Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research (2015)

https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-1.18787

by BrandonMarc • 6 years ago

48 9 6 years ago

An experiment that created a hybrid version of a bat coronavirus — one related to the virus that causes SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) — has triggered renewed debate over whether engineering lab variants of viruses with possible pandemic potential is worth the risks.

... and bear in mind, while the world has 55 BSL-4 labs, China has one ... and it's in Wuhan. Too many coincidences.

My ardent hope is that the hubris-laden excitement over CRISPR is diminished, especially in Wall Street and Sand Hill Road.

booleandilemma• 6 years ago

http://english.whiov.cas.cn/News/Events/201502/t20150203_135...

a_bonobo• 6 years ago

This is just conspiracy mongering, you cannot engineer a virus like nCov using CRISPR alone - all CRISPR-Cas9 can do is insert point mutations/change bases, no way to use it to mereg different genomic pieces together

ohiovr• 6 years ago

What are the benefits?

harry8• 6 years ago

Fundamental understanding.

This is probably required to effectively create cures. Dangerous research is full of tricky trade offs and ethical issues.

BrandonMarc2• 6 years ago

It's also worth pointing out, all of the Great Powers are involved in bio-weapons research. Even the USA. Classified of course. Very dangerous, but able to provide tempting powers to politicians and military leaders.

Not that I support this ... But neither can I close my eyes and hope it's not happening.

danarlow• 6 years ago

Before you jump to conclusions, here’s a relevant quote from the article:

“Although almost all coronaviruses isolated from bats have not been able to bind to the key human receptor, SHC014 is not the first that can do so. In 2013, researchers reported this ability for the first time in a different coronavirus isolated from the same bat population.

The findings reinforce suspicions that bat coronaviruses capable of directly infecting humans (rather than first needing to evolve in an intermediate animal host) may be more common than previously thought, the researchers say.”

Capur• 6 years ago

This is funny that everytime China has something happening, I see posts that either implicitly hint conspiracy or intentionally black China emerge on hacker news. If you really want to prove something instead of only showing partial facts, please go through a thorough logical process.

anticodon• 6 years ago

Not only China and not only Hacker News.

I live in Russia and it's impossible to not notice that Russia is portrayed only in negative light in Western media. If there's some news from Russia on BBC, CNN, HN or any other western media, it's always negative. Often without any proof. Often wrong (as I can see by living here).

It's just a neverending media war: pour as much dirt on competitors as you can. People reading news rarely do fact checking. And it is also complicated by the fact that most westerners know only one language (hence they can't find/read any alternative opinion) and trust their media as "democratic and fact-checked by default" (which is absolutely wrong).

Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research (2015)

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