[HN Gopher] Feds lift gain-of-function research pause, offer gui...
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Feds lift gain-of-function research pause, offer guidance (2017)
Author : sfusato
Score : 48 points
Date : 2022-12-30 11:38 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cidrap.umn.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cidrap.umn.edu)
| thinkmcfly wrote:
| Gotta love hn comment sections. Some things never change
| phkahler wrote:
| >> and responsible conduct of this type of research in a manner
| that maximizes the benefits to public health.
|
| What exactly is the benefit to public health? Serious question.
| Jemm wrote:
| Apparently it is pure research. The history books will say,
| "They did it because they could."
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| Pandemics are really very good for public health funding! (this
| is a joke)
|
| In seriousness though, there's a strong evolutionary incentive
| that acts on organizations to not eliminate their raison
| d'etre. Perhaps gain-of-function is some version of that
| because it ensures that there's something _to do_ even when
| there 's nothing to do.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| Viruses _will_ mutate. And we don't understand them well
| enough, so one method to study them is gain of function
| research - you modify the virus and then you have a lab version
| you can design against. The risk is you risk releasing a new
| virus entirely unnecessarily, the benefit is you can study how
| to combat viruses that don't yet exist. Imagine the counter
| example of covid. What if a covid type virus mutates in the
| wild but we already have a great vaccine sitting on ice ready
| to go.
| haihaibye wrote:
| The mRNA vaccine took only a few days to design. So you'd
| save a few days, if the GoF virus happened to be exactly the
| same as the wild type.
|
| There is no way to rush the rest of the process, unless you
| want to deliberately expose people to artificially created
| viruses that don't exist in the wild.
|
| Small upside vs large downside of potentially creating a
| global pandemic.
|
| Covid appeared on the Wuhan institute of virologies doorstep,
| with exactly the modification proposed in their grants. You
| would think this would be their time to shine but where was
| their help?
|
| Right when the world needed the info they took all of their
| databases off-line and have never opened them again
| llamaLord wrote:
| "Covid appeared on the Wuhan institute of virologies
| doorstep, with exactly the modification proposed in their
| grants. You would think this would be their time to shine
| but where was their help?
|
| Right when the world needed the info they took all of their
| databases off-line and have never opened them again"
|
| This is by far the best take on this topic I've seen IMO.
| I've been so busy thinking about whether or not the WHV was
| ground zero for the pandemic, I forgot that the whole point
| of GOF SHOULD have made it ground zero for the cure.
| mcbits wrote:
| The vaccines, while "better than nothing" and much cheaper
| than giving everyone a 6-month supply of N95 masks, were
| mostly a flop. We have a long way to go before we can just
| print up vaccines to head off emerging epidemics, but
| hopefully the lessons learned through this failure will
| lead to faster progress.
| aeternum wrote:
| Bioweapons. Perhaps this research can create a virus that has
| mild symptoms for most, spreads quickly, and specifically
| targets an enemy head of state.
|
| Targeting Putin for example could improve the public health of
| many Ukrainians.
| kmlx wrote:
| > Targeting Putin for example could improve the public health
| of many Ukrainians.
|
| i think this is naive to say the least. only place i've seen
| this kind of messaging is in the west.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| This is true, for me, in the trivial sense that the only
| place I've seen that kind of messaging is in the
| grandparent post, and I've seen a lot of hot takes from
| every side of the Russia/Ukraine war.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| "Infect everyone with a disease that needs to spread and live
| through enough generations to reach the target, giving it
| plenty of opportunity to mutate" as an assassination weapon,
| is-and this is skipping over a _lot_ of other problems
| practical, moral, and legal problems to focus on this one-a
| great way to accidentally produce a plague which wipes out a
| lot of the _wrong_ people.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Honest question: is this actually possible in a non "Michael
| Crichton science fiction" kind of way?
|
| Even if it were possible to design a virus to target a
| specific person, wouldn't that virus just mutate eventually,
| and start infecting other people? Seems like a very risky,
| crude, and ultimately unwise way to plan an assassination. If
| you can get close enough to expose someone to the virus-
| assassin, why not just poison them? It doesn't make any sense
| to me.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| No. That's not even remotely possible. In theory, the
| closest you could get is if you could design a virus that
| only really harmed people with some rare genetic variant,
| and that variant happened to be one that a person you
| wanted to target had. That's still pretty far out in terms
| of actual practice, but it's not so far out that it's
| crazy. Designer viruses that target one, single person is
| just crazy talk.
| jesusofnazarath wrote:
| [dead]
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