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Comment by ungreased0675 | Hacker News Reader

Are we fairly confident that these labs do more good than the risk they present to the public? I’m not sure we should be keeping dangerous pathogens around just for giggles and PhD papers. What are examples of how the research done in these places improves public health?

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One of the things which surprised me during covid was how e.g. Turkic central Asian states not only had clearly well-funded bio labs, but sometimes even their own vaccines (effective, too!) quickly in production.

The conclusion I drew from that is that people like Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow have asked a lot of questions about bioweapons in secret for a long time. And if he did it, you bet all similar leaders, in a wide sense, did it too. And I wouldn't like to be the scientist who got approached by security state people with these questions.

I guess I'm not conveying this well. What I'm trying to say is that we're not at all confident about anything like that - none of us - because it's all so hush hush because it's WMD-adjacent. The secrecy cripples our ability to have an honest well-informed discussion about it.

> One of the things which surprised me during covid was how e.g. Turkic central Asian states not only had clearly well-funded bio labs, but sometimes even their own vaccines (effective, too!) quickly in production.

citation needed.

Just go find a list of vaccines? I followed a tracked of vaccines which were under development during the pandemic, that tracker appears to be down, but even Wikipedia claims at least 50 got far enough to gain approval in at least one country.

knowledge. how to handle that and how it looks/works. if you forget it you will be reminded later.

You’re describing documentation though.

There is far more knowhow and supply chain that goes into keeping labs working than just documentation. Also, research requires labs, and so it is kind of already there sort of thing.

Yes, this is why doctors are only required to read textbooks and pass a written exam before practicing. Only mastery of the documentation is necessary. /s

For all the hand wringing we're doing over AI, I'm surprised that post-covid, regardless of origin, there wasn't a more serious discussion on what sorts of biological research are worth the risk.

I think this is in part because more people have some amount of knowledge about software and can directly see the effect AI has on the job market around them than do about biological research. Biological research labs usually don't expose convenient chat interfaces, besides, you only hear and read about them in scientific papers as long as things go well.

But totally agreed that that conversation should be had, a kind of test ban treaty would be useful but frankly, the three groups most likely to conduct this kind of research would never agree to such a ban.

bingo. my mom logs into ChatGPT and uses it for basic stuff.

nothing like a dev getting whole APIs built, but she understands what the tool is and how it may impact office workers, even if on a superficial, sci-fi sort of way.

i don't think she could tell you anything about RNA vaccines or mitosis

Because discussions of the idea that covid was the result of biological research was shut down hard, and suggesting it would quickly get you labeled as conspiracy theorist or put in a camp with the most extreme vaccine deniers

Much like nukes game theory favours keeping them.

Too bad you're not condemning the live animal / wet market trade because from that we've had SARS, H5N1, H7N9 and Covid19, so are you fairly confident the wet markets are doing a public good or just condemning research labs for some reason?

Do you think bird flu came from a lab?

Chinese authorities considered to crack down on these markets before Covid 19 but didn't...because the markets are a major source of income for the peasant class in China so it's politically dangerous to do it because it would put millions out of their businesses.

I wonder if people downvoting consider your question to be a thoughtcrime or something. It’s a legitimate line of inquiry. Research happens because somebody is interested and writes a grant request that is accepted. Governments and institutions where the research happens have rules as well. It’s possible that the researchers, the folks reviewing the grants, and the people making the rules haven’t done a cost-benefit analysis that adequately covers the tail risks. For some kinds of research, the answer can be: no, we shouldn’t do this. It’s reasonable to publicly discuss these concerns.

Plague exists naturally. It's not some kind of a movie-land bioweapon McGuffin. The US has half a dozen cases of plague each year.

Russia did a lot of work to control the plague with anti-plague vaccinations of cattle and pets, resulting in almost no human plague cases. This obviously requires research and development for vaccines.

BTW, same applies to anthrax. It also exists naturally, which surprises a lot of people.

Yes, but natural plague isn't what people are worried about here. Russia has worked on bioengineered versions that would be much worse.

Bubonic plague is not a good bioweapon. It doesn't form spores and requires fleas to spread. It can spread through aerosolized droplets, but that's really no better than a regular chemical weapon.

It's great for terrorist attacks, but not really a good weapon.

The Soviets developed antibiotic resistant strains of the plague meant to be dispersed over cities as aerosolized droplets. Inhaling these droplets causes pneumonic plague (coincidentally the type of infection this lab worker supposedly had which seems odd) and pneumonic plague can be spread human to human via coughing once the infection has been allowed to incubate for a few days. It can also be passed to animals from humans which could result in another vector for infection via handling, butchering or eating infected animals resulting in either primary bubonic plague or pharyngeal plague. Untreated pneumonic plague is almost always fatal so it goes without saying that antibiotic resistant plague is effectively 100% fatal in all contracted cases.

It would be more effective than chemical weapons in that it is more persistent, has delayed action and can be spread person to person or through animal vectors. This means it would be possible to deploy it more discretely and that it requires greater effort to contain. You're right that it is a better weapon for a terrorist attack or asymmetric warfare. It would still make a good weapon for creating an undue amount of stress on a region's medical capacity, if enough people were infected then a significant amount of antibiotics would initially be used attempting to treat them and a lot of resources would go to containing the spread, quarantining the infected or potential exposures and providing supportive care to a lot of people that would inevitably die very miserable deaths.

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