So the way I read this statement, they explicitly say state "Pfizer has not conducted gain of function."
Then they later admit, " In a limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells." (I'm not exactly clear what that means, but it reads like they do gain-of-function to me. I've learned that when people are usually unclear on very important statements it's often the worse interpretation that's true, otherwise they'd have a reason to be clear).
Then they quickly defend "It is important to note that these studies are required by U.S. and global regulators for all antiviral products and are carried out by many companies and academic institutions in the U.S. and around the world."
So I'd take this to mean one of two things:
1) Gain of function research is required & happening everywhere and they just stopped telling everyone because it's so political so we now weasel-word around it; if you were technical you'd understand
or
2) They are twisting words very hard in this press statement about what is "required"
Engineering the virus doesn’t mean making gain-of-function mutations. “Function” has a specific meaning and it’s not a synonym for “does anything.” Instead, in broad strokes, think of “function” as referring to biological activities that give the virus some advantage over its host.
To make a simplistic analogy (necessarily imperfect but sufficient for these purposes), consider instead a computer virus. If an antivirus company patches the binary in order to make it easier to study its behavior (for example, in order to make it more debuggable), that’s “engineering” the virus but it’s not “gain-of-function.” If the company instead patches the virus so that it can take advantage of a new 0-day exploit and spread further, that’s “gain-of-function.”
Whether gain-of-function research is capable of revealing new insight into transmissible diseases not obtainable elsewhere is a point of debate among biologists, but one can be well assured that a for-profit operation isn’t going to touch it with a ten-foot pole. Engineering the virus on the other hand, or in other words making mutations in viral components, is basically a description of “doing basic molecular biology” and is non-optional.
The sort of allegation that Pfizer is responding to is more or less the equivalent of someone recording an engineer calling themselves “hackers,” visiting “Hacker News,” then writing an exposé claiming that this proves Company X is in the business of computer crime.
The activity mentioned in the Pfizer press release that skirts closest to “gain-of-function” is actually a bit you didn’t mention at all, where they’re required by regulatory bodies to determine how the virus might resist an antiviral. Unlike computer viruses, biological ones mutate under treatment pressure. The closest analogy for a computer virus might be if it phones home and downloads a new payload to modify its behavior when it detects the presence of some antivirus software. For obvious reasons, studying how a pandemic virus would mutate in response to approved drugs is both necessary and icky, hence why Pfizer discussed its biosecurity measures. The distinction they make (rightly) between this research and a “directed evolution” or “gain-of-function” experiment, is that they’re reading out an answer to the question “Does the virus mutate when we treat with this antiviral drug, and if so, how?”, not culturing viruses iteratively in the presence of drug until they obtain an optimized treatment-resistant virus.
> Then they quickly defend "It is important to note that these studies are required by U.S. and global regulators"
Right before that claim, they mention another set of studies that don't require gain-of-function engineering. The regulations probably refer to those, and Pfizer is hoping we'll misinterpret their statement and think the regulations demand gain-of-function.
I would be very surprised if regulations required genetically engineering more dangerous virus strains.
It actually does show that, albeit he says they're considering/planning on doing it, not doing it right now. The clips where he talks about it are long and with plenty of context, the man in question does indeed have the title Veritas claimed for him (although they are now trying to scrub his internet presence), and when he was confronted with the recordings he freaked out and attacked the reporters.
On every thread about Veritas recordings, there's always people like hnbad who try to stop people watching the videos by labelling it as "far right" i.e. if you're progressive, you're not allowed to look. It's just more lies. There's nothing "far right" about what they do. The people in the videos literally speak for themselves, and often admit to the worst case scenarios that had previously been considered absurd conspiracy theories. Pfizer planning to create COVID variants so they can later sell vaccines for them - tinfoil crazy uncle stuff, except it comes direct from the mouth of a Pfizer employee who has been briefed on the initiative.
You got a source that those internal "admissions" are the allegations they are responding to and not any other floating around? Their vagueness on this point alone is far from transparent.
> Project Veritas is an American far-right activist group founded by James O'Keefe in 2010. The group produces deceptively edited videos of its undercover operations, which use secret recordings in an effort to discredit mainstream media organizations and progressive groups. Project Veritas also uses entrapment to generate bad publicity for its targets, and has propagated disinformation and conspiracy theories in its videos and operations.
Regardless of what you may think of the recordings themselves, the presentation and editing is often extremely misleading and credentials of the recorded individuals are often overstated to help create a narrative.
„In a limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells.“
and i bet they don't do that in the us. wasn't there some interesting back and forth about ominous us led bio engineering labs in the ukraine? someone with a link to that senate hearing with rand paul iirc. </TFH>
"It is important to note that these studies are required by U.S. and global regulators for all antiviral products" - i think this bit of the paragraph you highlighted changes the meaning somewhat.
Can someone explain this it's probably not relevant but baffles me why it's never spoken about.
Let's say you were tasked with making a virus like COVID-19. How would you go about it?
I think the answers obvious you take a potential source virus like the coronaviruses in bats and expose humans. You could literally culture the virus and inject it into a human.
Let's put on tinfoil hats, and say you could run this experiment in a prison. If you're careful you could introduce it at a bloc and culture the result if an infection seems to spread.
After a few cycles you're likely to get something like COVID out the other end. This is the bioengineering we do for attenuated pathogen vaccines.
So what exactly do they mean that it'd be impossible to bioengineer COVID?
You form a group, call it something like Eco Health Alliance, and the give financial stakes like offering to put names on any future patents to members of the NIH and FDA making it in their best personal interest to approve your "not gain of function", but really gain of function research in Wuhan China, then sit back the let the Chinese figure out the particulars. If it escapes the lab, just order the evidence deleted and have one of the members of the project write a paper that will be taken at face value, uncritically, that it's impossible that the virus came from a lab and use that paper as a justification for censorship of anyone on social media who says otherwise, you can also claim they are all racist.
Some experimental gain-of-function work has been done by passaging viruses through transgenic animals such as mice that have been modified to have more human-like respiratory systems. So, it wouldn't strictly be necessary to use human test subjects.
I fully expect this to be a guy spouting stories in the hopes of getting laid.
But, it could all be true. The level of detail is pretty convincing, not something you'd make up on the spot. So I am actually happy some congress people are taking it on and would like to see a more bipartisan effort there.
So, in the case this is real, now what? (I'd also think the next step would be to uncover more before going public and letting the investigated company purge everything, which makes me lean further towards assuming this is nothing but a publicity stunt).
zug_zug|3 years ago
Then they later admit, " In a limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells." (I'm not exactly clear what that means, but it reads like they do gain-of-function to me. I've learned that when people are usually unclear on very important statements it's often the worse interpretation that's true, otherwise they'd have a reason to be clear).
Then they quickly defend "It is important to note that these studies are required by U.S. and global regulators for all antiviral products and are carried out by many companies and academic institutions in the U.S. and around the world."
So I'd take this to mean one of two things:
1) Gain of function research is required & happening everywhere and they just stopped telling everyone because it's so political so we now weasel-word around it; if you were technical you'd understand
or
2) They are twisting words very hard in this press statement about what is "required"
wux|3 years ago
To make a simplistic analogy (necessarily imperfect but sufficient for these purposes), consider instead a computer virus. If an antivirus company patches the binary in order to make it easier to study its behavior (for example, in order to make it more debuggable), that’s “engineering” the virus but it’s not “gain-of-function.” If the company instead patches the virus so that it can take advantage of a new 0-day exploit and spread further, that’s “gain-of-function.”
Whether gain-of-function research is capable of revealing new insight into transmissible diseases not obtainable elsewhere is a point of debate among biologists, but one can be well assured that a for-profit operation isn’t going to touch it with a ten-foot pole. Engineering the virus on the other hand, or in other words making mutations in viral components, is basically a description of “doing basic molecular biology” and is non-optional.
The sort of allegation that Pfizer is responding to is more or less the equivalent of someone recording an engineer calling themselves “hackers,” visiting “Hacker News,” then writing an exposé claiming that this proves Company X is in the business of computer crime.
The activity mentioned in the Pfizer press release that skirts closest to “gain-of-function” is actually a bit you didn’t mention at all, where they’re required by regulatory bodies to determine how the virus might resist an antiviral. Unlike computer viruses, biological ones mutate under treatment pressure. The closest analogy for a computer virus might be if it phones home and downloads a new payload to modify its behavior when it detects the presence of some antivirus software. For obvious reasons, studying how a pandemic virus would mutate in response to approved drugs is both necessary and icky, hence why Pfizer discussed its biosecurity measures. The distinction they make (rightly) between this research and a “directed evolution” or “gain-of-function” experiment, is that they’re reading out an answer to the question “Does the virus mutate when we treat with this antiviral drug, and if so, how?”, not culturing viruses iteratively in the presence of drug until they obtain an optimized treatment-resistant virus.
nhchris|3 years ago
Right before that claim, they mention another set of studies that don't require gain-of-function engineering. The regulations probably refer to those, and Pfizer is hoping we'll misinterpret their statement and think the regulations demand gain-of-function.
I would be very surprised if regulations required genetically engineering more dangerous virus strains.
Digory|3 years ago
They have released a video that appears to show a Pfizer director saying they are mutating new COVID lines for vaccine purposes.
fidgewidge|3 years ago
On every thread about Veritas recordings, there's always people like hnbad who try to stop people watching the videos by labelling it as "far right" i.e. if you're progressive, you're not allowed to look. It's just more lies. There's nothing "far right" about what they do. The people in the videos literally speak for themselves, and often admit to the worst case scenarios that had previously been considered absurd conspiracy theories. Pfizer planning to create COVID variants so they can later sell vaccines for them - tinfoil crazy uncle stuff, except it comes direct from the mouth of a Pfizer employee who has been briefed on the initiative.
unraveller|3 years ago
up2isomorphism|3 years ago
Also I guess soon chatgpt will gain this function by reading your narrative.
LBJsPNS|3 years ago
hnbad|3 years ago
> Project Veritas is an American far-right activist group founded by James O'Keefe in 2010. The group produces deceptively edited videos of its undercover operations, which use secret recordings in an effort to discredit mainstream media organizations and progressive groups. Project Veritas also uses entrapment to generate bad publicity for its targets, and has propagated disinformation and conspiracy theories in its videos and operations.
Regardless of what you may think of the recordings themselves, the presentation and editing is often extremely misleading and credentials of the recorded individuals are often overstated to help create a narrative.
2-718-281-828|3 years ago
via https://nitter.net/Tim_Roehn/status/1619281947741806592#m
so they practice gain of function.
and i bet they don't do that in the us. wasn't there some interesting back and forth about ominous us led bio engineering labs in the ukraine? someone with a link to that senate hearing with rand paul iirc. </TFH>
unlikelymordant|3 years ago
psychphysic|3 years ago
Let's say you were tasked with making a virus like COVID-19. How would you go about it?
I think the answers obvious you take a potential source virus like the coronaviruses in bats and expose humans. You could literally culture the virus and inject it into a human.
Let's put on tinfoil hats, and say you could run this experiment in a prison. If you're careful you could introduce it at a bloc and culture the result if an infection seems to spread.
After a few cycles you're likely to get something like COVID out the other end. This is the bioengineering we do for attenuated pathogen vaccines.
So what exactly do they mean that it'd be impossible to bioengineer COVID?
willcipriano|3 years ago
nradov|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
ethanbond|3 years ago
daxfohl|3 years ago
But, it could all be true. The level of detail is pretty convincing, not something you'd make up on the spot. So I am actually happy some congress people are taking it on and would like to see a more bipartisan effort there.
So, in the case this is real, now what? (I'd also think the next step would be to uncover more before going public and letting the investigated company purge everything, which makes me lean further towards assuming this is nothing but a publicity stunt).
andreygrehov|3 years ago
^ obviously sarcasm, but my bullshit detector goes off every single time Pfizer does something.