creating super-viruses--courtesy of US National Institutes of Health

12-27-2017   Scientists today can create viruses from scratch, as they've already done with the polio virus, back in 2002. Using the tools of modern genomics, virologists and microbiologists can make pathogens much, much more deadly.  But would anyone really want to do this? The answer, it turns out, is yes.

A few years ago some virologists had the clever idea of modifying the bird flu virus to make it more deadly to humans.  What would it take, they wondered, to turn the bird flu into a human flu?  They decided to give it a try, and they announced their plans to the world.  Then just a few months later they published results showing that they had succeeded, at least partially, using a bird flu called H7N9. That wasn't even their first try.  Only a year earlier they did the same thing using a 

different flu virus (H5N1).  Both of these bird flu strains have killed people, but the 

wild-type version of the virus rarely infects humans.  The scientists running these 

experiments aimed to create a strain that could get into humans much more easily.

Many scientists were mortified.  Eighteen leading microbiologists and infectious disease experts, including Nobel laureate Sir Richard Roberts, formed the Cambridge Working Group to oppose efforts to create super-viruses in the lab. Hundreds of other scientists, including three more Nobel laureates, joined the group as charter members.   https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2017/12/27/u-s-re-opens-the-door-to-experiments-that-will-create-super-viruses/#5da412f4188f

............................................National Institutes of Health, 9000 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, Maryland 20892

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

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from  https://osp.od.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Gain_of_Function_Deliberative_Process_Written_Public_Comments.pdf

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  Fifty years ago artificially enhancing selection by intentionally infecting countless series of lab animals with different viruses is understood to have created the H1N1 Swine Flu.

  Its Franken-genome has a mysterious untraceable genetic parentage and a "clear unnatural origin," and H1N1 became the poster-child for a moratorium against gain-of-function research—experimentation that seeks to increase a pathogen's virulence, creating a more effective double-edged sword to counter and learn from.

    In the case of H1N1 it wasn't a question of if it'd escaped from a research laboratory, only whether it'd been designed as part of a weapons system or been part of a vaccine trial

Whether or not COVID-19 is eventually determined to have originate from gain-of-function research, this pandemic should be a stark reminder of the dangers it poses. -Dan Sirotkin   https://www.change.org/p/national-institutes-of-health-reinstate-the-global-moratorium-on-gain-of-function-research?recruiter=1045325428&recruited_by_id=b9cfba40-58cd-11ea-be9a-0317cc882fff&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=petition_dashboard

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