Thread by @AlleBurgers

Lab Accidents and Gain-of-Function: “An Engineered Doomsday.” (New York Times)

"Someone finally convinced me to do something really, really stupid,” virologist Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, told Scientific American in 2011."
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"Fouchier and Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, had separately tweaked the H5N1 virus — an influenza that primarily infects birds — in a way that made it spread more easily in ferrets."
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"H5N1 is a prime pandemic candidate, and ferrets are often used as proxies for humans in flu experiments.

The two scientists were planning to publish papers making a blueprint available to the world.

The outcry was extreme."
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"The scientists were trying to better understand H5N1 in order to prevent a pandemic, but critics worried that their experiments could instead cause one — or provide would-be bioterrorists with an outbreak manufacturing guide."
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"In 2012, Kawaoka, Fouchier, and others voluntarily agreed to pause the transmissibility work.

The debacle prompted an overhaul of policies, now being reconsidered in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, governing work with so-called gain-of-function research of concern."
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The story is well known. And yet, what happened next has never been reported in its entirety.

Early on, Fouchier told Science that he had created “probably one of the most dangerous viruses you can make.”
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"After controversy broke out, Fouchier and his supporters shifted to downplaying the danger.

In early 2013, flu scientists ended their voluntary pause, arguing that when the research was done at enhanced biosafety level 3, or BSL3+, the benefits outweighed the risks."
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"Then, months later, Kawaoka’s lab saw two accidents involving lab-generated flu viruses, just one week apart."
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A jump to today.

"The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity has been called reconsidering the P3CO policy, along with a policy on dual-use research." (biosafety, biosecurity, pjs)
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"The NSABB has a fraught history, and its members are appointed by National Institute of Health (NIH) itself, with an inherent conflict of interest in having a group appointed by an agency to review that agency’s work.”
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"At NSABB meetings in April and September 2022, tensions ran high. At stake is not just the future of gain-of-function research, but the safety of the world."
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"Lost in the discussion is the fact that one of the labs that set off the gain-of-function issue actually has had accidents involving modified H5N1..."

And we don't know nothing about Fouchier's/Koopmans' Erasmus Rotterdam lab. No transparancy, nothing as far as we can see.
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"Some biosafety advocates say..a broad..overhaul is needed. 'As long asl..oversight is strictly advisory and no[t]..enforceable.., nothing..will move forward—particularly so long as..oversight is housed in an institution that performs and funds research,' said Ebright."
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"For the rest of the world, how the US regulates research..matters. 'The US has a special responsibility when it comes to oversight and getting it right,' (F. Lentzos), an expert on biosecurity..at King’s College London..'It is..where most of this research takes place.'"
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"'We should be brave enough to say that some experiments should not be done,” said Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris who supported restrictions on controversial gain-of-function research in the wake of the 2011 studies."
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"Because such work accounts for a small proportion of biomedical science, he argued, 'This is not an attack on the scientific system. It is about protecting the integrity of the scientific system and society as a whole.'"
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Ht @R_H_Ebright Board of Governors, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology @RutgersU, New Jersey, USA.

https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1587582630337212418?t=diJPQ1vjqIlO2EfYMvfEFQ&s=19

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Fauci telcon with Fouchier and Koopmans, Jan 2020

https://twitter.com/emilyakopp/status/1583193956103618560?t=xIhTapAMvlqlqsn6CCHRmA&s=19

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Wuhan Biosafety Issue, Late 2019, ht @aychan

https://twitter.com/AlleBurgers/status/1586873659922210817?t=O8ZummHVz9yxKYfMZYYMSg&s=19

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@AlleBurgers
U.S. SENATE COMMITTEE  27.10.22
"An Analysis of the Origins of the COVID-19 Pandemic."

Tussentijdse rapport over de mogelijke oorsprong van SARS-CoV-2.
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https://twitter.com/AlleBurgers/status/1585807376589930497?t=kvcsx7EG2hrBPgFfBsstjQ&s=19

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