NIH restarts bat virus grant

https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-restarts-bat-virus-grant-suspended-3-years-ago-trump

by ed-209 • 3 years ago

125 147 3 years ago

MeteorMarc• 3 years ago

Obligatory: What could possibly go wrong?

op00to7• 3 years ago

Better to study and be prepared, than to stick our head in the sand and pretend emerging infectious disease aren't a recurrent factor in our lives.

anoxor• 3 years ago

I mean, modifying a bat virus to be more infectious to human and then doing so in a lab that only requires masks not full body suits. How many millions died, how many suffered, what did we lose?

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that is a terrible idea. “Sticking our head in the sand” appears to not fit this use case very well

dablweb• 3 years ago

That's not really the case here. Gain of function research can not be justified using this argument.

There are so many potential mutations that putting specific evolutionary pressure on a virus in order to "prevent" only those specific effects has such low efficacy considering the size of the problem space.

GOF research has provided very little in terms of benefits, and many argue it's simply been a way to disguise bioweapons research after the Geneva convention.

hammock• 3 years ago

Even if that’s the case, which could be possible, it would be nice to have some accountability for the accident that led to the covid pandemic and lockdowns, and a transparent accounting of why even after all that, the risk from not doing this research is greater than that of restarting it

kklisura• 3 years ago

Sure, but then if we're gonna create and study viruses that can erase significant percentage of our population, why not do that on some remote island with one month of required onboarding/offboarding quarantine for all of the scientists involved?

Eumenes• 3 years ago

They literally study viruses that don’t infect humans but they purposely mutate them so they can study the “what if they mutate in real life” - this is cover to study bioweapons

program_whiz• 3 years ago

counter example: we won't know how to fight a robot apocalypse unless we go ahead and develop some super-intelligent kill bots ourselves, so we can train against it and develop strategies. Given enough time and random variation, someone or some government is bound to create them, so we should not stick our heads in the sand or let fear-mongering stand in the way of research.

In reality COVID-19 required several key mutations to be as harmful and to bind as effectively to human cells as it did. The likelihood of all of these mutations occurring naturally, in animals only, without intermediate variants to observe and develop immunity against, is very small. If only 64 amino acids must mutate exactly correctly to create the deadly variant then it would require 4^64 or 2^128 mutations, which is a large number. Assuming it mutates 100B times per year, that's still more years 3e27 years.

For example, this experiment on more transmissible HIV requires hundreds of acids (600-1000, and a 32 amino prefix).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2836558/

The point being that creating extremely unlikely events to "see what would happen" is only justified if the risk of the observation is less than the natural risk of the event. If the risk of a world-ending pandemic is 1e-128 per year, and the risk due to human-made viruses is 0.1%, then "not sticking your head in the sand" has raised your risk by an astronomical factor.

shri_krishna3• 3 years ago

Here we go again! As if one pandemic wasn't enough! Ridiculous!

ed25519FUUU• 3 years ago

What would it even mean if we created covid 19 in a lab and it was accidentally released? Would it change anything? Would anyone be held responsible?

water554• 3 years ago

It's important that people know the truth.

rngname22• 3 years ago

In an ideal world, we'd realize through cost benefit analysis that seeking out novel strains of animal viruses and bringing samples of them back to labs, especially in an era where lab leaks are common (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...), and then further doing gain of function research on those viruses to enhance them for further testing, might not be the best idea. At least until we had better methods of securing such facilities.

jeremyjh5• 3 years ago

I think the arrogance of thinking its possible to do this research safely with any containment procedures is ridiculous. Yes, you can make the chances of a leak extremely minimal, but you can't rule it out when humans are involved and the consequences are so extraordinary that there just isn't an acceptable trade-off.

echelon• 3 years ago

A seriously creepy thought that I've had (that I certainly don't agree with) -

It could be a way for governments to quickly and affordably "cull the herd" of expensive to support elders, immune compromised, sick, and infirm individuals. In doing so, it would free up capital, resources, housing, jobs, etc. for the younger workforce.

This is of course only a creative musing, not a proposal for an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory.

shri_krishna3• 3 years ago

"I try not to think about it too much. But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to" [1]

- Sam Altman, OpenAI

[1] https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-ceo-survivalist-prepper

droopyEyelids• 3 years ago

On a very basic and obvious level, it'd change the protocols required to work with the virus. Researchers and organizations would take safety more seriously.

fallingknife• 3 years ago

It's China so someone would be held responsible. Exactly who would be a matter of political expediency more so than actual responsibility.

I would speculate that if it were lab created, having access to the initial genetic material and procedure that was used to create it would be of great scientific value in understanding how viruses jump species.

lvass2• 3 years ago

Someone would say "business as usual", somewhere.

LinuxBender• 3 years ago

What would it even mean if we created covid 19 in a lab and it was accidentally released?

Perhaps this may provide enough precedence to codify more specific laws, regulations, certifications, liabilities and consequences that affect funding availability, multiple levels of insurance requirements and lab safety requirements. Additionally there could also be more consequences for side-stepping direction from leadership to cease and desist research in a particular area when the risk was already deemed too great. The attitube of "It's easier to say sorry than it is to say please" should not apply to high risk research regardless of how much money could be potentially gained.

In my opinion this is important to address sooner than later. Covid may be a short walk in the park compared to the risk we are about to experience with Precision Medicine [1] also known as dual-use biology.

Would anyone be held responsible?

Proving intent is difficult without emails, contracts, voice conversations, etc... Even if these audit trails existed it is more likely to be covered up to protect all nations involved from international blow-back. More likely these people may be quietly found negligent and lose the ability to fund or manage future projects. They and their associates become a toxic investment risk thus possibly discouraging future behavior assuming only negligence was involved. A new set of people take their place and the world rinses and repeats.

I can not prove intent but I can see incentive. One need only watch V for Vendetta to see the parallels.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35734114

phkahler• 3 years ago

> What would it even mean if we created covid 19 in a lab and it was accidentally released? Would it change anything? Would anyone be held responsible?

Nothing. No. and No. "Scientists" were proposing research that would create essentially the Covid19 virus. I'm not sure if they ever got funded, but maybe that was being carried out at the Wuhan lab. The facts are: people wanted to create Covid19 (or something nearly like it). We found out what can happen if that type of thing gets out (whether it occurred naturally or in a lab). Those same people want to carry on with exactly the kind of "research" they were doing before, as if we've learned nothing from a global pandemic caused by a virus just like the ones they want to play with.

The fact we can't prove Covid19 came from a lab is beside the point. Given what people are working on, it may as well have been a lab leak since the result would be essentially identical to what happened, and they refuse to understand that - quite intentionally it seems.

local_crmdgeon• 3 years ago

At what point does a conspiracy become a fact? This results in another pandemic, it's not going to be pretty when gov't demands lockdowns.

peteradio5• 3 years ago

Conspiracy and fact are orthogonal descriptors.

jMyles7• 3 years ago

I don't understand this concept. I see it all over the internet. But I don't get it.

At what point did we stop believing it was possible for people to conspire to commit crimes?

Nobody disputes, for example, that the convictions of the Watergate conspirators - for the charge of conspiracy - was based in fact.

So how is it that we can now say that fact and conspiracy can't be part of the same pattern?

It's true that a huge majority of conspiracy theories are bogus and lack evidence. But it's also true that, albeit rarely, conspiracies do occur.

eli3• 3 years ago

Because of all the conspiracy theories, it is not going to be pretty if there's a lockdown in the future for any reason whatsoever. Indeed, I think governments will be very reluctant to order a lockdown even if it's the right thing to do. This has nothing to do with facts about virus research though.

Cthulhu_• 3 years ago

It feels like (at least in my country) all the lockdowns were part of an experiment; try something else, see if it works. At some point they tried a curfew for a few weeks, it had an effect but people didn't like it and enforcement was a huge issue (naturally).

The other thing is that every time a measure was effective, they would stop doing it so that the cases would go back up again.

That said, as China proved, a totalitarian lockdown (where people were locked in their house) didn't work in the long run either. China got back to productivity faster though, and gave their population time for a vaccine to be developed and distributed.

freedude2• 3 years ago

"Because of all the conspiracy theories" Why do you call them theories when they play out as described? Really it should be stated "Because of the government conspiracy to enact totalitarian rule..."

It has been proven the government was wrong about all of their Covid predictions and the methodology for care was flawed because it ignored basic care. Many people died because the government ignored actual science and set out to squelch those that disagreed. This is exactly what our government shouldn't be.

rewfewfewfew• 3 years ago

governments will be very reluctant to order a lockdown even if it's the right thing to do

Under what possible circumstances will this be the right thing to do? It's already very apparent that the historically unprecedented worldwide Covid lockdowns have had a devastating effect on the prospects of the poorest in society, while seriously enriching the wealthiest (go and take a look at the Forbes rich list, and find someone who has lost money since 2020. You'll have to look very hard).

2OEH8eoCRo0• 3 years ago

It's a "fact" when it's supported by a majority of evidence and withstands scrutiny over an extended period of time.

Which conspiracy are you referring to?

IIAOPSW2• 3 years ago

At what point in the day does it make sense to start reading the time off this broken clock I have?

netbioserror• 3 years ago

I love the appeal to the "independence" of science from politics, after what may have been the single most materially and socially destructive scientific disaster since the invention of the atom bomb. We'll just act like none of that ever happened and continue with impunity.

ethanbond2• 3 years ago

Act like what didn’t happen?

jeremyjh5• 3 years ago

They were trying to create SARS-Cov-2 to study methods of treating or managing it, and quite likely they succeeded only in creating it. We may never know for sure, but if you read the original grant proposal its clear they were trying to engineer a variant of bat coronviruses that could cross into humans.

sergiotapia2• 3 years ago

Whatever happens, I don't think people will tolerate another lockdown ever again for at least two generations.

I know in florida there could be literally airborn aids and people will still go out and live life, myself included. COVID lockdowns were a test of how much the government could push without backlash.

I feel so badly for the kids that lost their last two years of high school for what?

pupppet2• 3 years ago

For what?

I dunno, to prevent overflowing hospitals from having to turn people away because everyone who ‘did their research’ conveniently start trusting doctors again when they get a bad case.

zamnos• 3 years ago

airborne aids isn't the doomsday scenario, airborne ebola is.

jjoonathan7• 3 years ago

Are you forgetting that the lockdowns had to happen because authorities (Trump, not CDC) pissed away a month of exponential growth doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on "ignore it and it will go away" instead of jumping on measures to reduce Rt? They only blinked when faced with the imminent prospect of having hospitals spill out into parking lots full of people slowly dying for want of a respirator.

The pandemic was incompetently managed, but "ignore COVID harder" is the exact brand of incompetence that made the pandemic worse than it had to be.

arcbyte2• 3 years ago

Florida did lockdowns right.

They flattened the curve and then managed limited social resources.

Many other states just went into irrational and indefinite Long term lockdowns. Illinois for instance was locked down for months and months despite having enourmous hospital capacity - the lack of which was the whole reason for entering the lockdown in the first place. It just didn't make sense after a while except as a political tool.

Early on there was a lot of metrics-driven decision making, and metrics changed as new information came to light. That was good. Florida would still lockdown if done in that light - not without bellyaching but yes it would. When the metrics go out the window so too would Florida's compliance.

fullshark• 3 years ago

Fear gets your population to largely go along with horrendous gov't actions. I've seen it twice in my life, America's actions post 9/11 and COVID lockdowns. Terror over nuclear annihilation from the USSR allowed western gov'ts to fight Korean/Vietnam war with drafted citizens also.

If that fear returns then the population will go along with whatever terrible intervention is proposed, at least until that fear dissipates.

whywhywhywhy• 3 years ago

Whatever happens, I don't think people will tolerate another lockdown ever again for at least two generations.

Some wont, but some people actually miss it and it was the best thing that ever happened to them.

nathanaldensr• 3 years ago

The cognitive dissonance is that extreme in all those who blindly trusted the words of evil politicians and pharma companies.

shon3• 3 years ago

First, nice name OP. ;)

Second, are there any bio people here who can weigh-in on why this is a good idea and how the potential benefits outweigh the risks?

Bioweapons seem like a terrible idea in general. The worst case scenario of any weapon system is that it’s used against its creators and we humans aren’t that good at controlling biology.

So what’s the benefit?

criticalmass24• 3 years ago

This has nothing to do with bioweapons. The reality is that throughout all of human history, viruses have evolved organically in the environment in such a way that they are infectious to humans. Viruses will continue to evolve and future pandemics will happen. This research is attempting to study how viruses might evolve in a way that is particularly concerning to humans so that we can be more prepared in terms of creating vaccines and understanding the preventive measures that can be taken in future pandemics.

defen2• 3 years ago

so that we can be more prepared in terms of creating vaccines and understanding the preventive measures that can be taken in future pandemics.

Did the existing decades of research help with that when COVID-19 organically and naturally spontaneously jumped to human hosts?

sillypuddy• 3 years ago

We should warn these agencies that gain of function research is like playing Russian Roulette, but it would go in one ear and out the other.

galangalalgol2• 3 years ago

Whatvare the arguments for gain of function research? Is there any reason to think the mutations gained as a virus adapts to mice with human lung tissue will resemble the ones it makes when it crosses in the wild? Or is it kind of like the old giant nuke plants, a way to peace-wash war tech?

Edit: Vouching for the reply wasn't enough to resurrect it. It was a claim with no support other than an appeal to authority, but that means you reply to it with a counter not bury it. It sidestepped the question of whether adapting an animal virus to humans has sufficient gain for the risk.

criticalmass24• 3 years ago

The term “gain of function” is used by different people in different ways. It is a broad category of research and the misguided attempts to categorize it as dangerous in one broad stroke are not helpful. To quote Dr. Fauci:

"If all gain-of-function stops, you will have no vaccines for flu. You will have no vaccines for any of the other diseases, because all of that manipulates a virus or a pathogen to gain a certain function to be able to make a vaccine."

DoreenMichele• 3 years ago

Subtitle:

Revised award to EcoHealth Alliance will no longer involve studies of hybrid coronaviruses

FWIW. I don't know if that will make anyone feel any better about it.

freedude2• 3 years ago

It doesn't. Once bitten twice shy...

unyttigfjelltol• 3 years ago

EcoHealth should not be allowed to participate in Federal grants. If there is a reason we don't have confidence as a society where Covid came from, it's because of efforts taken by Ecohealth to short-circuit reasonable scientific inquiry. EcoHealth doesn't do science and should be banned.

hn_throwaway_99• 3 years ago

I think this your point is very important to highlight. I'm very uncomfortable with all the posts that posit "Covid came from the lab" is a conclusive fact. There is considerable evidence, and it's certainly plausible, that it did come from a lab, but it's likely we'll never know with certainty.

That said, EcoHealth's cardinal sin was the Feb 2020 Lancet letter ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19) ). There was clear conflict of interest in that letter, and in retrospect it did huge damage for the effort to study the origins of Covid. Like the saying goes "it's not the crime, it's the cover up". While it's not 100% clear there was an "original crime", that letter certainly looks like a coverup. For this letter alone EcoHealth should be banned from getting federal grant money.

hgsgm3• 3 years ago

It's additionally a shame that instead of pursuing this legitimate angle, many politicians and billionaires went off the deep end with the "prosecute Fauci" ranting, which made people feel forced to defend the EcoHealth side out of a sense of civility.

jeremyjh5• 3 years ago

Every "scientist" associated with that fact-free cover-up should have already ended their career in disgrace.

lamacase• 3 years ago

The project no longer involves collecting new bat samples or working with live viruses. WIV has no role beyond contributing more than 300 whole and partial genome sequences of SARS-related bat coronaviruses from its collection, Daszak says.

From the article there's also supposed to be additional review of further grants to deny anything that might look like gain of function research.

My laymen's take is that monitoring viruses for spillover is still important, maybe more important than ever, and gain of function research has negligible benefits and probably shouldn't happen? On that basis, what's presented in this article seems to be on the right track.

caned• 3 years ago

The project no longer involves collecting new bat samples or working with live viruses. WIV has no role beyond contributing more than 300 whole and partial genome sequences of SARS-related bat coronaviruses from its collection, Daszak says.

I join others in their skepticism, but, as a layman, I'd like to know: Is this gain-of-function research as described? What are the risks if the research doesn't involve live viruses?

TechBro8615• 3 years ago

Does it really matter? Given how much they've already obfuscated the semantics and definition of "gain of function," why should we trust that this time, they're really not doing anything resembling gain of function? And even if we could give them that benefit of the doubt, why should we? The board members of EcoHealth should be receiving federal prison sentences, not grant money.

NIH restarts bat virus grant

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