
US Federal Ban on Making Lethal Viruses Is Lifted - fern12
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih.html?_r=0
======
yegle
The intention seems legit, despite the concern. Quote from the article:

 _The pathogen to be modified must pose a serious health threat, and the work
must produce knowledge — such as a vaccine — that would benefit humans.
Finally, there must be no safer way to do the research._

~~~
TheSithMaster
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

~~~
toomanybeersies
Getting a bit off topic here, but I've always interpreted that aphorism
differently, and apparently the history of the saying agrees with me.

I've always interpreted it as being a corollary to "actions speak louder than
words". Simply saying something, or having the intention to do something does
not mean it will actually get done.

~~~
thret
I just assumed it meant both. On the off topic though, I've always liked:
"Words without actions lack credibility; Actions without words lack clarity."
\- John Stott.

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sndean
For more background, and since this article is surprisingly short:

This is a better article: [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/nih-
lifts-3-year-ban...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/nih-lifts-3-year-
ban-funding-risky-virus-studies)

This ban that's being lifted stems from a few incidents, but really the
driving force was Ron Fouchier's [0] gain-of-function study where his lab made
a few mutations that enabled transmission of the bird flu (H5N1) virus between
ferrets. All they had to do was make five mutations and it was suddenly more
dangerous (here's the paper [1]). Ferrets may sound random, but they can
become infected with human flu virus and show similar pathology to humans -
they're a model for humans.

I remember hearing Fouchier speak in Washington at a biodefense conference
right after the study came out. He was (is?) pretty much a celebrity among
scientists, but the policy folks had a different opinion...

Pretty sure these things will escape from the lab at some point. I've
personally handled some B. anthracis (causes anthrax) that was supposedly non-
viable only to find out later that it was almost certainly still alive. (Not
this case, but here's an example [2] mentioned in the article.) There would
(hopefully) be more regulations on BSL3+ organisms like the viruses being
discussed, because anthrax is relatively friendly, but like any other field,
all it takes is one incompetent person.

[0]
[https://www.erasmusmc.nl/MScMM/faculty/CVs/fouchier_cv?lang=...](https://www.erasmusmc.nl/MScMM/faculty/CVs/fouchier_cv?lang=en)

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4810786/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4810786/)

[2] [https://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/news-multimedia/lab-
incident/ind...](https://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/news-multimedia/lab-
incident/index.html)

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chrisper
You know how when you watch movies and because you know so much about tech you
can tell that most of the stuff done in movies regarding hacking etc is
bullshit and not real.

Now I have a lack in knowledge of biology at this level, but can someone maybe
explain to me how all those disease mass extinction movies cannot be real? I
feel like my lack of knowledge here causes my concerns when reading stuff like
this article.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Ebola is one such virus. In terms of evolution these viruses tend to burn out
by killing the host. Evolutionary pressures push viruses towards symbiotic
equilibrium. Thus in the worst case scenario there will be survivors who are
immune or the virus or the virus will burn out until the only strain left does
not harm humans. The later was the case with ebola.

~~~
jacquesm
If anything Ebola is too lethal. It tends to burn out locally before it can
spread far from its originating point though if someone should immediately
travel after becoming infected it could spread to a new location. But in the
majority of the cases so far it has burned out before it could spread to a new
village, though the largest outbreak to date claimed in excess of 10,000 lives
and spread quite far.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31982078](http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31982078)

All it will take for Ebola to be a truly massive killer is a small mutation
that would reduce immediate mortality or that would increase the incubation
time. Either one of those would greatly increase the number of people that a
single outbreak would affect. I'd rather not have to live through that.

~~~
wickawic
You can just move to Madagascar and close the ports.

~~~
Jach
Except [http://www.who.int/csr/don/15-november-2017-plague-
madagasca...](http://www.who.int/csr/don/15-november-2017-plague-
madagascar/en/)

~~~
maemre
I guess GP was referring to the game Plague Inc.

~~~
Jach
More like Pandemic 2, but yes. These games have a winning strategy of
infecting Madagascar first and spreading before the ports are closed.

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Houshalter
This was posted a few days ago. It's a talk about the dangers of man made
viruses by Intel's chief medical officer:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY)

2 minutes in he talks about how a strain of flu escaped from a lab in 1977 and
killed (and is still killing) millions of people.

------
smitherfield
Now, I don't want to seem anti-science or anything, but this seems like a
massive disaster just waiting to happen, in light of the incidents that led to
this ban and also, even more to the point, the 2001 anthrax attacks.[1]
Couldn't they at least restrict this research to labs far away from major
population centers?

The analogue with software development, I'd say, is when people periodically
point out that nuclear power plant or ICBM control systems _still run on
8-inch floppy disks!!1!_ and therefore allegedly need to be completely
rewritten. That rationale likewise fails to meet my tempting fate threshold.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks)

~~~
sillysaurus3
It's possible that it's very difficult to engineer a virus that can do better
than anything nature has come up with. Evolution has had billions of years to
try all the attack vectors. A worst case 12 Monkeys-style disaster seems
unlikely.

But I'm ignorant of this topic. Without handwaving or pointing at the worst
case, how much should we worry? Is there any evidence that a genetically
enhanced virus can be devastating?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_virus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_virus)
doesn't have much.

~~~
Simon_says
Maybe.

Evolution selects for virulence, not death toll. After all, your hosts can't
spread you if they're dead.

~~~
darpa_escapee
> After all, your hosts can't spread you if they're dead

Arguable. Dead bodies can and do spread disease.

~~~
Simon_says
I don't have a source at the moment, but there's evidence that infectious
agents become less deadly over time. There seems to be evolutionary pressure
to not kill hosts.

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c3534l
I don't trust people's due dilligence enough to be okay with this.

Edit: remember when Ebola was never supposed to leave the CDC fascility and a
nurse was exposed to it and left the hospital? That's what happens when
there's the highest level of scrutinity and security.

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ogdoad
Setting the stage for every biohazard movie ever made.

~~~
Isamu
That's ok, Project Wildfire will be automatically activated.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain)

~~~
lurr
Wouldn't activating wildfire have been a complete disaster in the book?

It's been a long time since I read that. The part about the guy's seizures
freaked me out for a while.

~~~
maxerickson
"Wildfire" was the protocol for responding to the detection of the alien
organism rather than the failsafe that wasn't.

~~~
lurr
oh, I thought wildfire was specifically the bombing that would have caused
massive growth of the organism.

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swframe2
My only concern is North Korea.

They have a strong desire to match american machismo. They probably lack the
funds to build novel biological weapons their own. They are extremely good at
break into computer systems. Companies excel at ignoring their vulnerabilities
until it is too late.

~~~
always_good
Pretty weak concern considering Americans will sell it to you.

I'd be more worried about the lack of scruples among people. Unfortunately
that doesn't create as much of a boogeyman.

------
top_post
So to bring a technology angle to this, there isn't anything remotely
equivalent around this for Cybersecurity where it has some parallels. Everyone
understands how bad a pandemic is - the risk of lives is obviously more
important than data - however with the reliance of technology lives can be
indirectly affected, such as the case of WannaCry shutting down hospitals and
associated healthcare technology.

Vulnerabilities researched and weaponized by the government, ended up in the
public, and caused global damage. There is no oversight into how these are
produced or their risks.

------
yakt
Great ! Now this is going to open new rooms for more mistakes and may lead to
more deaths which can be blamed to some scientific failure.

We humans collectively as one entity clearly have no discipline.

The current set of laws are themselves in first place not providing any peace
in the lives of most people. And we have no time to fix that issue and our
impulsive anxiety issue is making some weak willed men to open up new roads to
destruction. It may yield some benefit but it is not essential.

I have 0 confidence in today's governments that they are capable of containing
any damage caused by this law.

If entire of humanity is going to become extinct then we can take a high risk
effort. All the day every time we need not take life threatening risks.

Opening up of this law means any minute now in best case scenario there is a
1% chance that there may be a deadly virus in the air u just breathed in. And
based on history we humans are capable of leading ourselves into worst case
scenarios and that puts the percentage of risk anywhere between 1% to 99%.

Now even if something worst case happens i am sure the human species would not
go extinct as the billionaires and few millionaires would have means to
survive any death prone event only with nobody left to buy their products
anymore.

Kudos!

------
neuro_imager
I'm not entirely clear on the scenarios in which this type of research would
be beneficial (I'm a physician):

\- AFAIK research on vaccines does not require altering an organism to make it
more lethal. You would want to cover as broad a spectrum of serotypes/serovars
of the existing organism as possible. I can see how someone might argue that
you could pre-empt a more malignant variant but surely this is outweighed by
the likelihood of creating systemic risk.

\- What exactly would we learn form creating new, highly virulent organisms
that can't be learned using the same technology on non-virulent organisms?

\- It bothers me that this is a push to create more biological weapons from
the military complex (especially terrifying considering the infantile
intellects we currently have in congress).

------
staunch
Trial and error isn't great for this kind of stuff but it works great for AI
research. Let's create software that can do genetic engineering of viruses
right the first time.

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nerpderp83
As much as I dislike the subject, providing a monitorable outlet is better
than a full prohibition. Prohibition denies important signals to things that
will occur anyway.

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neves
As a foreigner, for me it is not a good news from the only country that
dropped nuclear bombs over innocent civilians.

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chewbacha
Sounds like we are multiplying the ways to cause species level extinction
rather than reducing them.

Kewl.

~~~
TeMPOraL
As long as we progress, it will always be like that.

Technology is, in a fundamental way, a force multiplicator. It gives you power
to do more things that you could do with only your biological body and mind.
That power can be used for destructive means too, so it follows that as we get
more power, we open new, exciting ways to destroy ourselves.

------
DigitalJack
An informative series from pbs narrated by Jeff goldblum on YouTube: search
for "dna episode 1 of 5 the secret of life"

It's a great high level overview of dna sequencing from the discovery of its
shape through the completion of the human genome project in 2000.

I'm having trouble pasting a link, maybe someone could help me out.

~~~
DigitalJack
The downvotes seem weird to me. Maybe it felt off topic?

Dr. Francis S. Collins is in several of the videos, and the third video is all
about this particular controversy of dangerous experiments at the dawn of
genetic engineering(for example one guy wanted to splice a cancer causing gene
in e. coli bacterium).

It seemed relevant to me. It is what the article is talking about afterall.

~~~
grzm
Hard to say. Maybe the lack of a link? I agree it otherwise looks it _would_
be relevant.

------
Tharkun
Lethal viruses? No problem. Drugs? Abortion? Never!

Weird how that works.

~~~
snowpanda
Yes because black tar heroin produced in a basement comes with the following
disclaimer: ".... and the work must produce knowledge — such as a vaccine —
that would benefit humans".

Stop making everything political, if this was done under a different
administration you would have applauded it because of it being a scientific
effort. Chances are this was decided by a panel and not the person you
despise.

Being a-political myself, it always amazes me how for BOTH parties, the
political issues aren't even about the issue at hand anymore. It's about
proving the other side wrong.

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's politics in a nutshell. It's never about the actual issue at hand, it's
always about getting on top of the other side.

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convery
Well, shit. That law was the only thing keeping the super-villains from going
through with their plans..

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exelius
Do you want the zombie apocalypse? Because this is how you get the zombie
apocalypse.

~~~
nutbutter
This also how you get ants.

------
roryisok
Just when I think we can't possibly make any more amazingly stupid decisions
on this planet, there we go again

~~~
strictnein
A smart decision would have been to read the article.

~~~
sllabres
I have read the article -- don't you think that there is the possibility for a
catastrophic error with this kind of research?

