Do No Harm 3

"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.

St. Raphael, oil on panel, Georges Lapchine (1885-1950)

On reading First, do no harm by Robert M. May, Science, 346:1065 (2014). A book review of Capital Failure. Rebuilding Trust in Financial Services by Nicholas Morris and David Vines, Eds. Oxford University Press, 2014.

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The late Bob May was a remarkable and singular scientist. Not only did he make advances in the field of population biology through the application of mathematical techniques, he also rose to become Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government and later president of the Royal Society.

He was instrumental in getting a couple of early articles on DURC (ex-GOF) research into print. Bob felt this risky virus research was bonkers and after the inept handling of mad cow disease under his watch, he realized that openness was the best solution.

The book is based on a year-long series of meetings and seminars …  that brought together economists, lawyers, and philosophers to discuss ideas for ensuring greater accountability in the financial services sector. In particular, it addresses the question of why, in the banking and finance community, there is no formal “duty of care” as there is in the legal and medical professions. In those professions, the kind of behavior manifested by some in the financial community in recent years might well have resulted in disbarment.

Indeed. Scientists are not mentioned probably because they do not take the equivalent of the Hippocratic oath, even though some of their work could kill far more people than any wayward medic – for example the lab escape of a novel human flu virus with pandemic potential along with a high death rate.

Quoting Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, the authors refer to the “virtually indecipherable complexity of … products and markets that developed with the advent of sophisticated mathematical techniques to evaluate risks”. The essential problem is that these techniques, although undoubtedly complex, were certainly not sophisticated.

Yet these highly complex products were put together by humans with the mathematical knowledge to evaluate risks. The problem is oversight by others above them but lacking enough competence to fully understand what they were about. The intent was financial gain while there was risk.

In DURC virology, the gain is what? Even though grant monies are tiny compared to stock market numbers, they are essential the survival of a research lab, which is effectively a small business in constant need of funding. So its back to money once again. And making novel human viruses ostensibly to predict the next pandemic strain was used to collar some. Even though it made the world a more dangerous place, even though the claims have not been substantiated 12 years down the line.

Short term and very basic facts override long term interests of society. And in case readers might wonder, the interest of society is to beat the hell out of viruses and other microbes.

Under the exposure to press criticism, the corporate spirit kicks in. Whistle-blowers are slammed. You know the rest. Self-governance doesn’t work when the stakes are high. Without independent oversight nothing will change.

But to what extent did banks, hedge funds, and other intermediaries really understand the risks? It is surprising that so little note was taken of Warren Buffett’s statement, clearly expressed in 2002, that “derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction”.

The catch is in the words. These instruments of mass destruction were probably created by PhDs who no doubt understood what they were doing. Maybe they didn’t perceive the full extent of the risks. Maybe they weren’t encouraged to. But as the information went up the chain, fewer could understand them (Pandemic illusions) and the associated risks. By contrast, the financial benefits were always perceived for that is the raison d’être of banking. And of course, those at the top got to make the calls.

The modified H5N1 bird flu viruses of Drs. Fouchier and Kawaoka are of unfathomable danger as they will never be tested on humans unless there is a lab leak. But as transmissible flu viruses in an immunologically naïve population, they are as close to weapons of mass destruction as any virologist could conjure up.

As noted in Capital Failure, and elsewhere by the Banking Commission, one important question is whether the competence and behavior of individuals working within the system would benefit from a professional oversight organization.

This is what the Risky Research Review Bill introduced into the US Senate is all about. What is needed is a much greater realization by politicians in all countries of the risks of enhancing viral transmission and disease - the equivalent of a COVID pandemic.

Only next time when there is a pandemic, there will be two aspects nobody can foresee:

• The death rate could be higher than for the COVID-19 virus.

• Vaccine development might prove to be way more difficult.

Remember, we do not have vaccines for HIV and HCV despite trying. And while an optimist, On reading is a realist.

Although it was at one time thought possible that some of the more egregious instances of such unprofessional behavior might result in jail sentences, this has not happened.

As said above, when the stakes are high, self-governance doesn’t work. Yet precisely when the stakes are high, corporate spirit must give way to oversight by society, aka governments, aka bodies that are independent of those financing virology and microbiology.

It is obvious that virologists are the best at virology. Over 99.9% of questions and issues in virology can be handled by insider knowledge and decision making. Nobody can do better than they. Indeed, nobody should try. Yet there will be occasions when virology runs into a controversy. It is precisely these moments when virologists must engage with the public and handle discussions openly without talking down or over others.

Conclusions

• First, do no harm.

• Society supports virologists to work for it.

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Aside 1

This book review was published nearly three years into the Fouchier & Kawaoka papers on adapting bird flu viruses to humans by the respiratory route. By which time Bob was worried about the dangerous folly of resuming avian flu research.

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Aside 2

The problem of oversight inside banks is highlighted by this url.

It shows that the oversight of risk is difficult when the products are complex. Human nature/competence gets in the way. It sounds as though as information went up the ladder benefits were perceived while the risks were less understood.

Van Noorden published in Nature 2013 a story which showed that scientists overestimated the benefits of their work while underestimated the risks. Maybe something similar occurred.

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Aside 3

Economics is generally regarded as a social science, although some critics of the field argue that it falls short of the definition of a science for a number of reasons, including a lack of testable hypotheses, lack of consensus, and inherent political overtones.

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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.