🧵list of prepandemic warnings about gain-of-function research and lab leaks
1) Lynn Klotz, 2012: "But with 42 labs carrying out live PPP research, this basic 0.3 percent probability translates to an 80 percent likelihood of escape...
... from at least one of the 42 labs every 12.8 years, a time interval smaller than those that have separated influenza pandemics in the 20th century. This level of risk is clearly unacceptable."
thebulletin.org/2012/08/the-un…
2) Simon Wain-Hobson, 2013: "If GOF virology cannot deliver any benefits, while the catastrophic risks are tangible and remain, common sense suggests that it should stop"
embopress.org/doi/pdf/10.100…
3) Martin Furmanski, 2014: "the question is not if such escapes will result in a major civilian outbreak, but rather what the pathogen will be and how such an escape may be contained, if indeed it can be contained at all."
thebulletin.org/2014/03/threat…
4) Cambrdidge Working Group, 2014: "Whenever possible, safer approaches should be pursued in preference to any approach that risks an accidental pandemic."
cambridgeworkinggroup.org
5) Marc Lipsitch, Thomas V. Inglesby, 2014: "While this research represents a tiny portion of the experimental work done in infectious disease research, it poses extraordinary potential risks to the public."
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mb…
6) Simon Wain-Hobson, 2015: "If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory”
Richard Ebright: "The only impact of this work is the creation, in a lab, of a new, non-natural risk"
nature.com/articles/natur…
7) Gryphon Scientific, 2016: "increasing the transmissibility of the coronaviruses could significantly increase the chance of a global pandemic due to a laboratory accident."
gryphonsci.wpengine.com/wp-content/upl…
8) bet between Steven Pinker & Martin Rees, 2017: "A bioterror or bioerror will lead to one million casualties in a single event within a six month period starting no later than Dec 31 02020"
9) Carl Bergstrom, 2017: "Of course, the problem is that if something goes wrong and the virus escapes, it could start a pandemic and kill millions"
archive.is/F16Wb
10) Marc Lipsitsch, 2018: "I also believe that gain-of-function experiments to date have given us only modest scientific knowledge and have done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemics, yet they have risked creating an accidental pandemic"
hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/…
11) U.S. Embassy officials cables, 2018: "The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic."
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
12) WHO, 2006: “A new epidemic of SARS would most likely emerge from an animal reservoir or a laboratory doing research... The risk of re-emergence from a laboratory source is thought to be potentially greater.”
p236 in apps.who.int/iris/bitstream…
13) Lynn Klotz, 2019: "Combining release probability with the not insignificant probability that an airborne-transmissible influenza virus could seed a pandemic, we have an alarming situation."
thebulletin.org/2019/02/human-…
14) Edward Hammond, 2008: "I hope that we don't have to have a catastrophic lab accident before something happens to improve the situation"
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15) George Gao, 2019: "genetic modification of pathogens, which may expand host range as well as increase transmission and virulence, may result in new risks for epidemics... modifying the genomes... must be highly regulated." ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
16) Marc Lipsitch and Tom Inglesby, February 2019:
“But creating potentially pandemic pathogens creates a risk — albeit a small one — of infecting millions of people with a highly dangerous virus.”
washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-u…
17) In 2013, 56 scientists signed an open letter to the European Commission, warning about the incredible risks and absence of benefits of GoF.
nature.com/news/polopoly_…
18) In 2017, Peter Daszak himself as part of the leadership team of the Global Virome Project, warned that GoF elevates the risk of accidental release deadly pathogens.
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