Cutting edge not bleeding edge

"On reading," by Simon Wain-Hobson, is a weekly discussion of scientific papers and news articles around gain of function research in virology.

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

Mimosa in flower, south of France, 2026, a good season

On worrying again about dual use research of concern (DURC).

---

We’ve not had much guidance from bureaucracies or learned bodies about DURC in biology. This is odd for science is performed in societies that have no end of laws and regulations, many of which go back to time immemorial. Yet as Yoshua Bengio, the 2018 Turing Prize winner, the ‘Nobel’ in computing, recently remarked a sandwich has more regulation than AI.

A 2013 study showed that scientists are optimistic, upbeat and tend to overestimate the benefits of their work, while downplaying the associated risks. While it captures the incurable passion associated with doing science, it puts a finger on a vulnerable spot that most of us are unaware of.

The issue becomes complicated for the bosses and managers responsible for things going on under them. This lack of guidance masks responsibility and allows decision makers to fudge and decide what is best for them and not what is best in the public’s interest. It’s the age-old question for anyone on the up: will they serve or serve themselves? Sometimes people at the top decide for it is expected that they decide, even though they know next to nothing about the issue. The results can be bloody (Pandemic illusions, UK COVID response Report).

In the thin air at the mountain tops of the scientific firmament the little guidance there is is remarkably clear. The Hippocratic Oath First, do no harm. OK, but that’s for medics, not scientists. Not so according to the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP) 2005 statement on biosecurity signed by over 60 national science academies from around the world. It has five points that fit on the two sides of a single sheet of paper. The first point was Awareness. Scientists have an obligation to do no harm. We know where this comes from. It skewers any ambiguity with They should therefore… recognize that individual good conscience does not justify ignoring the possible misuse of their scientific endeavour. In blunt terms, you can’t say that once your paper is published ‘I’m no longer responsible.’

We’ve been over this in one of the earliest essays (Do no harm 1). It was a model of clarity and dragged in all the actors. For example, Oversight. Scientists with responsibility for oversight of research or for evaluation of projects or publications should promote adherence to these principles by those under their control, supervision or evaluation and act as role models in this regard. Unfortunately the IAP statement had no teeth. Worse, the academies didn’t promote the message. While it may well have provided protection for them, it didn’t protect citizens.

If it had been adhered too, we wouldn’t be where we are. It is not a question of being lost in the volume of a hectic world, it’s because administrators and scientists pushed it under the carpet. Why? Either they don’t care, are serving themselves, or are more incompetent that we believe, or some awful combination. Whatever, the buck doesn’t stop with them. Plus, there is always someone to scapegoat. Someone smaller, understand.

Nobody wants to talk about the down sides of science. Stop, reboot. Everybody wants to talk up the positives starting with the scientists themselves, the journals, the institutional press officers and occasionally the university Presidents, Provosts and the like. Positives are fascinating and comforting. News media will laude a breakthrough or the development of a new cutting-edge technology.

But the negative side? Taking just dual use research of concern, US biologists have been avoiding it for decades even though it was first brought up at the Asilomar conference in 1975. Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.

Yes, yes, but science has its down sides that are vastly more painful than shedding a few tears. And while the atom bomb is the example, the 1977 flu pandemic arose through the hand of Sapiens leading to maybe 10 million deaths. Re COVID the scientific jury is out only because scientists and administrators everywhere are not cooperating. Things are changing for the current NIH Director has said he believes that the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged from a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The atomic bomb resulted in many physicists moving into biology which benefited immensely from the likes of Max Delbrück or Francis Crick, to mention just two. Readers, do you know of any virologists that left the field over DGOF research? Do let me know, for I’ve not spotted any.

Perhaps some of the younger generation might feel that do no harm sounds rather old world, something you’d get from a low-energy candidate. Perhaps something punchier is needed. If so, the solution is in the title. Everyone knows that universities and research institutions swear by cutting edge research. It sounds sharp, on target. Fine. Just ask yourself if what you’re doing could cause bleeding. Bright red hemoglobin bleeding resulting from a nastier virus or a more transmissible bacterium.

If so you’re on the wrong side of history. On the other side to the greats, aka Pasteur, Koch, Yersin, Ross, Theiler, Enders Sabin and many, many more who devoted their lives to beating the hell out of microbes. You don’t even need a bioethicist or a cleric for advice (Biosomething). Society wants/needs cutting edge research on microbes that advances knowledge. Cutting edge research that stops bleeding.

Some more guidance? It’s there is if you care to look. NIH’s mission is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.

And this is where it hurts. For while the NIH sponsored gain of function research on flu and coronaviruses that might, at the very best provide qualitative information on the H5N1 bird flu virus, it was of no predictive value whatsoever. Sure, it had the merit of existing, but since when was that a criterion of the NIH for securing funding? This work always carried a huge risk if ever there was an accident or if the research was duplicated by a bad actor or rogue state.

The risks generated by the DGOF research on H5N1 bird flu virus will never subside. The information is on the cloud, downloaded as pdfs on innumerable laptops away from the praying eyes of the world’s intelligence communities. The next chapter in a book without end will be a lab accident or when a rogue state or crazy decides to act. The risk is permanent and accumulates with every new paper reporting DGOF research, notably on bird flu H7N1 and H7N9 viruses not to mention coronaviruses.

The NIH broke its own mission statement, to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability, and nobody rebuked them! Fortunately, the new administration is doing something about DGOF.

Draw no blood is a zero-level criterion but very relevant to scientists. Nobody knows whether a NIH financed project will pan out and enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability. Obviously, there are strong hopes which explains why projects are selected for funding, but as science is tough, you more often don’t know.

It was always an unwritten assumption that everybody was on the side of the greats, the giants innumerable, the mentors and personal heroes. Always.

Yet given the disgrace of DGOF research on viruses, finding yourself on the other side, aligning with those who make biological agents that are outlawed by the Biological and Chemical Weapons Convention, it’s time to be blunt. It is immensely sad that the Rubicon was crossed by the NIH.

Don’t fall for word plays that disguise the reality, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) being the greatest purveyor (ASM propaganda). If ever you find yourself in an unsure or tight spot, discuss with a colleague, perhaps On reading, don’t bottle it up for there is another form of bleeding, regret. You might come to regret having your name associated with the development of the equivalent of biological weapons and bright red bleeding down the line even though you aspired to cutting edge research.

Regret. That’s the situation of some of the pioneers in AI.

And if DGOF research on viruses ever hits the fan, you may well bleed for the loss of family and friends.

Fortunately, there is hope. No doubt stung by the direction AI was going, Yoshua Bengio set up LawZero, Safe AI for Humanity, a nonprofit startup developing technical solutions for highly-capable, safe-by-design AI systems.

We have seen how the Mirror Life community has been behaving openly and responsibly (Mirror Life).

All you have to do is follow others. You’ll be in excellent company.

Conclusions

Are you doing cutting edge or bleeding edge research? Trust that’s blunt enough guidance for what DGOF research is all about. Indeed, for all DURC biology.

NIH, please add a sentence to all grant contracts getting the principal investigator and others on the project to commit to first, don’t draw blood. It’s a very low bar.

---

Simon Wain-Hobson is an emeritus professor at the Institute Pasteur, Paris, from which he retired in 2021. He and his colleagues were the first to sequence the genome of HIV, and Wain-Hobson has published more than 230 papers on virology and cancer.