NIH’s axing of bat coronavirus grant a ‘horrible precedent’ | Hacker News Reader

NIH’s axing of bat coronavirus grant a ‘horrible precedent’

sciencemag.org

43 pointsHarryHirsch46 comments

What's missing in this article but well reported on in Newsweek [1] is that these studies included "gain of function" research, which means attempts to make viruses human transmissible. This type of research is extremely dangerous and very controversial within the scientific community and that portion should certainly be stopped.

Almost all of the attention has been focused on the lab receiving these grants. However, that lab is miles away from the initial outbreak and there's another lab that's a block away from the Wuhan seafood market that also does bat research (but not gain of function). This lab is also adjacent to the hospital that dealt with initial outbreak. This was pointed out by Chinese researchers in a preprint that was quickly taken down [2].

1: https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan...

2: The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus 10.13140/RG.2.2.21799.29601 https://web.archive.org/web/20200214144447/https://www.resea...

It's certainly possible it came from a lab. The problem here is political interest. Some on the left are downplaying the lab aspect in favor of a natural origin because some on the right are using the Chinese origin as a basis for racism.

If it came from a lab in China, that doesn't make it a "Chinese" virus. Don't we have labs studying dangerous diseases in the US? People make mistakes. It's better to find the true cause and learn from it, human or not.

I think people on the left are downplaying it primarily because 1) there's literally no evidence that it happened that way and 2) the mere speculation is being treated as "truth" by some liars to spread fear and hate, and to confuse, distract, and deflect.

> 1) there's literally no evidence that it happened that way

There's no smoking gun evidence that is accessible, and there likely never will be. There is some circumstantial evidence that seems compelling. We know that scientists in Wuhan were working on this exact type of virus and were also working to make it transmissible in humans. We also know that there were issues reported in safety protocols at this/these labs. Finally, we know that the virus outbreak happened in the same city (and possibly within a very short distance) of these labs.

Presumably (I have no data on this and would love some from anyone who knows more), there are not many labs doing this sort of research, so the fact that the virus appeared in the immediate vicinity of one of the few labs where they were doing this research seems like a heck of a coincidence. It's not a smoking gun, but I'm a little concerned to see people in the scientific community writing it off as a near-impossibility. What's wrong with saying, "We think that this is unlikely given xyz, but the circumstantial evidence is concerning and we should reevaluate all research of this type."

What's wrong with saying that is that the research itself is probably less dangerous than the alternative, which would be to stop trying to understand the nature of the evolution of these diseases. The point of the research is to be better informed about such infectious diseases so we can formulate an effective response, or maybe even come up with a permanent solution to neutralize the threat. The perceived short term dangers do not outweigh the long term benefits. I feel like a compelling parallel to nuclear power could be drawn here.

What if the most effective response is 'pray it never happens'?

Pandemics are similar to nukes: both have damage capacity and exponential growth regimen. The one major difference is that nukes have limited fissile material, whereas a pandemics's mass is the entire humanity, or, in the worst case, biosphere.

Engineering viruses for human reproduction to 'learn how to contain' pandemics is about as useful as detonating nukes to 'learn how to contain' nuclear detonations. The downside is that you may end up blowing up significant chunks of the world, whereas the purported benefit may never pan out. It may well be that a pandemic or nuclear detonation is uncontrollable and unstoppable once it gets started.

> detonating nukes to 'learn how to contain' nuclear detonations.

That’s exactly how the development of nuclear power stations happened historically, and I expect most other viable power sources. We start with something that releases a lot of uncontrolled energy, and then figure out how to make it do something useful— Wildfires begat combustion engines, waterfalls begat hydroelectric dams, and volcanoes begat geothermal power.

With nuclear, the natural state of fissile material is inert, under critical density. It's too spread out to lead to a spontaneous planet scale detonation. You have the work hard to amass even tiny amounts of fissile material for experimentation. You can't blow up Earth even if you want it, there isn't enough fissile material on Earth to do so.

With bio, the fissile material is humanity itself and is above critical density. Once the virus escapes your lab, you have a planet scale pandemic detonation on your hands. Afterwards, all you can do is to try to spread out the fissile material [aka humanity] to keep it under critical density. See 'social distancing' and 'stay at home orders'. Which doesn't work long term, note the economic crisis that's just starting, arguably worse than the Great Depression. What positive rewards are you expecting from this? A new source of energy ain't it.

Imagine a Manhattan project where, if a handful of stray neutrons escape Oak Ridge, the entire Eastern US goes up in flames.

Edit: How about: 'learn how to contain' nuclear detonations by partially detonating planet-scale doomsday devices?

I don't know how widely aware of it people are these days, but there was a much repeated bit of folklore about how the people setting off the first atomic test weren't 100% sure it wouldn't ignite the atmosphere in a global chain reaction.

It always struck me as possibly a glib anti-nuclear slant on a joke or offhand comment some scientist made that wasn't really serious, but nevertheless it's part of the lore of the beginning of the atomic age.

True! They did had that concern. They considered both shutting down the whole enterprise over it and did the math to assess the risk and found it unfounded.

Our friends in Wuhan? Crickets. And puff pieces in the US media attempting to politicize the issue and keep the gravy train going.

> When Teller informed some of his colleagues of this possibility, he was greeted with both skepticism and fear. Hans Bethe immediately dismissed the idea, but according to author Pearl Buck, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Arthur Compton was so concerned that he told Robert Oppenheimer that if there were even the slightest chance of this "ultimate catastrophe" playing out, all work on the bomb should stop.

> So a study was commissioned to explore the matter in detail, and six months before the Trinity test, the very first detonation of nuclear device, Edward Teller and Emil Konopinski announced their findings in a report with the ominous title "Ignition of the Atmosphere With Nuclear Bombs."

> "It is shown that, whatever the temperature to which a section of the atmosphere may be heated, no self-propagating chain of nuclear reactions is likely to be started. The energy losses to radiation always overcompensate the gains due to the reactions."

[0] https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2019/09/12/the_fear_th...

And to add to your points, we also know if the hypothesis is true, it would be a type of blow to China’s image that the CCP just can’t have.

We’ll never know because no one will be allowed to investigate it:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1197516

The WHO is probably on the same list as organizations waiting to get a chance to investigate the Uyghur camps.

Wild stuff.

does “anti-chinese government” = “anti-chinese” = racism?

If so, would that mean that “anti-american government” views by many people the world = “anti-american” = racism?

You and I can appreciate the subtle distinction that "anti-chinese government" != "anti-chinese", but tribalist thinking that equates "anti-chinese government" with "anti-chinese actions" exploits subconscious pathways of the human brain, so that it feels "natural" or "easy" to think that way. That is why during COVID-19, even one month ago we have already seen over 600 anti-Chinese and anti-Asian racism in the US [1], and a racially-motivated stabbing in Montreal [2]. Even in the Silicon Valley which is considered a liberal bastion, we have seen racist attacks against Asian-Americans [3].

All of these examples show that even though you and I can draw a difference between a government and its people and therefore do not do racist attacks against random people of a certain nationality, I hope you can see that calling it the "China virus" can compel others do racist attacks. Using reason to fight 600 million years of evolution is hard.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/asian-americans-r...

[2] https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/covid-19-korean-consulate-issues...

[3] https://nextshark.com/silicon-valley-supermarket-xenophobic-...

> It's certainly possible it came from a lab.

Quite a few significant geneticists consider it extremely unlikely: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

Sure, it’s possible, but that probability appears to be extremely small.

Edit: I just realized you might have meant “natural origins but escaped from the lab rather than being introduced directly from wild animals”. If that’s what you meant apologies that my reply is irrelevant. If you meant “deliberately engineered in a lab” then my reply stands. I don’t see science as a “left/right” issue.

I did mean escaped. There’s plenty of labs that were studying SARS, so it’s not impossible. I agree that we should look at only the facts, but political groups on all sides are twisting them for own convenience, so you have to be skeptical of motivations right now.

What is the argument in that paper?

Perhaps this bit:

While the analyses above suggest that SARS-CoV-2 may bind human ACE2 with high affinity, computational analyses predict that the interaction is not ideal7 and that the RBD sequence is different from those shown in SARS-CoV to be optimal for receptor binding7,11. Thus, the high-affinity binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to human ACE2 is most likely the result of natural selection on a human or human-like ACE2 that permits another optimal binding solution to arise. This is strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of purposeful manipulation.

But again, the poster clarified this only addresses the engineering of the virus, not the the other theories that center around lax precautions at the lab.

So, these threads do devolve into a predictable pattern, but I’m compelled to bring up instances where viruses escaped from Chinese labs before:

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-analysis/sars-escaped-bei...

I believe there were a few more instances too (not mentioned in the article).

Humans have engaged in genetic manipulation through application of selective pressures since the dawn of time. In its positive form is called 'domestication', and 99% of the food of your table, vegetable or animal, is the byproduct of such genetic manipulation.

Nothing in the article you cite addresses whether SARS-CoV-2 is a result of applying selective pressures or not. And the grant in question is funding exactly that: scientists looking to enhance the ability of coronavirus to infect various species, including humans. Not hard to presume they used the tried and true method of applying selective pressures, at least as a baseline.

https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan...

The leading theory is that it’s the result of a serial passage experiment.

The genetic “architecture” doesn’t look human-made. Here’s a popular science summary for people who don’t have the training to read the paper (which is most people, for any science paper as they are written for domain experts and nobody is a domain expert in every field):

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200317175442.h...

How am I supposed to make sense of the conflicts-of-interest here? Obviously, this sort of scientific research has merit. Obviously, it isn't 100% free of risk. I haven't heard any claims of certainty around the origin of the current virus. How do we figure out the line between acknowledging that a hypothesis has inadequate evidence versus asserting it to be wrong because we don't like the ramifications or we don't like the overconfidence of people asserting too-quickly that it is true?

Weigh the importance of the research against the risk of the research process itself causing tens of thousands of deaths, and the confidence that the researchers have sufficiently protected against that risk.

Anyone who has that kind of confidence in the Wuhan laboratory researchers is operating from a different set of facts than I am.

> Anyone who has that kind of confidence in the Wuhan laboratory researchers is operating from a different set of facts than I am.

What set of facts do you have access to? I haven’t any reason to believe that lab is particularly bad, so would be glad to learn something additional.

State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-dep...

Thanks, that’s useful.

The WaPo should have done a lot better, specifically by asking the Galveston people what they thought: had anything gotten better in the last two years? Or worse?

The cable said they were asking for assistance and in two yearsthey might well have received it — or not.

Usually, when you're doing good science and letting the evidence speak for itself, you don't terminate anyone's grants in the middle of the study without notice.

Here is an example of engineering SARS to be deadlier in 2015[0].

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985

Just wow.

We have a bunch of guys knowingly playing with fire. Then out of nowhere a major inferno starts within spitting distance from their playground. And the US tax payers have the moral duty to fund foreign nationals to enact this charade in a foreign country?

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. This comment is a noticeable and gratuitous step down in quality from the parent. It's fine to disagree, of course, but do so substantively and not with battle rhetoric.

Edit: I've detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23052700.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I responded in kind to the OP title, claiming that to cut funding to an incredibly dangerous practice is a ‘horrible precedent’. Quote from none other than a business partner of the principal in question.

For balance, consider crafting a less inflammatory title.

Responding to inflammation with firestarter is exactly the wrong thing to do. You should respond with flame retardant instead, or not at all. Do the site guidelines not make that clear? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Usually quotation marks in a title act as insulation. I can see how that wasn't the case here, but it's still your responsibility to be a good citizen of the community, rather than breaking the rules and pointing a finger.

If you were responding to the title, you shouldn't have hijacked the top comment by replying to it. I've detached it from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23052700 now.

Even if it did start there by negligence - or even malice - I as s US taxpayer would still be extremely interested in keeping as many threads going as possible to understand what happened, even if it involves input from foreign nationals with possible agendas of their own, if it helps us get closer to the truth.

> Then out of nowhere a major inferno starts within spitting distance from their playground

Instead of descending into conspiracy logic, two things need to be pointed out.

1. This virus did not come "out of nowhere", zoonotic corona viruses are common, and as you probably know at this point have started pandemics multiple times over recent years. This was not an unexpected event, it was a matter of time, which is why people like Gates as well as the scientific community have been warning us for years.

2. That labs studying those diseases are found in close proximity to the locations where they're prone to break out doesn't imply anything. Fire stations tend to be close to the places where fires are common, doesn't mean they cause them.

It's sad to see that the blind tribalism in the absence of any evidence is even taking place on this site.

I agree that this outbreak was expected, but I don't think it was expected to occur a block away from a lab that studies bats. These labs obtained bats from hundreds of miles away. Those areas (with huge bat populations) seem like more likely sources of an outbreak even if there are bats in cities as well. I believe this is strong enough circumstantial (not conspiratorial) evidence that we should be demanding an investigation into whether the labs could have accidentally released the virus.

> but I don't think it was expected to occur a block away

Have you actually looked on a map or simply repeating what tabloids say? They aren't close at all it's nearly an hour's walk away.

It's entirely conspiratorial, it's the textbook definition of conspiracy, where's the evidence apart from heresay and feelings?

Personally think that the US needs something to deflect from its disastrous handling of the pandemic.

Plenty of scientists have looked into it, along with investigative reporters, feel free to read:

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/23/8417296...

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3079391/bat-...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/31/bat-soup-dodgy...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/01/29/experts-debu...

> Immunologist Vincent Racaniello stated that virus leaking theory "reflect a lack of understanding of the genetic make-up of Sars-CoV-2 and its relationship to the bat virus". He states that the bat virus researched in the institution "would not have been able to infect humans – the human Sars-CoV-2 has additional changes that allows it to infect humans."

It doesn't seem you have read my comments or the paper I cited which has a map. There are 2 labs. The one everyone is accusing is 10km away. The lab that is most likely to have caused the outbreak is a block away.

> the human Sars-CoV-2 has additional changes

Ok sure maybe, but then the main question - really the only thing that matters - is still unanswered, how did the human Sars-CoV-2 with additional changes occur, most prominently for the first time, in Wuhan? Where did it come from? Honest question.

>how did the human Sars-CoV-2 with additional changes occur, most prominently for the first time, in Wuhan?

who said it did? This is just a form of anthropic bias. If you have the highest density of scientists and viral experts around Wuhan then the chance that it's first recognised there is simply higher.

It's impossible to pinpoint the origin down to the kilometre because we don't even really know who patient 0 is. For all we know this could have spawned in some village and then traveled to the Wuhan market without anyone noticing, until doctors with enough experience did, who are most likely to be close to that facility.

Firefighters are designed to be close to places that could burn down so that they can respond quickly. A research institution has no such incentive.

There will be a coronavirus pandemic != There will be a lethal coronavirus pandemic starting in Wuhan.

I'm not aware that Wuhan was regarded as breeding ground for human transmissible lethal coronaviruses prior to 2020. Do you happen to have a source for that?

Edit. Added 'lethal', as common cold is also a coronavirus in 15% of the instances.

It doesn't matter much where it originated now, the lab or the market. US tax payers should not fund such research. China tried to cover up the incident and has failed to stop the virus escape to other countries. They should be held accountable for this. The US is one of the few countries in the position to issue punitive measures. Others may follow. I am going to refrain from buying goods from the PRC after this.

I disagree with this point of view. It only encourages covering things up. The US frequently has it's own lab incidents including even with anthrax (this was reported in some of the Newsweek articles). There's no indication of carelessness or violations of lab procedures in the Chinese labs yet. This could have happened anywhere in the world.

The problem now is that there is no real investigation into the true source of the outbreak. That is all we should be demanding right now. And if it turns out to have escaped from the lab that does not imply a need for punishment beyond perhaps the lab director and those in an oversight position.

What is more important is probably to recognize how dangerous it is to work with bats and that much greater safety precautions be taken with them even when not working on gain of function research. And the entire world needs to learn how to research infectious diseases in a safer way that doesn't create outbreaks.

Maybe you're right, but what about the CCP culture of covering things up and finding scapegoats? Do you trust the CCP to conduct this investigation? Because I do not. And I doubt they would let a board of international experts conduct it and cooperate with them. They'll just cover things up like they're used to, punish some innocent people for spreading rumors or alleged negligence or who knows what. Let's not forget that he CCP is a totalitarian state actor which throws innocent people in reeducation camps, harvests organs from Falun Gong practitioners and sells them abroad, abducts people critical of its regime, claims that Taiwan is part if China etc. The only thing we can do is handle it like we handle Iran or North Korea. They only get a free pass because they're the PRC and we build stuff cheaply there with their blessing and the blood sweat and tears of Chinese people working in subhuman conditions.

> The only thing we can do is handle it like we handle Iran or North Korea

That sounds like a great way to _never_ find out what really happened, and boycott 1.4 billion people in the process.

We already know what happened: messing around with wildlife. Wildlife smuggling. Open air markets where meat is processed near potentially sick wild animals that are kept in cages. Bushmeat (Ebola). Caring for camels who got it from bats (MERS). Preparing monkeys for dinner, whoops a knife cut (AIDS). Habitat destruction (Lyme). There's a reason they're called zootonic diseases. Maybe another accidental lab escape. Does it really matter? Then what? Wildlife smuggling should have been banned anyway but I guess "lab escape" sounds more pressworthy. I realize there are people who have no other option or education in Africa but China is quite a different story.

"culture of covering things up and finding scapegoats"

That sounds bad, doesn't it?

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