Kevin Esvelt: "Natural pandemics may be inevitable. Synthetic ones, constructed with full knowledge of society’s vulnerabilities, are not. Let’s not learn to make pandemics until we can reliably defend against them."

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
"Questions about..oversight..risks and pandemic origins are all legitimate. But perhaps the biggest question..isn’t being asked insistently enough: Why is anyone trying to teach the world how to make viruses that could kill millions of people?"
"[T]o credibly identify a single virus as capable of causing a pandemic is to give thousands the power to wield it as a weapon. To discover many dangerous viruses, or learn to enhance weaker ones, is to share the blueprints for an arsenal of plagues."
"[A]larmingly, multiple health agencies around the world are actively funding efforts to find, study and rank-order the animal viruses most likely to cause a new pandemic."
"Once we consider the possibility of misuse..such research looks like a gamble that civilization can’t afford to risk."

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More from @R_H_Ebright

6 Oct
Esvelt: "Questions about..oversight..risks and pandemic origins are all legitimate. But perhaps the biggest question..isn’t being asked insistently enough: Why is anyone trying to teach the world how to make viruses that could kill millions of people?"

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
"Like nuclear physics, with its potential for global catastrophe when put to destructive ends, the proliferation of pandemic biology ought to be considered a matter of international security."
"[A]larmingly, multiple health agencies around the world are actively funding efforts to find, study and rank-order the animal viruses most likely to cause a new pandemic."
Read 7 tweets
6 Oct
"Consensus candidate genomes will be synthesised commercially using established techniques and genome-length RNA and electroporation to recover recombinant viruses'..application states"

"This would result in a virus which had no clear ancestor in nature"

mol.im/a/10062775
"WHO expert told The Telegraph that the process detailed in the application would create 'a new virus sequence, not a 100% match to anything.'"
"'They would then synthesise the viral genome from the computer sequence, thus creating a virus genome that did not exist in nature but looks natural as it is the average of natural viruses..Then they put that RNA in a cell and recover the virus from it.'"
Read 4 tweets
1 Oct
How many times can one grantee violate the Terms and Conditions of one NIH grant without being penalized?

(Apparently, if the grantee is EcoHealth Alliance, the number is at least four.)

theintercept.com/2021/10/01/nih…
Violation 1:

"No funds are provided and no funds can be used to support gain-of-function research covered under the October 17, 2014 White House Announcement (NIH Guide Notice NOT-OD-15-011)."
Violation 2:

"[S]hould any of the MERS-like or SARS-like chimeras generated under this grant show evidence of enhanced virus growth greater than 1 log over the parental backbone strain you must stop all experiments with
these viruses"
Read 11 tweets
1 Oct
Eight of the twelve members of the task force had disqualifying conflicts of interest.

Covid-19: Lancet investigation into origin of pandemic shuts down over bias risk bmj.com/content/375/bm…
The Chair, Peter Daszak, heads EcoHealth Alliance, the contractor who funded the WIV laboratory performing high-risk surveillance research and high-risk gain-of-function research on bat SARS-related coronaviruses (with subcontracts from $200M in USAID funds and $7M in NIH funds).
Another member of the task force--Hume Field--was a senior employee of EcoHealth Alliance.

Three other members of the task force--Danielle Andersen, Gerald Kreusch and Supaporn Wacharapluesadee--were subcontractors on a 2020 multi-million-dollar grant to EcoHealth Alliance.
Read 4 tweets
30 Sep
@Ayjchan @aaas @ScienceMagazine @sciencecohen Wang was desperately spinning and brazenly lying.
@Ayjchan @aaas @ScienceMagazine @sciencecohen Especially in the part where he insisted, preposterously, that an accident with a natural virus during field collection or lab characterization should be deemed natural spillover and not research-related spillover.
@Ayjchan @aaas @ScienceMagazine @sciencecohen And the part where he insisted, demonstrably falsely, that definition of research-related spillover changed over the year, initially covering only accident with engineered virus and now--"latest"--covering accident with natural virus in field collection or lab characterization.
Read 4 tweets
30 Sep
"The US and China need to put aside differences and work together to set new safety standards for laboratories doing virus research, said Jeffrey Sachs, chair of the Lancet Covid-19 Commission"

scmp.com/news/china/dip…
"His comments come as both Beijing and Washington this month released statements on the need for stricter oversight of laboratories that handle dangerous pathogens."
Sachs: "The US was funding joint US-China research on Sars-like viruses, and so should not point fingers at China but should approach the investigation in a cooperative mode, and with a sense of shared responsibility for a careful review of the evidence"
Read 6 tweets

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