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The search for answers about the origins of Covid-19 has focused global attention on scientific corners that were previously far from public view.
This research, called “gain of function,” involves manipulating pathogens, usually to make them more lethal. The goal is to understand how viruses behave and how they become resistant to vaccines. Critics say that the risk of pathogens escaping and triggering a pandemic is too great—in 2014, US President Barack Obama stopped funding for functional studies of certain viruses, while officials set stricter guidelines.
New rules were enacted in 2017, but after the ban was imposed in laboratories around the world (including the facility now at the center of the coronavirus origin debate: Wuhan Institute of Virology), similar experiments (usually funded by the United States) continue.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the U.S. Senate that between 2015 and 2020, a multinational group of 15 scientists working at the Wuhan Institute received $600,000. US public funds are used to investigate whether the bat coronavirus poses a threat to humans at the hearing this week.
As part of the work, the team-including famous Chinese virologists Shi ZhengliKnown as the “Batwoman” of China-splicing two different coronaviruses together to create a more dangerous version, they found that this virus may infect humans. 2015 papers The scientists published in the journal Nature.
Shi Zhengli in the P4 laboratory of Wuhan Research Institute © Feature China/Barcroft Media/Getty
Fauci denied on Tuesday that these experiments constituted a gain in functional research. However, the 2015 paper provided a stern warning: “The scientific review team may believe that similar research on the construction of chimeric viruses based on circulating strains is too risky to proceed.”
“These data and restrictions represent a crossroads for GOF [gain of function] Research the problem,” the scientist wrote in the paper. “We must weigh the potential for preparing for and mitigating future outbreaks against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens. “
Their warning resonated even more because some scientists are now considering the possibility of it leaking from the Wuhan Institute. They still lack definite evidence that Sars-Cov-2 is naturally transmitted to humans from bats or through intermediate animal hosts. .
“We must take the assumptions about nature and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have enough data,” wrote a group of scientists including Ralph Baric, one of the authors of the 2015 paper. An open letter This month.
Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard University, explained: “If you want to conduct an experiment that may trigger a new epidemic, then there should be good public health reasons for doing so.”
Earlier this year, with the assistance of China, an investigation by the World Health Organization found that the leakage of Sars-Cov-2 from research institutes was “very unlikely.” However, this conclusion was challenged in March by countries including the United States and the United Kingdom and the Director-General of the World Health Organization Tan Desai, who said that the investigation was “not extensive enough.”
US President Joe Biden ordered his intelligence agency this week Review evidence The laboratory leaked hypotheses and concluded within 90 days.Chinese official media many times Denies that laboratory leaks are possible And described the theory as a “conspiracy.”
The renewed attention has raised problems with the National Institutes of Health about its relationship with Wuhan Institute and Research. Baric and the Eco-Health Alliance-a non-governmental organization through which NIH provides funding-like Fauci, Previously rejected Their work in Wuhan constitutes a gain from functional research, partly because it is not designed to increase human infectivity.
Baric, NIH, Eco-Health Alliance and Wuhan Research Institute did not respond to requests for comment.
However, regardless of whether the NIH-funded Wuhan work is confidential, some experts, including Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, believe that it should not be done.
Ebright said: “Regardless of whether the Covid-19 pandemic is the result of laboratory leaks, the fact that this result is reasonable means that this is a type of research that we should not fund or help carry out.”
Ebright also questioned the safety standards of the Wuhan facility. In 2016, some scientists, including Peter Daszak, director of Shihe Ecological Health, used NIH funds to conduct experiments on live coronaviruses in a Level 2 Biosafety Laboratory in Wuhan. Announced work detailsThe BSL-2 facility is usually only used for medium-risk work, and researchers can perform experiments on open benches with only lab coats and gloves.
“If this work is happening, it definitely shouldn’t happen in BSL-2,” Ebright said. “This is roughly equivalent to a standard dentist’s office.”
In 2018, China’s first biosafety level 4 laboratory was opened in Wuhan, undertaking the highest risk biological work. Daszak did not respond to a request for comment.
Ebright is not alone. U.S. diplomats in China in 2018 It is said that a telegram was sent Washington warns: “The new laboratory [at Wuhan] There is a serious lack of properly trained technicians and investigators required to safely operate this high-protection laboratory. “
Although scientists say that the world may never be able to determine whether Covid-19 originated naturally or in a Wuhan laboratory, many believe that the pandemic highlights why such research should not be conducted at all.
Milton Lettenberg, a biological weapons expert at the University of Maryland, said: “No matter what we classify this work, it should not be carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Additional reporting by Yang Yuan and Liu Nian in Beijing
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