More dodging and deflecting
"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.
The article comes with the subline, Creating international viral biosafety guidelines are key to clearing up confusion, regaining trust and ensuring that essential research continues.
The opening gambit is reference to a New York Times guest essay back in March 2025 by Professors Ralph Baric and Ian Lipkin from the US. They argued that experiments on a coronavirus found in bats and similar to those that cause Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) had been conducted without sufficient safety measures. The experiments involved infecting human cells with the live bat virus to see how the virus behaved.
The NYT article was on target but suboptimal. It criticized a Chinese group for working with a human coronavirus at an insufficient biosafety level. They failed to mention a US group that did the same. As this NYT piece has been covered in a previous essay (Coronavirus biosafety levels) we’ll home in on the present authors’ take.
Quickly we learn of a growing problem that the entire virology community needs to address. On the one hand, the threat posed by emerging infectious diseases is growing, making investigations of potentially dangerous viruses more important. Nothing untoward here.
On the other hand, since the COVID-19 pandemic, trust in virology and science more broadly has declined and work on viruses has become more politicized. There is too much buried here to know what they mean. It pivots To improve trust in science - and to ensure that essential work on viruses can continue - international, standardized and transparent biosafety guidance is urgently needed.
All three of the above sentences are concatenated. They are elliptic and do not enlighten the reader who must wonder how trust in virology has been eroded and how the last sentence flows from the others. Apparently, every country has its own rules and regulations not to mention committees leading to a regulatory patchwork. It reflects nation states of course who tend to be territorial and pay lip service to international governance.
This patchwork regulation has led to confusion in the field. And the lack of transparency has probably made it easier for people to spread misinformation and fake news around the handling of live viruses in research. What confusion? What lack of transparency and by whom? Nothing is said. If people want to be mischievous, they will. Do they imply that virologists fall for fake news, or can’t distinguish it from reality? Plenty of words, nothing precise.
Re the COVID origins issue we learn that findings indicating that the pandemic resulted from a natural ‘spillover’ event, the epicentre of which was the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, continue to accumulate.
Where’s the solid data for the natural ‘spillover’ event? The data for the epicentre being the Huanan seafood market isn’t that strong and beyond its best before date. Continue to accumulate? There’s no new data, just more analysis.
They then proffer an opinion. In our experience, virologists are often reluctant to engage in discussions about work that involves the enhancement of live viruses - either genetically or through natural evolutionary processes - for fear of being caught in the crosshairs or of their own work being shut down, even if it is low risk. But now is not the time to lie low.
• Why is anyone still enhancing live viruses? Why go down this path which, in the case of the Fouchier and Kawaoka experiments, didn’t deliver on the promises made in 2012? Who is financing such ongoing folly?
• Do you know about the Executive Order? You may not approve of President Trump, but the Order exists, and such work is stopped in the US. Other nations should speak out but have not. As we saw from last week’s essay, people are now using AI to play with viral genomes (AI design of virus lookalikes).
• If work is low risk, it is unlikely to be shut down so irrelevant.
• Indeed, now is not the time to lie low, although virologists have deliberately avoided taking on the dangerous GOF and DURC problems in any serious manner. Their conclusion is always ‘yes but let’s continue.’
We then encounter besides growing fully functional zoonotic viruses in the lab, experiments involving live viruses are key to testing antiviral drugs and vaccines. This is so obvious it does not need saying. So why here? It’s difficult to say except to seize the high ground of making drugs or vaccines. We’ve seen that the trinity of developing diagnostics, drugs and vaccines is evoked regularly to counter criticism, notably of dangerous GOF research and COVID origins.
The section finishes with Given the crisis of mistrust in science and institutions, and an increasingly fractured geopolitical world, unified international guidelines are crucial for protecting essential research involving dangerous viruses.
The sentence alone would make for an essay. Up to now it’s been about virology but now it’s science. The mistrust hasn’t been about biosafety levels but dangerous GOF research and the closing down of any discussion of COVID origins from the get-go, even when there was no data. Hence, the proposed solution is irrelevant to the mistrust, although who could be against unified international guidelines for handling viruses?
What does an increasingly fractured geopolitical world mean? Spell it out, be clear. Is this a reference to China’s handling of COVID or Trump’s America? The reader can’t follow. There’s no mention of other issues as per the recent book, the War on Science, the rise of anti-vax amplified by social media, or the decline of scholarship in universities. What do they mean?
Let’s move on for there is more downstream, notably: Some scenarios should not be allowed to happen. If an investigator is working on the H5N1 bird flu virus in a BSL-3 facility, for instance, they should take strict precautions to prevent viral strains that cause human seasonal flu from entering the facility, even though seasonal flu is not considered a dangerous virus. This is because strains of flu virus can exchange RNA fragments. Such exchange could make H5N1 more transmissible in humans.
But wait a moment, didn’t Dr Kawaoka do his H5N1 GOF experiments using a reassortant virus, something akin to a recombinant virus?
Let’s fact check. We identified a reassortant H5 HA/H1N1 virus—comprising H5 HA (from an H5N1 virus) with four mutations and the remaining seven gene segments from a 2009 pandemic H1N1 virus—that was capable of droplet transmission in a ferret model.
Dr. Kawaoka did more than 13 years ago what Dr. Casadevall fears in 2025.
The sentences in bold are taken from an earlier essay discussing the fears of a supporter of Dr. Kawaoka’s work (Some housekeeping).
To paraphrase: Dr. Kawaoka did more than 13 years ago what Drs. Ott, Schwartz and Siegal say should not be allowed to happen in 2025.
Perhaps they never read what he did. It’s amusing that this amnesia shows up in Nature which published Dr. Kawaoka’s dangerous GOF paper on the bird flu H5N1 virus. This is not serious and makes you wonder about the authors. Meanwhile, the authors wonder about mistrust of virologists.
They go on to cite a sloppy study from Georgetown University concerning GOF research which is an error of judgement (Off target).
In the final section entitled Taking control we read that We think that virologists themselves are best positioned to take the lead on establishing guidelines. They know most about which viruses and procedures pose the highest risks and are generally highly motivated to protect the field from reputational damage.
By definition, specialists know their field better than others. Nobody is questioning that. The worrying part is at the end. By overwhelmingly supporting dangerous GOF research and the talking over the COVID lab leak hypothesis, virologists shot themselves in the foot bigly. It was precisely these two occasions where virologists needed to engage with the public. Yet they didn’t; they doubled down to protect the field from reputational damage.
They suggest an international committee that could produce international guidelines for gain-of-function and virology work. And there you have it. The opening gambit concerning biosafety levels for novel coronaviruses was merely cover. Dangerous GOF was the real concern. They finally spat it out.
This committee could draw on existing efforts. This is reference to two papers that provoked a couple of essays, notably Flights from Reason and Going Places both of which reeked of corporatism.
The Nature piece ends with Centralized, international guidelines would empower publishers and funders to screen all work on viruses according to the same rules and help to ensure that virologists globally can continue to do the crucial work of lessening the risk of another pandemic.
Publishers and funders should have been doing this since yesteryear. They never needed a committee. As to lessening the risk of another pandemic, what exactly can virologists do? The authors could have been pragmatic or reassuring and cited an example or two. But no, it was thrown out in the vein of ‘leave us in peace to get on with important work’.
Until virologists realize they must engage with the public in moments of angst, until they share a little of what they know and don’t know, until they accept that oversight is part and parcel of the funding process that keeps them alive, they’ll continue to shoot themselves in the foot. Soon they’ll have nothing left to stand on.
Conclusions
When used thoughtfully, words have precision and meaning. They can have power and for the likes of Shakespeare utter brilliance. Words are essential to generating a hypothesis. Any researcher with a decade or two under their belt knows that when a question is robustly formulated sometimes the solution drops out.
Here we have sloppy text downloaded from floppy disks.
Journals like Nature are a big problem for they refuse to protect virology by addressing the reality of dangerous GOF research, the origins of the COVID virus, and more. Add to this AI assisted design of viruses and the public is right to ask what the hell is going on? Journals play up the good news but doge and deflect everything else. Without society bankrolling virology, the scientific journals would cease to exist.
Aside 1
The New England Journal of Medicine did no better than Nature when they published the article ‘The Origins of Covid-19 — Why It Matters (and Why It Doesn’t)’ which came under scrutiny in the essay Why Words Matter.
Aside 2
Mention of Bill, Shakespeare that is not Gates, can’t pass without a couple of verses. The first on a little brief authority, while the second on imagination is extraordinary.
but man, proud man,
Dress’d in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d—
His glassy essence—like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.
Measure for Measure Act 2 Scene 2, 1604
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 5, Scene 1, 1600
Sadly Simon it is you who is doing the most dodging and deflecting. You refuse to acknowledge or look into Institut Pasteur's role in the origin of Covid and its cover-up - Institut Pasteur Shanghai and its relationship with WIV. You refuse to acknowledge that China may have pursued an offensive bioweapon strategy that was the likely cause. You consistently point the finger at US scientists, when all evidence suggests offensive bioweapons were abandoned in 1969 under orders from Nixon.
Not sure how much protection you can continue to claim under your Nobel award.
Spot on. You've realy highlighted the core issue here with how trust in science is being undermined. It's fantastic to see you pushing for this level of transparent, global accountability.