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These conversations all miss the single most important underlying detail.

Even if covid didn't come from a lab, we clearly possess the technology.

The cherry on top is that we're still actively working on said technology.

We have collectively and silently learned that we have the technology to end the world, and no one is really shocked by it.

This is far worse than nukes because M.A.D. doesn't apply, and it's not resource constrained. Viruses can come from anywhere and be enhanced with the right equipment and knowledge, which probably isn't all that expensive.

Why the hell aren't we shutting these labs down, or at the very least this type of research?




This does seem to be the case. Pathogenic (or even nonpathogenic 'silent riders' with minimal effects) respiratory viruses exist in a wide variety of animal species, and it seems the main barrier to cross-species transmission is that the natural host's cell-surface receptor proteins are different enough from human cell-surface receptor proteins that transmission is blocked.

With all the modern biotech tools, it's now possible to swap out the cell-surface binding domain from any virus with one that matches a human cell-surface receptor protein, which is how the viral particle gains access to the cell's interior. Cellular interiors seem more highly conserved across species, i.e. it appears that once you breach the outer defenses, the rest of the viral package can replicate within the cell without being constrained so much by inter-species differences. The ribosomal machinery will build just about anything in other words.

Hence the 'gain-of-function' game, which proponents justify as 'finding the potentially dangerous mutations before they arise naturally' is just creating novel pathogenic viruses with a high chance of escape from the labs where they're being created. This kind of research was temporarily banned in 2014 in the USA, but then that ban was lifted in 2017, all with little public discussion.

A permanent international ban on this kind of research, including an inspection and monitoring regime, is likely the only long-term solution that will work.


Because we have natural pathogens that could be released to do the same as a bioengineered one. For example the Spainish Flu, smallpox, plague. All of these could be introduced into our cities and kill millions. In addition there is and has been for quite a while the potential for buoengineered viruses as well.

So, what should we do if the local chapter of the Aryan Nation or whatever bad actor we choose to discuss were to go on a bioterrorism campaign? What could we do if we had not capability to test, evaluate and develop counters for these agents? These labs are where the folks that understand these agents come from.


I understand that's the value proposition of the research, but the difference between theory and practice is.. we just had a plague and it's not clear the research helped in any tangible way. In fact it may very well have been the catalyst.


There is bioweapon potential in these combination of technologies beyond simply engineering a virus, I won't go into detail here, since maybe (however unlikely) no-one else has come up with this particular scheme. However recent work by Baric and others leads me to believe that this kind of scheme is precisely their endgame.


I don't think it is the best strategy to build a dangerous pathogen, because we do not have the capability to contain it reliably. We just do not, as has been demonstrated many times. Humans are involved, and mistakes will happen.

To imagine you are "preparing" for a possible outcome, by realizing that exact outcome (as this pandemic may demonstrate), is like training the fire department by burning down Chicago.


Plague can be treated with antibiotics now.

We have supplies of smallpox vaccine ready to go in the event of an attack.

I don’t think we actually have the Spanish flu in a lab somewhere in reproducible form. Supposedly H1N1/swine flu is descended from it, but most people have protection against severe disease now from vaccination or a previous H1N1 infection.

If someone releases a new SARS-CoV-3 that’s been engineered to be as good a killer as MERS or SARS1 while retaining the transmission characteristics of covid-19 we could be in trouble, same if someone did it with a different virus family we don’t have some immunity to already.

Bird flu could be a good example here. It is an excellent human-killer but luckily doesn’t transmit well.


Lab leak doesn't necessarily mean it was man made.

They were storing coronavirus samples from all over the world here, it could have been a contamination accident, yet still a "lab leak"

We've always known humans do dangerous things, the takeaway is that you need safety procedures to mitigate risk.

The scandal that needs to be addressed is the dangerous experiments being done in BSL2 conditions and every country deciding their own tolerance for safety.

These are internationally supported and funded projects. There is no excuse for the stakeholders not to be on the same page about safety procedures.


I guess my underlying question is whether or not some areas of research should just be absolutely off-limits.

MKUltra, for example. Other human experimentation.

What if a physicist discovered the math to create black holes and wanted to test it; could any theoretical benefit be worth the known risk? Maybe it can be justified if the experiment is done in deep space, far from earth. Perhaps the same is true of gain of function, it should be studied on a moon facility instead of in or near a densely populated city?

On the other hand, the highest form of safety is not doing it in the first place, which happens to be cheap compared to a moon base.


If every democratic nation voted to cease development of these programs, the programs will continue where democracy doesn't.


The meme answer to which is "Then let's continue to spread the democracy :D".

Except that that also might be the most reasonable serious answer... What else do you do when a country continues to develop an extremely dangerous weapon?


stuxnet


Right, there's an arms race nature to it and you can't put the genie back in the bottle. But banning and sanctions still seem like the only real option.

Effort and diligence can work, even if it's at odds with our nature.


[flagged]


Why go out of your way to make absolutist claims? you're just setting yourself up to fail.

What you really meant to say is, "where is my evidence", and well we've been doing this since 2012, at least.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22722205/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22723413/


because you are clueless and/or misinformed as to what separates this virus from other coronaviruses and HOW different it is from other coronaviruses. the technology absolutely does not exist.


Attacking another user like this is not allowed on HN. Since you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly in other places too, I've banned this account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.


Agree, it's not possible to create something like sars-cov2 completely de-novo. I assume this is what you mean? Claims of impossibility here need to be quite specific to be meaningful, I think.

On the other hand if you have not read the DEFUSE proposal you are in for a real treat. It is absolutely plausible that sars-cov2 could be an output of this line of research.

We also don't really know what backbones they had.


At the other end of the scale, it is absolutely certain that if humans started with a virus more similar to SARS-COV-2 than any publicly disclosed virus and made some possibly very minor modifications they could end up with COVID-19, whether the virus leaked was more or less harmful than its all-natural ancestors.

But if we're looking at specific claims about applied research apparently featured in the book: that it was [most] plausible details like the spike binding to ACE2 receptors were the product of human ingenuity applied to RATG13, the likelihood of this seems to have been undermined by the subsequent discovery of other naturally occurring viruses more similar to SARS-COV-2 already featuring a spike capable of binding to human ACE2 receptors.

Ultimately I guess the question is whether the intermediate viruses between SARS-COV-2 and other variants are more likely to exist in secret in the labs or outside the scope of human knowledge, I guess. I do believe it is possible for virologists to cover up things in their lab especially in this context, but outside the scope of human knowledge is a bigger search space.


Are you a bot? this reply makes no sense.

I know plenty about the differences, and even if I didn't what would that have to do with our technological abilities?

Here's what's patently true:

1. We are actively funding many "gain of function" research grants.

2. We have gene editing technology, CRISPR has been around for over a decade now.

3. We have literally synthesized DNA, RNA, bacteria, and viruses in the lab. The covid vaccines alone are enough to validate this, but here's further evidence we've been doing this for at least 2 decades. [0]

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12114528/

(2002) Chemical synthesis of poliovirus cDNA: generation of infectious virus in the absence of natural template

So, yeah. We clearly possess the technology.


Asking other contributors to a thread whether they are a bot, a shill or some other non-player entity is not a nice thing to do.


The point is you don't need to control them to wreak havoc. Yes you would harm your own community/country, but this is already in many ways the case with conventional weapons.




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