Ethics of GOF virology
"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.
On reading an interview with The Seeker on COVID and GOF virology, January 13, 2025.
The title of the essay was supposed to be ‘The bioethics of GOF virology’ but Substack can’t handle strikeouts in titles. As it is, adding a prefix shouldn’t change the attitude, or transform the values brought to discussing GOF/DURC.
On reading has been disappointed by the few talks he’s heard on the subject despite having co-organized a meeting at the Royal Society in April 2012 with the title ‘H5N1 research: biosafety, biosecurity and bioethics’.
There have been several papers on the bioethics of GOF virology which tend to go down rabbit holes. For example, Resnik starts with some blunt talk about COVID which has taken a 20M plus human toll. The inability to resolve the origins issue, an obvious and legitimate question in the eyes of many, is well summed up by this bioethicist who works at the US National Institute of Environmental Health Services: We may never fully understand the origins of COVID-19 because the Chinese government has destroyed and suppressed coronavirus data and prevented WHO officials who were investigating the origins of COVID-19 from having unrestricted access to the WIV and researchers working there. Nevertheless, the idea that a biosafety lapse at the WIV - or some other laboratory for that matter - could have caused the COVID-19 pandemic is a very real possibility that has significant bioethical and public policy implications.
Lab accidents happen and can involve natural viruses. Occasionally the lab worker can get infected and die (Lab acquired infections). This occupational risk is understood. Society finances work on natural viruses for doing nothing would be inadmissible.
But what if a disaster resulted from an engineered novel human virus? What then?
Rather than address the ethics of such a threatening human feat This article reviews some pivotal events in the history of biosafety and biosecurity and explores three different biosafety topics that generate significant ethical concerns, i.e., risk assessment, risk management, and risk distribution. These are downstream issues and so we’re no wiser as to the Big One.
A paper in the journal Science and Engineering Ethics discussed the ‘ethical dilemmas in the development of dual use governance as well as the engineering of the H5N1 bird flu viruses. They say that the issue is more complex than the binary choice implied by the epithet dual, which it certainly is, and mention a series of paralyzing dilemmas facing everybody concerned.
That said the decision maker, whether they be the science administrator or legislator – better the latter for they are independent of the scientific process albeit conflicted differently – will be looking for a clear, aka yes/no answer. We simply can’t continue generating novel human viruses of unknown potential, shake our heads in despair at the silliness of the malevolent mind who could usurp this information, and still do nothing. This paper doesn’t get anywhere near this issue.
A third paper notes that Biomedical research ethics has focused largely on human subjects research, while biosafety concerns about accidental infections, seen largely as a problem of occupational health, have been ignored… We argue that bioethical principles that ordinarily apply only to human subjects research should also apply to research that threatens public health, even if, as in GOF studies, the research involves no human subjects. There you have it. Lab accidents go under the radar. People get infected, a few die. That involves humans IMHO. How lazy can administrators get?
So it was interesting to come across an interview of Prasenjit Ray in Firstpost, an Indian online media network. We’ll use here his more colorful pseudonym, The Seeker. He’s young – well most people are young when you’re over 70 – and doesn’t have a science training. Despite that he comes across as a mature and cool head throughout the interview.
As he wandered and wondered about the origins of the COVID virus, he teamed up with others creating DRASTIC, an acronym for ‘Decentralised Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating Covid-19’, spent months scouring the internet for evidence and analysing it to answer questions that the Chinese regime should have addressed at the onset.
Re the origins question/issue/controversy he has a very clear analogy as analogies go. Imagine a plane crash with around 20 million people on board. After months and years of searching for the black box to figure out what happened, you find out that someone has it but refuses to share it. Even worse, they insist that the cause is already settled and they deny any human error could be involved. That’s pretty much what we’re dealing with regarding the origins of Covid-19. Quite.
After discussing the many findings of DRASTIC – the link to the Mojiang mines, the DEFUSE project that described GOF experiments on bat coronaviruses to adapt them to growth on human cells and more - one of his conclusions was very prosaic: The only silver lining is that the public awareness of the dangers associated with lab manipulation of pathogens has grown. People’s perceptions of the risks related to lab accidents have shifted.
The interview moves on to GOF research where we’re treated to The reality is that the potential benefits of GoF research are marginal at best, while the risks are catastrophic. To me, these dangerous virology experiments are not just scientifically questionable — they’re ethically indefensible. The risk-reward balance simply doesn’t hold up.
And just in case this was some lucky formulation we’re treated to another blunt statement just a few lines mater: In this field, profits are private, but the risks are public — and that’s fundamentally unjust and unethical. When potential harms far outweigh speculative benefits, continuing this type of research becomes indefensible.
The non-scientist has understood. First, he uses the word ethical without any prefix. Next, the understanding that the risk is not that of getting run down on the way home but catastrophic risk involving huge numbers of people, although this was known from the outset. On reading approves of the succinct formulation in bold face. The private profits are a scientific paper for maybe 5-15 people that will stay on their CV until they retire. If it is in a high-profile journal, it may help garner a grant and an invitation to a conference for the senior author even though the results are hypothetical and unfalsifiable – we’ve been through this.
Indeed, the only gains so far identified in gain-of-function virology are private.
The public risks are merely a lab leak with unpredictable consequences going from an illness for the lab worker to a pandemic. Oh, and let’s not forget the malevolent mind that could make a biological weapon free of charge using the genetic blueprint funded by USG. All in all, a bad joke at everybody’s expense.
Few virologists have spoken out against this work being petrified by the chill coming from the NIH (Chilled virology). Actually it went something like this: the vast majority of virologists kept quiet with a vocal few pushing the work; bacteriologists generally didn’t get it – making a beast like anthrax that is naturally sensitive to penicillin resistant to the drug, just to see if was possible, was obviously a dumb idea; most medical doctors who knew about disease and suffering were clearly bothered and asked why? Non-scientists including my neighbor were saying WHAT! accompanied by the odd expletive.
Obviously, virologists are best equipped to handle the language of virology, rank grant proposals and critique scientific papers for they can handle the details. However, it’s clear that when things get serious, self-governance is science fiction.
The Seeker is not finished, however.
What makes matters worse is the insular, self-serving nature of the GoF research community. A small group of scientists has effectively controlled the narrative, driven by personal interests and professional solidarity.
I believe GoF research should be banned globally — or at the very least, placed under a strict international moratorium with safeguards comparable to those regulating nuclear weapons.
So far, however, the world’s response has been one of denial — ignoring the risks and hoping for the best. That’s a gamble we simply can’t afford.
Indeed. As the analysis is fine, action is now needed. GOF research on pathogens – making new human agents from animal pathogens or enhancing the transmission and virulence of existing human pathogens – should be banned. This is what the Mirror Life community have called for and they are not even in the danger zone yet (Mirror Life). Perhaps go for an immediate moratorium in the short term while the mechanics of a ban are worked out, but a ban is the end game.
Aside 1
My clairvoyant neighbor is no longer with us.
Aside 2
The three papers do make useful points, they just miss #1.
Aside 3
Dr. Nicholas Evans, a bioethicist at the University of Massachusetts Lowell recently came up with a simple sentence in a LA Times piece predominantly in favor of GOF research on the H5N1 cow flu viruses: “I think what the gain-of-function debate has yet to answer is, ‘What is the social value of these studies?’” he said. Has yet to answer, despite society funding this work by way of US taxpayers’ money. For some of us who understood the science and were not conflicted, the answer from the outset was zero.
Very good Simon.
The Seeker’s work is both broad and detailed with very specific links to the datasphere sign of COVID origin that are well in advance of virologists in this field.
There are many bioinformatics based epistemologists and interdisciplinary researchers that while they do not have a faculty home and often remain anonymous or censored to the point of almost being non existent …these emerging areas are leading GOF ethics and COVID origin forensics analysis.
Not Virology.
Virology has failed.
It has failed as there is an essential error in application and approach here in Dual Use Research of Concern studies and biosynthetics technologies …this is simply not the safe realm of fair weather thinking. DURC, even before GOF studies, are always prosperous and flourishing on the one hand and always open to Biological and Informational Warfare on the other.
This means the details count…many details that The Seeker has worked over many years to uncover…and many more that demonstrate the idea that science and politics are distinct forms of thinking is weak…human thought deals with details well in some cases and appallingly in others.