Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by LaminatorX on Friday August 15 2014, @07:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept.

A scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison published an article in June 2014 revealing that he had taken genes from the deadly human 1918 Spanish Flu and inserted them into the H5N1 avian flu to make a new virus one which was both far deadlier and far more capable of spreading than the original avian strain. In July 2014 it was revealed that the same scientist was conducting another study in which he genetically altered the 2009 strain of flu to enable it to evade immune responses, "effectively making the human population defenseless against re-emergence" In the U.S. alone, biosafety incidents involving pathogens happen more than twice per week. These 'gain-of-function' experiments are accidents waiting to happen, with the possibility of starting deadly pandemics that could kill millions. In 2009, a group of Chinese scientists created a viral strain of flu virus by deliberately mixing the H5N1 bird flu virus, which is highly lethal but not easily transmitted between people, with a 2009 strain of H1N1 flu virus, which is very infectious to humans And got heavily criticized for doing this by senior scientists. 'The growing use of gain-of-function approaches for research requires more careful examination. And the potential consequences keep getting more catastrophic.' The Bulletin has published an article that explores the history of lab created pandemics and outlines recommendations for a safer approach to this type of research.

The possibility of gene mixing in the wild is also a reason to urgently deal with the current outbreak of Ebola in west Africa Which has the possibility to become airborne. Something that has been known since 1986.

Beware list: The SSL deficient journal Cell Host and Microbe is owned by Evilvier, The
Guardian and The independent still hasn't got the message about neither the use of SSL or annoying javascripts (autoscroll to top), thebulletin.org page layout is best viewed in a text only browser.

Related Stories

National Institutes of Health 3-Year Ban on Viral "Gain of Function" Studies Lifted 1 comment

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has lifted a ban on research into making certain viruses more deadly, while putting a new review process in place:

More than 3 years after imposing a moratorium on U.S. funding for certain studies with dangerous viruses, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) today lifted this so-called "pause" and announced a new plan for reviewing such research. But federal officials haven't yet decided the fate of a handful of studies on influenza and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) that were put on hold in October 2014.

[...] Concerns over so-called "gain of function" (GOF) studies that make pathogens more potent or likely to spread in people erupted in 2011, when Kawaoka's team and Ron Fouchier's lab at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands announced that they had modified the H5N1 bird flu virus to enable it to spread between ferrets. Such studies could help experts prepare for pandemics, but pose risks if the souped-up pathogen escapes the lab. After a long discussion, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) decided the two studies should be published and federal officials issued new oversight rules for certain H5N1 studies.

But U.S. officials grew uneasy after the publication of new GOF papers and several accidents in U.S. biocontainment labs. In October 2014, they announced an unprecedented "pause" on funding for 21 GOF studies of influenza, MERS and severe acute respiratory syndrome viruses. (At the time, NIH said there were 18 paused studies.) NIH eventually exempted some studies found to pose relatively little risk. But eight influenza studies and three MERS projects remained on hold.

Also at Nature, NYT, NPR, and Washington Post (archive).

Previously: The Question of Lab Safety when Creating Global Killer Viruses

Related: NIH Won't Fund Human Germline Modification
NIH Plans To Lift Ban On Research Funds For Human-Animal Chimera Embryos
U.S. Human Embryo Editing Study Published


Original Submission

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 15 2014, @07:32AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 15 2014, @07:32AM (#81642)

    In 2009, a group of Chinese scientists created a viral strain of flu virus by deliberately mixing the H5N1 bird flu virus, which is highly lethal but not easily transmitted between people, with a 2009 strain of H1N1 flu virus, which is very infectious to humans

    And you want us to believe the US military never did anything like that?

    The only difference is, those Chinese were stupid enough to let people know about it. I have no doubt the Chinese military have been, and still are, doing similar experiments in secret. And I also have no doubt that the US military and the Russian military are doing exactly the same thing.

  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday August 15 2014, @08:04AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Friday August 15 2014, @08:04AM (#81652) Journal

    Evilvier? I like it. Not like they ever had a motto contrary or anything.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 15 2014, @09:24AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 15 2014, @09:24AM (#81673)

    At least, there should be some kind of vaccine that is developed in parallel with the new virus. Otherwise making a weapon out of it wouldn't be of much use, since the virus doesn't dislike certain groups of people, only certain people do.

  • (Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Friday August 15 2014, @05:06PM

    by Blackmoore (57) on Friday August 15 2014, @05:06PM (#81792) Journal

    of all the horrid ideas us criminal super-geniuses have tried; this is the one that I can't get behind.
    Fer cripes sake - viruses don't care if it attacks a target; or a lackey.

    And the mutation. you can't even keep a good anti-virus or anti-bacterial agent working as the damn things insist on mutating all the time.
    You think you have one that you can use to hold the worlds Cattle supply hostage? in 3 weeks it's spreading through the deer and moose populations, and then jumps to a rabid raccoon. at that point you can't even guess if the next generation will go after humans; or be so week that the original target will have a vaccine.

    Bah!

  • (Score: 2) by naubol on Friday August 15 2014, @06:32PM

    by naubol (1918) on Friday August 15 2014, @06:32PM (#81819)

    Every article is an opinion piece disguised as journalism. I'm not saying the opinions aren't on point, wouldn't be my opinion if I was in possession of all the facts, etc... but seriously wth?

    Do we even know why all these people are making "gain of function" viruses from those articles? I assume, due to the omission of any statements by the criticisms, that militarization wasn't the primary stated goal.

    Could the summary be more nakedly biased? Are people editing these things?

    The only link that doesn't seem to be completely biased is from the guy who created the super virus in which he mildly says, "Foreseeing and understanding this potential is important for effective surveillance", in the abstract.

    I want to know, are there other reasons to be trying to do these things? Like, laboratory methods and orthogonal knowledge are discovered? What happened to the principle that science has to be relatively uninhibited because it is never clear when something incredibly useful will be discovered when the original purpose seems arbitrary? Even if we have to balance that against the possibility that a pandemic will be created, what are the probabilities? How many people would die? What would the economic damage be? I don't think it sufficient to say one life is too many, because how many lives might be saved or improved by working on this knowledge?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 19 2014, @11:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 19 2014, @11:57PM (#95704)
    kaszz writes:

    the deadly human 1918 Spanish Flu

    Again: The origin of the 1917 flu is well-known to be in the United States. However, as the United States and most european countries were involved in the Great War, they chose to silence the illness. Hence, the first country to report the epidemy was a neutral country, Spain. Use of "spanish flu" is misleading and should stop.-Ignacio Agulló