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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has lifted a ban on research into making certain viruses more deadly [sciencemag.org], 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 [nih.gov] 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 [sciencemag.org]. 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 [sciencemag.org] 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 [sciencemag.org] found to pose relatively little risk. But eight influenza studies and three MERS projects remained on hold.

Also at Nature [nature.com], NYT [nytimes.com], NPR [npr.org], and Washington Post [washingtonpost.com] (archive [archive.fo]).

Previously: The Question of Lab Safety when Creating Global Killer Viruses [soylentnews.org]

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

Original Submission