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Comment by nicoburns | Hacker News Reader

No it's not, and yes it is. That these laboratories were (and still are?) doing gain of function research - deliberately creating new variants of viruses to study them - has been known since the start of the pandemic (the results are published in reputable scientific journals, and a lot of the funding came from western medical research bodies). And it's definitely something I think we need to have a societal conversation about. Personally in light of recent events I feel like this is something we probably ought not to be doing.

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Yeah I knew about GoF research but I didn't know they planned on doing it on MERS. Another troubling thing was that they basically ignored the moratorium so even if measures were taken to stop GoF... they were just ignored by using a foreign lab as a loophole?

To me it's mind-boggling that you could get arrested and fined for violating covid-related restrictions but people who did much much much more potentially dangerous stuff are not only getting away with it but also kept getting financed by the government. Even if covid turns out to not originate from a lab, just the insane potential risks that came from the blatant violations of the GoF moratorium should have been enough to land people in trouble. Especially since us commoners were punished based on the possibility that we could transmit the virus, whether we were infected or completely virus free didn't matter.

Yes, this is where the whole lab leak "conspiracy" came from.

The lab was doing GoF research with bat and pangolin Coronaviruses exploring if the spike protein can be modified to enter through the human ACE2 receptor. There are a number of papers from Ralph Baric and Shi Zhengli on the topic with research done at the Wuhan lab.

I think your 'commoners' framing... is not helpful here.

You raise a few objectionable assertions that I think is good to contemplate: - GoF was never banned - The ban was NIH funding GoF - The ban was lifted in 2017 anyways - Is this risky? The ban on funding it doesn't mean it's risky, as per se. - The potential pie in the eye risk are infinite, but what are the realistic risks? That really depends on the technical details of how the research is done, and where it's done. - Compare and contrast to activities that are very dangerous and have nearly infinite catastrophic risks but we do every day: driving, flying, operating nuclear power plants, refining oil, and much much more.

All of this research came out of the desire not to be caught flat footed by the next version of SARS or MERS. Overall global research did in fact prep us for SARS-CoV-2. Vaccines "made in months" that have stood the test of efficacy and safety? Months if you ignore the years of research behind it.

Is this particular thing excessively dangerous or not? I'm not 100% sure. Most of the "this is unacceptable" seems to be coming from people who seem to have a visceral hatred of Dr Fauci and who as head of the NIH was indirectly responsible for this funding. But I don't find that a reasonable line of reasoning. One thing I know, is every scientist I know is not paid a boat load, and care deeply about what they are doing and why.

Perhaps GoF is too 'dangerous', but maybe we should also hear about how it can be made safe, how does it compare in hazardousness to other common things that are deemed 'safe' and what the benefits are.

Yep - we kept having near-misses with prior coronaviruses, so understandably, scientists were spending a ton of energy trying to figure out what makes them so pathogenic and how the animal-human jumps occur. Considering the fact that SARS and MERS both came from zoonotic origin (and IMO, Sarscov2 did as well) - we should really be spending our energy on the best research methods to prevent another pandemic, whether that's GoF research or something else.

Even if "we" figure out how the animal-jump can occur, it's not like "we" can stop it or even predict it.

And the probability that what is created in a lab will be close enough to what is naturally occurring in nature to be useful are none to zero.

> Even if "we" figure out how the animal-jump can occur, it's not like "we" can stop it or even predict it.

The first step is understanding. Until you understand how it happens, statements about whether or not you can prevent it do not make much sense to me.

For example: imagine you have not yet discovered that the unwashed hands of doctors are transmitting disease in a hospital. You might make a statement very similar to yours about how "even if we can figure out how people get sick, it's not like we can stop it".

That's true, but whether the understanding is worth the risk is questionable. It seems likely that we've managed to cause rather than prevent a pandemic with this particular research.

I’m not sure how realistic your example is. Prior to discovering handwashing, were scientists doing things they knew had the potential to get literally everyone morbidly sick, just to try figuring out how it worked?

> The first step is understanding.

This is a slogan with no logical value.

> Until you understand how it happens, statements about whether or not you can prevent it do not make much sense to me.

Except we do understand. It seems to me that you are lacking is basic scientific knowledge. Virus mutates naturally and become more virulent due to evolution.

> For example: imagine you have not yet discovered that the unwashed hands of doctors are transmitting disease in a hospital. You might make a statement very similar to yours about how "even if we can figure out how people get sick, it's not like we can stop it".

We can control our hands, we can't control viruses in nature.

The problem is, there's no real clinical benefit that comes out of gain of function research. Virologists claim that there is, but they can't point to examples of where it helped us actually treat or prevent something.

Basically they're creating bigger and bigger fires and claiming that doing so somehow helps firefighters. Next we'll have nuclear weapons researchers claiming that higher yields are good to know about so we can work out how to protect against stronger explosions.

The potential benefit is developing novel viruses. That's it. They will likely be infectious. Hopefully, ahem, your operating protocols prevent the release of that virus and you study it in model organisms to figure out metabolic pathways to fight it before such a real virus occurs naturally.

I suppose I'm operating from the belief that everyone cares about preventing possible virologic doomsday weapons. I'm sure quite a few people have not the slightest concern.

So, we need to do more research until we will find an ultimate weapon against viruses.

As an alternative, we need to stop development of new viruses, both naturally and in labs, including Russian and North Korean labs.

> Compare and contrast to activities that are very dangerous and have nearly infinite catastrophic risks but we do every day: driving, flying, operating nuclear power plants, refining oil, and much much more.

What? The risks for each of those, even the nuclear power plant operation, are extremely limited and localized. GoF research has potential near-extinction levels of risk. Nuclear weapons are the ony thing on remotely the same tier IMO. It's not to say that GoF is not a good idea, as clearly there is potential benefit. But to compare it to the risks of driving a car is apples to radioactive oranges.

Stupid GoF research has those risks. Totally eliminating a research methodology because of possible bad actors is just like how nuclear energy was delayed for decades because of green ooze.

With all respect to nuclear threat. It doesn't self replicate.

It’s not just about bad actors. It’s that the techniques (serial passaging) aren’t even controllable in the sense that we don’t know what will result.

GoF is often not lab engineering and the outcomes are not predictable and the range of possible danger is almost infinite. Even from perfectly well intentioned actors.

Not knowing the result is the point. You develop novel viruses that you may not be able to imagine and then study how they impact an organism. This is useful.

I agree with your sentiment, but you are contradicting yourself

Nuclear accidents cannot be [1] limited and localized, and also [2] at the same tier as GoF (...since GoF outcomes are certainly not [1]).

There was no contradiction. The difference was nuclear power plant vs nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons vs. nuclear power plants. Even terrorist attacks on nuclear power plants or maximum meltdowns aren't GoF tier. Only nuclear war.

I don't have any particular opinion on fauci and 2 years ago I'd have agreed on pretty much everything you said. The issue though is not necessarily the GoF research by itself. If the scientists involved did not try to completely silence everyone, cover their tracks and basically stonewall any potential investigation, I wouldn't see the problem.

From my point of view, you simply cannot assess the risk when the main party involved in taking and being responsible for said risk has proven itself to be so shady. We all know that there areinherent dangers to this type of research, but we can't account for human deception and tribal wagon circling on top of that.

The proponents of GoF could've come clean, been transparent and welcomed the scrutiny considering the insane magnitude of the situation. But they have not! Even if it turns out that this is purely zoonotic, the trust is rightfully broken imo. Maybe research should continue, even on GoF, but consequences should now be clear. The article details such a long pattern of deliberate obfuscation, gaslighting and outright manipulation that it's becomes impossible to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Also, considering that we went through the biggest pandemic of the past century during which most people have seen their lives literally dictated by arbitrary (and very low) risk thresholds that authorities have decided to follow... it would be a bit rich to now just say that we have to live with the risks of scientists fucking up and that we have to let the pros handle it. Yes screw ups happen, but asking billions of people to just live with the consequences won't work.

Again, 2 years ago I'd have said that we need to take the risk because it can have tremendous benefits. But as much as appealing to "commoners" might sound lazy, there's still something deeply wrong when we see a much stronger and visceral reactions/consequences to maskless "karens" than we do to the individuals involved with orgs like the EcoHealth alliance. Yes it's maybe a populist take, but at some point the elitism becomes so blatant that even populism makes sense

> Overall global research did in fact prep us for SARS-CoV-2.

Didn't feel like it.

We had a vaccine candidate within a few days as I recall. That's miraculous.

That was mostly due to advances in mRNA technology, no? Moderna was able to design the vaccine in days mostly because of it's RNA tech, not because it was prepared for a coronavirus pandemic.

Definitely mRNA advancements played a huge role, but it certainly sounds like coronavirus research played its part.

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2021/0...

All that was needed was knowing spike is a target.

The tail risk of taking viruses and deliberately making them more dangerous is not even comparable to the tail risks of flying, driving, or (imo) operating nuclear power plants. This is either a profoundly ignorant statement or just disingenuous. Like seriously, this is a mind boggling statement you just made

This is missing basic understanding risk management.

Parent is solely focused on probability, when what really matters is outcome.

Lets say that for every 10 years: 1) p of lab leak is 0.002% vs 2) p of nuclear accident is 0.03%

Although (2) is much more probable, from a risk management perspective, (1) is unacceptable because risks compound over time and critically, the domain of outcomes are vastly less localized and certain than (2).

The conspiracy theory (at this point, is it even one?) is that they want to create a virus that targets only certain ethnic group, like SARS2 did to some extent, or at least being a able to have the vaccine before everyone else, which also happened to some extent.

Because otherwise there are no valid reasons to create this kind of pathogens in labs; the chance the bugs created there will be similar to the naturally occurring ones are basically none and even less so that the vaccines or treatment will be or remain efficient treatment.

> they want to create a virus that targets only certain ethnic group

Ok that is totally made up.

There are plenty of reasons that researchers make dangerous pathogens that have nothing to do with ethnic cleansing.

Some of these methods even get published despite the risks that the knowledge presents https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.10875

Can you explain what you mean by “totally made up?”

Are you saying literally no one at all wants this? Just that there are also other reasons to do the research? Something else?

I think that the covid pandemic is highly unlikely to be the result of such research. It's much more likely to be the result of research into how to prevent future pandemics and treat coronaviruses.

Ok, I think that’s reasonable. At the level of individual research directors, I agree that probably the large majority of them have good intentions.

My concern is that there aren’t just altruistic research directors. There are funders. There are politicians. There are militaries. There are covert agents. And I get really concerned how easy it is for actors with less savory, noble intentions to coopt naive researchers into participating in a larger agenda.

It’s super convenient for everyone to be able to have the plucky, innocent, earnest research director come out with shining optimism about the potential. And it’s a convenient reason not to totally slam the brakes on research that, for better or worse, may lead (may have led) to global pandemic.

Not sure what the GP's point was but I'll just point out that there is literally a conspiracy theory being circulated right now that says just that. It's being used in Russia to justify the war in Ukraine.

> Ok that is totally made up.

https://guardian.ng/features/health/bioweapons-designed-to-k...

"A new report from Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk says that world governments have failed when it comes to preparing against threats like futuristic bioweapons powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and genetic manipulation. Such weapons would have to power to target specific DNA, and kill certain races of people leaving other swaths of the population unharmed."

Additional information from a biochemist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjfvHOcfEUQ

> There are plenty of reasons that researchers make dangerous pathogens that have nothing to do with ethnic cleansing.

Such as? The article you posted merely states that it is possible and that they "wish" it will lead to more vaccine research, without saying how.

This was a thing a few years ago.

There were alleged leaks from a whistle-blower from the CCP regarding developing bio-weapons that targeted specific gene sequences attributed to certain ethnicities.

>no valid reasons to create this kind of pathogens in labs; the chance the bugs created there will be similar to the naturally occurring ones are basically none and even less so that the vaccines or treatment will be or remain efficient treatment.

This is literally the purpose of gain of function virology research. Modify bugs in ways that could be seen in nature and explore vaccines and treatments.

> Modify bugs in ways that could be seen in nature and explore vaccines and treatments.

There are no reasons to believe the mutants created in laboratories will arise in nature nor that the vaccines or treatments will be effective compared to what nature does. Added to the fact that GOF research never produced any kind of meaningful treatment or response so far and given how they are dangerous and leaks happen all the time; they should be outright banned.

This is where it becomes more sinister. You have to consider that other countries are doing the same research, and developing super bugs that only they have the treatment for

Gain of function isn't about predicting future natural mutations. It's about generating virus that can be used in dish and animal model studies, often blending features of existing viruses.

They are banned. It is bioweapons research but under a different name.

And, frankly, the purpose does not make it valid.

The research should not be done because it has not proven to provide beneficial treatments.

> doing gain of function research - deliberately creating new variants of viruses to study them

What do they learn from these studies? The drawbacks to GOF is clear - but what are the potential gains that makes the risks worthwhile?

Disclaimer: I think the virus leaked from a lab because scientists are usually more stupid and reckless than what their funders think they are, so maybe I'm insane and you shouldn't listen to me because I can affect your mental health. Also what I will write may be very dangerous misinformation so be careful because if you keep reading you consent to being misinformed. This writing is known by the state of California to cause cancer.

There's two objectives of this type of research. One is that after you have the new virus you can try different drugs on it, so that if gets out you can rapidly control it. Usually the drugs you try are ones that the company you work for sell or have a patent for. I think creating a pathogen and then testing how you can cure it with stuff that you can sell for a big profit creates a conflict of interest if it's also your responsibility to be sure it's not released, but apparently I'm pretty alone in this conspiranoic belief.

The other objective is creating a bioweapon, or getting ready for one. The US allegedly withdrew from researching bioweapons in an offensive manner but offensive and defensive research are very similar in that field because you speculate what viruses your alleged adversaries have and then recreate them to try the vaccines against them.

One other rationale I've seen is to create self-disseminating vaccines: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1254-y

Yeah but that's like a very long-term goal for which it's not even clear there's a legal framework or even a market for such products.

Do you mean it's a long term goal in terms of ability or in terms of policy? Cause as far as I know there's been at least one experiment doing this already, all the way back in 2001:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11483281/

Policy a bit but mostly market, I think it can be done. People already show with their wallets that they prefer to get either "meat products" where the origin of the meat is dubious and hidden so you are probably getting scraps and meat from factory farms, and on the other end they want free range no antibiotics products. This pathogen vaccine thing doesn't make sense in factory farming and would "polute" free range, and for a good reason.

Hmm, yeah idk about the industrial agriculture market either. But a lot of the papers about these argue that this stuff is necessary to prevent climate change driven zoonotic diseases. So I guess the "market" would be governments. The lack of clear legal framework might stop some countries from trying this stuff out but probably not all of them.

If it's going to be anything like GMO soy that Monsanto pushed into the Buenos Aires government in Argentina because "it was the future and we need it to feed the world after climate change" then maybe they'll try it on another third world "weak" or "cheap" government. Also BTW after that the US passed the law saying if something is GMO it needs to be on the label and there was a huge campaign against GMO foods so they pushed out the farmers using GMO in most of the third world out of the US market. Lovely.

I wouldn't be surprised if it goes the same way, push the little guy into trying it and then push everything else in the supply chain so that their meat can only be used for low margin cheap shit.

Even if scientists are competent, virus can be leaked because of someone else stupidity. For example, look at blast in «Vector» lab, Novosibirsk, RF, Sep 16 2019, where Russian first responders entered into biosafety level 4 lab without protective equipment, then opened every door checking for fire and stole some equipment. How you protect your lab from that?

I keep hearing this a lot, but how do "we as a society" have a "conversation" about something, exactly? Twitter?

Yes. And here, and Facebook, and at the bus stop, in the office breakroom, around the dinner table, etc.

And hopefully enough of the people in those conversations then write their representatives.

That's adorable. The reality looks more like an inflamed populist movement mounted atop a bucking orange baffoon.

Somehow the world came to a consensus that nuclear weapons should never be used, and that genocide and slavery are reprehensible. Creating and/or modifying viruses to better infect humans belongs on the short global "don't do" list.

Not doing gain of function research is like not doing disaster recovery drills or penetration tests at the tech companies.

gain of function research is more like inventing novel nuclear weapons more likely to kill humans to study bomb shelter and anti radiagion technology than any drill. the pathogens created are not drills.

Only if nuclear weapons would evolve by its own, and on insanely much higher speed than what you can invent.

But if the drills end up killing thousands or the pen tests end up causing massive data breaches, wouldn't you agree that the pen tester or drill organizer should be held liable? Or do you just let them do it again because it's just a risk we need to take

If you leak pathogen - sure. But there’s no proof of any kind that it happened, and people fear mongering greatly overestimate abilities of gain of function. It’s like Skynet vs current state of an AI.

We don’t ban pen tests, just because people who have 0 understanding of it are sacred of it.

There is obviously a risk of pathogen leak..

https://armscontrolcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Esc...

And there are highly qualified experts in the field who view GoF research as the most likely source of COVID-19, so on what basis are you so confident that it doesn't pose a major risk?

Lab leaks (even without GoF involved) are remarkably common events.

So shouldn’t be base our regulation on that reality?

There have been many documented instances of lab leaks. It's even happened with Covid-19 research[1] at least once that was reported, and with the virus being pandemic around most of the world I'd assume there were many other leaks that weren't reported because nobody could prove it came from a lab. And even if the evidence that the original Covid-19 resulted from a lab leak is weak the evidence that the Omicron variant came from a lab is much stronger.

Scientists are only human and bio research labs don't have the same culture of continuous improvement and lack of blame that have let the airline industry, say, get to its current level of safety.

EDIT: Oops, forgot to add the citation

[1] https://fortune.com/2021/12/10/taiwan-investigates-covid-lab...

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