Also from 12 November 2015
Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research
Lab-made coronavirus related to SARS can infect human cells.
https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-1.18787
An experiment that created a hybrid version of a bat coronavirus — one related to the virus that causes SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) — has triggered renewed debate over whether engineering lab variants of viruses with possible pandemic potential is worth the risks.
In an article published in Nature Medicine1 on 9 November, scientists investigated a virus called SHC014, which is found in horseshoe bats in China. The researchers created a chimaeric virus, made up of a surface protein of SHC014 and the backbone of a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and to mimic human disease. The chimaera infected human airway cells — proving that the surface protein of SHC014 has the necessary structure to bind to a key receptor on the cells and to infect them. It also caused disease in mice, but did not kill them.
Although almost all coronaviruses isolated from bats have not been able to bind to the key human receptor, SHC014 is not the first that can do so. In 2013, researchers reported this ability for the first time in a different coronavirus isolated from the same bat population.
US suspends risky disease research
Government to cease funding gain-of-function studies that make viruses more dangerous, pending a safety assessment.
Sara Reardon
22 October 2014
https://www.nature.com/news/us-suspends-risky-disease-research-1.16192
The US government surprised many researchers on 17 October when it announced that it will temporarily stop funding new research that makes certain viruses more deadly or transmissible. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is also asking researchers who conduct such ‘gain-of-function’ experiments on influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) to stop their work until a risk assessment is completed — leaving many unsure of how to proceed.
“I think it’s really excellent news,” says Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, who has long called for more oversight for gain-of-function research. “I think it’s common sense to deliberate before you act.”
Critics of such work argue that it is unnecessarily dangerous and risks accidentally releasing viruses with pandemic potential — such as an engineered H5N1 influenza virus that easily spreads between ferrets breathing the same air1, 2. In 2012, such concerns prompted a global group of flu researchers to halt gain-of-function experiments for a year (see Nature http://doi.org/wgx; 2012). The debate reignited in July, after a series of lab accidents involving mishandled pathogens at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.
One of the most prominent laboratories conducting gain-of-function studies is run by Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a flu researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 2012, Kawaoka published a controversial paper1 reporting airborne transmission of engineered H5N1 flu between ferrets. He has since created an H1N1 flu virus using genes similar to those from the 1918 pandemic strain3, to show how such a dangerous flu could emerge. The engineered H1N1 was transmissible in mammals and much more harmful than the natural strain.
Notice how they added an update to the page to cover tracks? Even the Director of NIH merely speculates and admits they dont know where it came from but claims its natural nevertheless. Its in the NIH director’s blog. So what they are saying to me is “oh yeah that? Yes tbings have been engineered but not this one.