The intention seems legit, despite the concern. Quote from the article:
The pathogen to be modified must pose a serious health threat, and the work must produce knowledge — such as a vaccine — that would benefit humans. Finally, there must be no safer way to do the research.
Also, it's regulated and overseen by a review board:
> "Now, a government panel will require that researchers show that their studies in this area are scientifically sound and that they will be done in a high-security lab."
It does sound like there are concerns. I'm glad that people are keeping their eyes on it. I found this quote interesting as well, regarding publishing the results of such research:
> “Physicists long ago learned to distinguish between what can be publicly available and what’s classified,” he added, referring to nuclear weapons research. “We want to keep some of this stuff on a need-to-know basis.”
I have no serious concerns with the US' good intentions, nor their ability to properly manage such a program.
What I fear, however, is that this action undermines the Biological Weapons Convention[0].
The convention explicitly allows for research such as this, yes. Nonetheless, it effectively worked as a moratorium on such research, with the US leading by example.
This program creates a situation much like nuclear research, where civil and military use cases exist on a continuum, with the first often being used to cover the second. Note how biological agents, where the US had the moral high ground, have entirely disappeared. Meanwhile, nuclear and chemical agents, which can be produced under the cover of closely related civil industries, are still very much threatening (and killing) people today.
This ban that's being lifted stems from a few incidents, but really the driving force was Ron Fouchier's [0] gain-of-function study where his lab made a few mutations that enabled transmission of the bird flu (H5N1) virus between ferrets. All they had to do was make five mutations and it was suddenly more dangerous (here's the paper [1]). Ferrets may sound random, but they can become infected with human flu virus and show similar pathology to humans - they're a model for humans.
I remember hearing Fouchier speak in Washington at a biodefense conference right after the study came out. He was (is?) pretty much a celebrity among scientists, but the policy folks had a different opinion...
Pretty sure these things will escape from the lab at some point. I've personally handled some B. anthracis (causes anthrax) that was supposedly non-viable only to find out later that it was almost certainly still alive. (Not this case, but here's an example [2] mentioned in the article.) There would (hopefully) be more regulations on BSL3+ organisms like the viruses being discussed, because anthrax is relatively friendly, but like any other field, all it takes is one incompetent person.
You know how when you watch movies and because you know so much about tech you can tell that most of the stuff done in movies regarding hacking etc is bullshit and not real.
Now I have a lack in knowledge of biology at this level, but can someone maybe explain to me how all those disease mass extinction movies cannot be real? I feel like my lack of knowledge here causes my concerns when reading stuff like this article.
Thing is, some of the stuff I used to laugh at as bullshit can be done now.
Use the enhance feature to magically unblur images to clarity? I've seen ML demos of stuff like that.
Giant realtime database of all phone calls meta data and recordings? Realtime facial/license plate recognition search of millions of people/cars? Not so funny anymore.
Tracking peoples movements in realtime. Sure just cary this phone wherever you go.
Realtime overhead imagery of an entire city? There's a company that flies drones around that lets them rewind the movements of all cars in the city throughout the day...
Magic black box that can decrypt all encryption? Sure, funny only if you overlook underhanded C planted by the NSA.
Hacking into industrial machinery and power systems?
Having millions of computers all under your control to launch attacks?
This was all funny Hollywood BS and conspiracy theories two decades ago. Elaborate animated "hacking" scenes are still funny but what they accomplish is possible.
One aspect such movies almost always get wrong is ease of protection: With only modest countermeasures (face coverings, washing hands, ventilating rooms etc), you can drastically cut down the rate of transmission. A scientist with advanced equipment and knowledge getting infected is extremely unlikely. In the real world it happens, but only to 0.x%, and only to hospital staff spending weeks with thousands of infected people, under often sub-optimal conditions.
It's completely possible to go years without catching a cold if you're willing to devote maybe 10% of your time and a little money to it, and avoid certain situation. We just don't bother because getting a cold isn't (usually) that terrible.
Ebola is one such virus. In terms of evolution these viruses tend to burn out by killing the host. Evolutionary pressures push viruses towards symbiotic equilibrium. Thus in the worst case scenario there will be survivors who are immune or the virus or the virus will burn out until the only strain left does not harm humans. The later was the case with ebola.
Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I'm also glad that I'm aware to some extent of how what I don't know might obscure my judgement - I think a lot of people don't get exposed to the amount of cross-discipline junctures in knowledge that people in tech do.
Now, I don't want to seem anti-science or anything, but this seems like a massive disaster just waiting to happen, in light of the incidents that led to this ban and also, even more to the point, the 2001 anthrax attacks.[1] Couldn't they at least restrict this research to labs far away from major population centers?
The analogue with software development, I'd say, is when people periodically point out that nuclear power plant or ICBM control systems still run on 8-inch floppy disks!!1! and therefore allegedly need to be completely rewritten. That rationale likewise fails to meet my tempting fate threshold.
But the massiveness of that disaster, or its impendingness, has very little to do with some people in Washington DC mouthing words about how you shouldn't do that.
This is definitely one of those cases where I feel like a lot of people are demonstrating some very magical thinking about the effectiveness of regulations, with all due respect to those involved. Does Kim Jong Un care that some people in Washington DC say that it's illegal to make lethal viruses? Does China? Russia? Iran? Europe? Anyone else in the world, really? Or a small criminal lab located in the United States? Or a criminal with access to a lab in the United States? It's not like there's literally people standing on top of every single gene sequencer in the world, or the US, stopping people from doing things.
The regulations were not all that was standing between us and some deadly virus, because anyone who would make a deadly virus and release it, accidentally or otherwise, still has a very simple path to that goal: "Ignore the regulations the US has." This just gives the good guys a chance to possibly learn some things about that before someone else releases it.
It's possible that it's very difficult to engineer a virus that can do better than anything nature has come up with. Evolution has had billions of years to try all the attack vectors. A worst case 12 Monkeys-style disaster seems unlikely.
But I'm ignorant of this topic. Without handwaving or pointing at the worst case, how much should we worry? Is there any evidence that a genetically enhanced virus can be devastating? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_virus doesn't have much.
I don't trust people's due dilligence enough to be okay with this.
Edit: remember when Ebola was never supposed to leave the CDC fascility and a nurse was exposed to it and left the hospital? That's what happens when there's the highest level of scrutinity and security.
They have a strong desire to match american machismo. They probably lack the funds to build novel biological weapons their own. They are extremely good at break into computer systems. Companies excel at ignoring their vulnerabilities until it is too late.
So to bring a technology angle to this, there isn't anything remotely equivalent around this for Cybersecurity where it has some parallels. Everyone understands how bad a pandemic is - the risk of lives is obviously more important than data - however with the reliance of technology lives can be indirectly affected, such as the case of WannaCry shutting down hospitals and associated healthcare technology.
Vulnerabilities researched and weaponized by the government, ended up in the public, and caused global damage. There is no oversight into how these are produced or their risks.
Great ! Now this is going to open new rooms for more mistakes and may lead to more deaths which can be blamed to some scientific failure.
We humans collectively as one entity clearly have no discipline.
The current set of laws are themselves in first place not providing any peace in the lives of most people. And we have no time to fix that issue and our impulsive anxiety issue is making some weak willed men to open up new roads to destruction. It may yield some benefit but it is not essential.
I have 0 confidence in today's governments that they are capable of containing any damage caused by this law.
If entire of humanity is going to become extinct then we can take a high risk effort. All the day every time we need not take life threatening risks.
Opening up of this law means any minute now in best case scenario there is a 1% chance that there may be a deadly virus in the air u just breathed in. And based on history we humans are capable of leading ourselves into worst case scenarios and that puts the percentage of risk anywhere between 1% to 99%.
Now even if something worst case happens i am sure the human species would not go extinct as the billionaires and few millionaires would have means to survive any death prone event only with nobody left to buy their products anymore.
I'm not entirely clear on the scenarios in which this type of research would be beneficial (I'm a physician):
- AFAIK research on vaccines does not require altering an organism to make it more lethal. You would want to cover as broad a spectrum of serotypes/serovars of the existing organism as possible. I can see how someone might argue that you could pre-empt a more malignant variant but surely this is outweighed by the likelihood of creating systemic risk.
- What exactly would we learn form creating new, highly virulent organisms that can't be learned using the same technology on non-virulent organisms?
- It bothers me that this is a push to create more biological weapons from the military complex (especially terrifying considering the infantile intellects we currently have in congress).
Trial and error isn't great for this kind of stuff but it works great for AI research. Let's create software that can do genetic engineering of viruses right the first time.
As much as I dislike the subject, providing a monitorable outlet is better than a full prohibition. Prohibition denies important signals to things that will occur anyway.
As long as we progress, it will always be like that.
Technology is, in a fundamental way, a force multiplicator. It gives you power to do more things that you could do with only your biological body and mind. That power can be used for destructive means too, so it follows that as we get more power, we open new, exciting ways to destroy ourselves.
[+] [-] yegle|8 years ago|reply
The pathogen to be modified must pose a serious health threat, and the work must produce knowledge — such as a vaccine — that would benefit humans. Finally, there must be no safer way to do the research.
[+] [-] grzm|8 years ago|reply
> "Now, a government panel will require that researchers show that their studies in this area are scientifically sound and that they will be done in a high-security lab."
It does sound like there are concerns. I'm glad that people are keeping their eyes on it. I found this quote interesting as well, regarding publishing the results of such research:
> “Physicists long ago learned to distinguish between what can be publicly available and what’s classified,” he added, referring to nuclear weapons research. “We want to keep some of this stuff on a need-to-know basis.”
[+] [-] matt4077|8 years ago|reply
What I fear, however, is that this action undermines the Biological Weapons Convention[0].
The convention explicitly allows for research such as this, yes. Nonetheless, it effectively worked as a moratorium on such research, with the US leading by example.
This program creates a situation much like nuclear research, where civil and military use cases exist on a continuum, with the first often being used to cover the second. Note how biological agents, where the US had the moral high ground, have entirely disappeared. Meanwhile, nuclear and chemical agents, which can be produced under the cover of closely related civil industries, are still very much threatening (and killing) people today.
[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_Weapons_Convention
[+] [-] TheSithMaster|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JustAnotherPat|8 years ago|reply
And how do you know the work will 'produce knowledge?'
A vaccine is impossible to guarantee.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] saosebastiao|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdironman|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sndean|8 years ago|reply
This is a better article: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/nih-lifts-3-year-ban...
This ban that's being lifted stems from a few incidents, but really the driving force was Ron Fouchier's [0] gain-of-function study where his lab made a few mutations that enabled transmission of the bird flu (H5N1) virus between ferrets. All they had to do was make five mutations and it was suddenly more dangerous (here's the paper [1]). Ferrets may sound random, but they can become infected with human flu virus and show similar pathology to humans - they're a model for humans.
I remember hearing Fouchier speak in Washington at a biodefense conference right after the study came out. He was (is?) pretty much a celebrity among scientists, but the policy folks had a different opinion...
Pretty sure these things will escape from the lab at some point. I've personally handled some B. anthracis (causes anthrax) that was supposedly non-viable only to find out later that it was almost certainly still alive. (Not this case, but here's an example [2] mentioned in the article.) There would (hopefully) be more regulations on BSL3+ organisms like the viruses being discussed, because anthrax is relatively friendly, but like any other field, all it takes is one incompetent person.
[0] https://www.erasmusmc.nl/MScMM/faculty/CVs/fouchier_cv?lang=...
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4810786/
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/news-multimedia/lab-incident/ind...
[+] [-] crickshinks|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] chrisper|8 years ago|reply
Now I have a lack in knowledge of biology at this level, but can someone maybe explain to me how all those disease mass extinction movies cannot be real? I feel like my lack of knowledge here causes my concerns when reading stuff like this article.
[+] [-] grouseway|8 years ago|reply
Use the enhance feature to magically unblur images to clarity? I've seen ML demos of stuff like that.
Giant realtime database of all phone calls meta data and recordings? Realtime facial/license plate recognition search of millions of people/cars? Not so funny anymore.
Tracking peoples movements in realtime. Sure just cary this phone wherever you go.
Realtime overhead imagery of an entire city? There's a company that flies drones around that lets them rewind the movements of all cars in the city throughout the day...
Magic black box that can decrypt all encryption? Sure, funny only if you overlook underhanded C planted by the NSA.
Hacking into industrial machinery and power systems?
Having millions of computers all under your control to launch attacks?
This was all funny Hollywood BS and conspiracy theories two decades ago. Elaborate animated "hacking" scenes are still funny but what they accomplish is possible.
[+] [-] matt4077|8 years ago|reply
It's completely possible to go years without catching a cold if you're willing to devote maybe 10% of your time and a little money to it, and avoid certain situation. We just don't bother because getting a cold isn't (usually) that terrible.
[+] [-] crimsonalucard|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s0l1dsnak3123|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Houshalter|8 years ago|reply
2 minutes in he talks about how a strain of flu escaped from a lab in 1977 and killed (and is still killing) millions of people.
[+] [-] smitherfield|8 years ago|reply
The analogue with software development, I'd say, is when people periodically point out that nuclear power plant or ICBM control systems still run on 8-inch floppy disks!!1! and therefore allegedly need to be completely rewritten. That rationale likewise fails to meet my tempting fate threshold.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks
[+] [-] jerf|8 years ago|reply
But the massiveness of that disaster, or its impendingness, has very little to do with some people in Washington DC mouthing words about how you shouldn't do that.
This is definitely one of those cases where I feel like a lot of people are demonstrating some very magical thinking about the effectiveness of regulations, with all due respect to those involved. Does Kim Jong Un care that some people in Washington DC say that it's illegal to make lethal viruses? Does China? Russia? Iran? Europe? Anyone else in the world, really? Or a small criminal lab located in the United States? Or a criminal with access to a lab in the United States? It's not like there's literally people standing on top of every single gene sequencer in the world, or the US, stopping people from doing things.
The regulations were not all that was standing between us and some deadly virus, because anyone who would make a deadly virus and release it, accidentally or otherwise, still has a very simple path to that goal: "Ignore the regulations the US has." This just gives the good guys a chance to possibly learn some things about that before someone else releases it.
[+] [-] sillysaurus3|8 years ago|reply
But I'm ignorant of this topic. Without handwaving or pointing at the worst case, how much should we worry? Is there any evidence that a genetically enhanced virus can be devastating? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_virus doesn't have much.
[+] [-] c3534l|8 years ago|reply
Edit: remember when Ebola was never supposed to leave the CDC fascility and a nurse was exposed to it and left the hospital? That's what happens when there's the highest level of scrutinity and security.
[+] [-] ogdoad|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ct0|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Isamu|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain
[+] [-] swframe2|8 years ago|reply
They have a strong desire to match american machismo. They probably lack the funds to build novel biological weapons their own. They are extremely good at break into computer systems. Companies excel at ignoring their vulnerabilities until it is too late.
[+] [-] always_good|8 years ago|reply
I'd be more worried about the lack of scruples among people. Unfortunately that doesn't create as much of a boogeyman.
[+] [-] top_post|8 years ago|reply
Vulnerabilities researched and weaponized by the government, ended up in the public, and caused global damage. There is no oversight into how these are produced or their risks.
[+] [-] yakt|8 years ago|reply
We humans collectively as one entity clearly have no discipline.
The current set of laws are themselves in first place not providing any peace in the lives of most people. And we have no time to fix that issue and our impulsive anxiety issue is making some weak willed men to open up new roads to destruction. It may yield some benefit but it is not essential.
I have 0 confidence in today's governments that they are capable of containing any damage caused by this law.
If entire of humanity is going to become extinct then we can take a high risk effort. All the day every time we need not take life threatening risks.
Opening up of this law means any minute now in best case scenario there is a 1% chance that there may be a deadly virus in the air u just breathed in. And based on history we humans are capable of leading ourselves into worst case scenarios and that puts the percentage of risk anywhere between 1% to 99%.
Now even if something worst case happens i am sure the human species would not go extinct as the billionaires and few millionaires would have means to survive any death prone event only with nobody left to buy their products anymore.
Kudos!
[+] [-] neuro_imager|8 years ago|reply
- AFAIK research on vaccines does not require altering an organism to make it more lethal. You would want to cover as broad a spectrum of serotypes/serovars of the existing organism as possible. I can see how someone might argue that you could pre-empt a more malignant variant but surely this is outweighed by the likelihood of creating systemic risk.
- What exactly would we learn form creating new, highly virulent organisms that can't be learned using the same technology on non-virulent organisms?
- It bothers me that this is a push to create more biological weapons from the military complex (especially terrifying considering the infantile intellects we currently have in congress).
[+] [-] staunch|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nerpderp83|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neves|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chewbacha|8 years ago|reply
Kewl.
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|8 years ago|reply
Technology is, in a fundamental way, a force multiplicator. It gives you power to do more things that you could do with only your biological body and mind. That power can be used for destructive means too, so it follows that as we get more power, we open new, exciting ways to destroy ourselves.
[+] [-] DigitalJack|8 years ago|reply
It's a great high level overview of dna sequencing from the discovery of its shape through the completion of the human genome project in 2000.
I'm having trouble pasting a link, maybe someone could help me out.
[+] [-] Tharkun|8 years ago|reply
Weird how that works.
[+] [-] blablabla123|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] quotha|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Parcissons|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]