This sort of work should absolutely get more difficult for western scientists too. We’ve had several lab leaks that through luck didn’t turn in to pandemics. Certainly the costs of auditing and complying with lab safety is far cheaper than a global pandemic.
Prominent, respected virologists have been questioning gain of function research for a while. Here's a cite[1] from 2018 from Marc Lipsitch, who would be on most people's top ten list of trusted virologists on Covid. He's also one of the signatories of the letter calling for investigation[2].
I think it's possible to split out the question of bioresearch risks from Covid origins. If it was a lab leak, obviously we should regulate those risks better, but we should also do more to mitigate zoonotic spillover, because we have tons of evidence that happens and causes damage. If it wasn't lab leak, we should do more to mitigate spillover, but it would also be a good idea to be more careful about biosafety.
Very little in the way of public health implications. Quite a bit in terms of geopolitical implications. I do think people confuse the two a fair amount.
If there are no practical implications, why would there be political implications? You don't usually premise your political stances on the foundation that "something irrelevant happened".
> Prominent, respected virologists have been questioning gain of function research for a while
The quotation you cite from Lipitsch doesn't validate your comment.
He wasn't "questioning gain of function research". He was calling for greater oversight over gain of function research and for more initiatives to try to limit the damage potential of zoonotic spillover.
If anything, Lipitsch was upholding the value of gain of function research, because he believes scientists should do everything possible to try to prevent pandemics.
Huh? The title of the piece is "Why Do Exceptionally Dangerous Gain-of-Function Experiments in Influenza?" The introduction specifically criticizes entire categories of GoF research, stating that it goes against the consensus view of many virologists. How is that not "questioning?" Lipsitch has been consistently critical in other fora too, including a quote in a Science piece[1], a call for a debate[2], and other communications.
Now, one thing that is going on in a lot of the discussion (and which makes reasoned discourse harder) is that many people mean different things when talking about "gain of function." For some, it's anything that creates a pathogen that's potentially infectious to humans, which potentially covers a lot of experiments to test transmissibility and other factors. For others, it has to be specifically engineering to increase transmissibility or virulence [3]. That can lead to confusion, for example the debate about whether Fauci's denial that the NIAID funded GoF research was honest.
I very carefully check my sources when posting, but am sure I make mistakes. When I do, I'm happy to be corrected. But this seems a very odd thing to call me out for.
Oh I see. I didn't follow your links, rather I thought your second para was the quote.
"I think it's possible to split out the question of bioresearch risks from Covid origins. If it was a lab leak, obviously we should regulate those risks better, but we should also do more to mitigate zoonotic spillover, because we have tons of evidence that happens and causes damage. If it wasn't lab leak, we should do more to mitigate spillover, but it would also be a good idea to be more careful about biosafety."
Nope, apologies if there is any confusion. That's just my opinion. I'm basically trying to make the point that this overfocus on origins is more of a political question than one with direct public health impact.
It’s hard to overstate the case here. Even a tiny chance for a proposed research project to causing something like covid 19 has a gigantic risk adjusted cost and should only have been undertaken if the expected results were likewise enormously beneficial.
Something seems off with the cost benefit analysis in these laboratories.
The whole point of research like this is to better understand a naturally occurring risk of disease. Without the work to understand in detail how similar coronaviruses infect humans cells, there is no way Moderna and BioNTech could have turned around their mRNA vaccine candidates as fast as they did.
When looking at cost-benefit analysis you have to understand that the probability of a naturally occurring human infectious disease capable of causing a pandemic is 100% over a long enough time span. Therefore the possibility of a lab leak can add little marginal risk over that same period of time. Whereas the understanding that comes from research will confer benefits no matter the origin of the disease.
Labs should be as secure as possible: yes. But there is a huge opportunity cost to saying “don’t work with human infectious diseases any more.”
If you run a secure lab, you don’t accelerate the onset of a potential pandemic. If you run an insecure lab, you might accelerate the onset, which is bad.
My point is that ceasing research entirely does not rule out a future pandemic, but it certainly would harm our ability to respond to a future pandemic.
> Without the work to understand in detail how similar coronaviruses infect humans cells, there is no way Moderna and BioNTech could have turned around their mRNA vaccine candidates as fast as they did.
I’d also like some evidence for this. If moderna or biontech researcher were specifically using knowledge from gain of function research that would shift my view on the cost/benefit analysis.
So far all I’ve seen is a bunch of handwaving about “advancing the science.”
(1) this pandemic has not been shown to be caused by gain-of-function research and probably wasn't.
(2) why do you think scientists do gain-of-function research? It's to try and prevent pandemics by finding viruses which might be dangerous.
So if there's a problem it's really (3): we haven't consistently funded pandemic preparedness, in particular there needs to be an established process to clinical trial and test new vaccines against identified "risky" viral strains in the wild, ideally with a platform perspective that we can have confidence can be rapidly modified to get a new vaccine out the door.
