Advances in genetics have made it possible to create viruses to make them more lethal or bring back lethal strains that were once eradicated, such as the 1918 strain of influenza Photo: Andrew Brooks.
Laboratories working to create or improve dangerous viruses and microbes risk killing 1.6 million people each year, scientists warn, calling for a public review of experiments.
Virologists and scientists Biosecurity experts from around the world gathered this week in Geneva to discuss how to prevent laboratory accidents that have caused a pandemic that could kill millions.
Recent genetic advances have made it possible to create viruses to make them more lethal to humans, or to bring back lethal strains that have been eradicated, such as the 1918 flu strain.
There are concerns that Covid-19 could have repercussions . A leak from a lab in China where scientists harvested bat viruses and manipulated them to figure out how they could evolve to infect humans.
«The risk is far from acceptable»
Mark Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at Harvard University, told the Pathogens Project Conference that he estimates that each lab doing this puts between 10,000 and 1.6 million people at risk of death each year.
The calculation is based on the mortality rate combined with the number of accidents occurring in biosafety level 3 laboratories, the second safest facilities.
At last count, there were at least 600 BSL-3 laboratories in the UK, although it is not known how many experiments are being carried out on potential pandemic pathogens.
“The risk is far from acceptable,” Professor Lipsitch said. «All research that raises the likelihood of a pandemic should be reviewed.
«Scientists believe that if their intentions are good, they should be allowed to do anything, but this can have gigantic consequences.»
«If there is a risk of a pandemic as a result of an experiment, then there must be a public health benefit, not a purely scientific benefit that offsets it, so we weigh lives against lives.»
Examples of risky research< p>In recent years, many laboratories have been criticized for conducting risky research.
Last May, Boston University created a new form of Covid-19 by inserting a spike protein from an early strain of the virus into a variant of Omicron.
Imperial College conducted Covid-19 experiments in which cells were infected with delta and omicron at the same time to see which had a competitive advantage.
Experts warned that there was a risk of combining the two options during the experiment to get what something «more deadly» that could have infected the scientists or leaked out of the lab.
There was also widespread criticism last year when a team of Canadian and American scientists recreated the 1918 influenza virus and infected macaques with it.
While the team said the study yielded useful scientific discoveries, the experts said the same results could be made with sequencing without the need to create a virus.
Experts also raised concerns about virus detection experiments that aim looking for unknown viruses in the wild or creating pathogens in the lab.
While previous lab leaks have been about known viruses such as SARS, smallpox or swine flu, new leaks may involve unknown viruses that are more difficult to fight.
Biosecurity expert Dr. Philippa Lenzos of the Royal College London, co-director of the conference and one of the working group members, said: «I think we agree on the need to limit the risks of research.
«There seems to be some agreement that if the virus is not currently circulates in nature, it's much harder to justify working on it.»
There will be more virus outbreaks in the future.
A task force from the Pathogens Project will publish a list of recommendations in the coming months, which may include a call to journals not to publish papers that do not maintain proper biosafety controls.
Co-Director Jesse Bloom, a computer virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, said : “I think we all agree that there will be more viral outbreaks in the future. I wouldn't be shocked if there wasn't another viral pandemic in my life.
“Of course there will probably be more outbreaks of zoonotic origin, and there will probably be more laboratory accidents in the future – there will probably be serious accidents in the laboratory.
“It will happen, and part of what we have to to make sure we are still doing research to prepare for these, but we obviously want to minimize the chance that the research will backfire.”
Experts said scientists should be more honest and transparent about their experiments so that the public can judge the merits of their work and how effective it is. potentially put them at risk.
“We conduct public civil and criminal trials – both the names of people and events, all this is made public before a person is found guilty,” Professor Lipsich added.
«So the idea that we can't publish studies [as to] whether they pose a potential threat to people seems a little crazy.»
Свежие комментарии