David A. Relman writes:

If we scientists are not forced to confront the issues of laboratory safety and risky research in a serious and sustained manner, history suggests that we will not do so. In 2012, controversy erupted when it transpired that two sets of researchers — at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands — were altering highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses to enhance their transmissibility among mammals (to understand their potential to cause a pandemic). The subsequent debate led to a three-year moratorium on the funding of experiments designed to enhance the transmissibility or disease-causing capabilities of influenza viruses or coronaviruses.

And yet we still have only a framework for guiding funding decisions by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and not the funding by other public and private entities. What’s more, there is still inadequate attention paid to the dangers created by the publication of the sequences of these enhanced pathogens, with which anyone around the world skilled in the art can synthesize these dangerous agents. Finding a proper balance between risky but justifiable work in pursuit of the public health and overly risky work is challenging. There is understandable fear on the part of researchers that clumsy regulations and poorly defined red lines may impede important progress toward critical beneficial products like vaccines. On the other hand, scientists directly involved in such work may sometimes fail to see the gravity of the risks.

If the lab-leak hypothesis is put aside because it is too contentious, laboratory safety and especially risky research will continue to be ignored. [Continue reading…]