the wet markets are no longer a source of valid data and it was clear how the WHO who were refused at first from entering) is not to be trusted given their alliances to the CCP and refusal to acknowledge the efforts Taiwan had during this pandemic.
Sadly, political theater will always undo anything Science can prove (or not prove) even when it results in the death of 2+ million people. Let it not be forgotten the CCP was jailing, disspeaing and going fafter people on Social media for talking about the deadliness and serious nature of what was happening. Mainland Citizen-journalists who exposed the dire situation and the pathetic state of these make shift hospitals over run by are still not accounted for and are presumed to be either dissapeared in a black-site re-education camp, or simply murdered at this point.
That's why the CCP is such a threat, and its reliance needs to be broken from and decoupled: cheap labour and trinkets aren't worth having them be the vanguard for Human or even environmental health and denying and hiding, getting rid of any and all evidence when it suits them--which includes but is not limited to disspearing people and committing war crimes and acts of genocide while Xi speaks at DAVOS about creating a more 'diverse' system as it extinguishes ethnic groups it see's as threat to it's divisive death cult (CCP).
https://www.wired.com/2014/07/cdc-found-pox/ https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/blog/scab-story
I don't think there's anything that we could learn from gain-of-function research on deadly viruses and bacteria that would be worth risking millions of deaths.
I meant RE though
It doesn't matter how good your intentions are when your behavior is extremely dangerous and can (and possibly did) result in a global pandemic that kills millions of people. Risk/reward calculations should be performed without regard to intent.
>Banning it would reduce the amount done greatly.
It would also reduce the risk of a man-made virus killing millions of people.
Now, try to apply that same reasoning to your allegation without looking silly. Yes, the USG has secretly run certain aspects of a public biowarfare program - and when it came to light they paid. Boom, they couldn't keep it secret and they couldn't escape the consequences (lots of very damaging legal cases and hearings). Finally, do they have an incentive? No - as I said, it makes no sense for them to reduce the cost of yet another world ending weapon. Now you could point to Russia getting caught with massive stockpiles of Anthrax after they claimed to end the program... but their nuclear program's credibility isn't comparable - they've always demonstrated clear signs of insecurity about it. That isn't the case for the USG.