Are we mad to have let a maverick scientist create a virus that could wipe out 400 million people?
- Professor Yoshihiro Kawaoka created a new strain of 2009 swine flu virus
- If virus escaped it could kill up to a billion people - there is no known vaccine
- Professor Kawaoka argues that it is part of valuable scientific research
- Others in the field have called the experiment 'exceedingly dangerous'
No vaccine: If the new strain of swine flu was released, it could kill up to a billion people
What
was extraordinary about the great flu pandemic of 2018 was not only
that it came exactly 100 years after the Spanish flu of 1918, but that
it also killed 5 per cent of the world’s population.
In 1918, that proportion meant some 100 million people. In 2018, nearly 400 million fell victim.
Of
those, some one million were in Britain. Nearly every family lost a
loved one, with children and the elderly being particularly vulnerable.
The NHS was unable to cope with the sheer numbers infected, which ran to around ten million — almost a sixth of the population.
With no vaccine available, all that doctors could do was to send people home and tell them to hope for the best.
It
was the worst natural disaster the world had ever seen. But the virus
was no random creation of Mother Nature — it was man-made, produced by
an obscure professor at a university deep in the heart of the U.S.
This may sound like a science-fiction scenario that would strain credulity but, terrifyingly, it is all too possible.
Professor
Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has created a
deadly new strain of the 2009 swine flu virus — for which there is no
known vaccine.
If
the virus escaped from Professor Kawaoka’s laboratory it could kill
hundreds of millions — perhaps even a billion. Worryingly, scientists
seem as alarmed as the general public.
Professor
Kawaoka revealed what he had done at a secret meeting held earlier this
year, and his fellow virologists appear to have reacted with despair.
‘He’s
basically got a known pandemic strain that is now resistant to
vaccination,’ said one scientist who did not wish to be named.
‘Everything he did before was dangerous, but this is even madder.’
So what exactly has Professor Kawaoka done before?
Only last month Kawaoka revealed in a scientific paper that he had also synthesised a bird flu virus — called ‘1918-like Avian’.
He
had created, through a process called ‘reverse genetics’, a flu virus
extremely similar to that which caused the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.
Kawaoka
and his team declared that they had made the virus to assess whether
variants of the 1918 flu were as deadly to humans as the original virus.
After
testing it on ferrets, the team found that what they had created, in
the dry words of academia, ‘may have pandemic potential’.
A patient is given a swine flu vaccination.
Compared to the outbreak in 1918, H5N1 has so far been relatively
merciful. To date, only some 400 people worldwide have died from the
virus
An earlier experiment looked at making another lethal bird flu strain easier to catch.
The
idea that scientists blithely create deadly flu viruses, essentially to
see how deadly they are, caused outrage in the scientific community and
the world at large.
‘The
work they are doing is absolutely crazy,’ said Professor Lord May of
Oxford, a former president of the Royal Society. ‘The whole thing is
exceedingly dangerous.’
Marc
Lipsitch, Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public
Health, said: ‘I am worried that this signals a growing trend to make
“transmissible” novel viruses willy-nilly. This is a risky activity,
even in the safest labs.
‘Scientists
should not take such risks without strong evidence that the work could
save lives, which this paper does not provide.’
Other scientists used stronger language.
‘If
society understood what was going on,’ thundered Professor Simon
Wain-Hobson, of the Virology Department at the Pasteur Institute in
Paris, ‘they would say “What the F are you doing?” ’
'I am worried that this signals a growing trend to make “transmissible” novel viruses
willy-nilly' - Professor Marc Lipsitch
willy-nilly' - Professor Marc Lipsitch
It’s a good question. Professor Kawaoka did try to justify his research last month.
He
explained that wild birds continue to harbour many variants of the
influenza A virus — the strain of virus that can be transmitted from
birds, including domestic poultry, through to humans.
One of the subtypes of influenza A is called H5N1 — a name familiar to many.
Not
only was a form of H5N1 behind the 1918 outbreak, but its variants have
started to emerge over the past ten years, and are now collectively
known as ‘bird flu’.
Compared
to the outbreak in 1918, H5N1 has so far been relatively merciful. To
date, only some 400 people worldwide have died from the virus.
However,
this is not to say that a new form of H5N1 could not be more deadly,
and there are many virologists around the world working on ways to deal
with potential pandemics.
Professor Kawaoka argues that ‘foreseeing and understanding this potential is important for effective surveillance’.
Kawaoka and his team create new forms of H5N1,
then study how they function and how easily they can spread. Naturally,
the experiments are carried out in extremely secure conditions
To do this, Kawaoka and his team create new forms of H5N1, then study how they function and how easily they can spread.
Naturally, the experiments are carried out in extremely secure conditions — although it is alarming to learn that
Professor Kawaoka’s Department of Pathobiological Sciences at the University of Wisconsin is not rated at the most secure level.
Laboratories
that work with deadly biological agents are graded with increasing
levels of biosafety, which range from BSL-1 up to BSL-4.
Establishments
rated at BSL-4 include the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at
Porton Down in Wiltshire, and the new National Biodefense Analysis and
Countermeasures Center in Maryland in the U.S.
‘In the case of influenza, we anticipate
that such a risk assessment will show that the risks are unjustifiable’ - Professor Lipsitch, Harvard School of Public Health
Professor
Kawaoka’s lab is rated at BSL-3. Under the strict guidelines, the
entrance to the laboratory must be through two sets of self-closing and
locking doors, and no air must escape from it.
All
procedures must be carried out inside a closed biological safety
cabinet, into which scientists insert their hands and arms cased in
latex gloves.
Often,
respirators must be worn, and all staff members are medically screened,
and immunised when possible. However some scientists are adamant that
the risks are still too high.
In
a paper published in 2012, Lynn Klotz, a Senior Science Fellow at the
U.S. Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, stated that 42
institutions were working with any number of three potentially deadly
disease-causing substances — smallpox, the SARS virus, and H5N1.
Klotz
estimated there was an 80 per cent likelihood of one of these diseases
escaping from one of these laboratories in just under every 13 years.
‘This level of risk is clearly unacceptable,’ Klotz said.
However,
Klotz’s work did not take account of another danger — one that makes
the risk of a genetically manipulated virus breaking free from a lab
even more likely: terrorism.
Even
though the idea that, say, militant Islamists, might break into
laboratories to release strains of H5N1 seems far-fetched, it is taken
very seriously by policymakers.
A visual representation of the H5N1 strain of
bird flu. Even though the idea that, say, militant Islamists, might
break into laboratories to release strains of H5N1 seems far-fetched, it
is taken very seriously by policymakers
In
2011, the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity called
for scientific papers on H5N1 to be censored, which caused fierce debate
among scientists.
Because
of such fears, in 2012 many scientists voluntarily halted research on
H5N1. The moratorium lasted for a year, after which the virologists
lifted it, stating that the risks from not studying the virus were
greater than those raised by the virus falling into the wrong hands.
However,
many scientists remain deeply uncomfortable with the way some research
is carried out on H5N1. Those doubts are sure to be repeated with the
latest revelations about Professor Kawaoka.
Some,
such as Professor Marc Lipsitch, advocate what he calls ‘ethical
alternatives’ to the type of approach used by Kawaoka, in which more
rigorous risk assessments should be made.
‘In
the case of influenza, we anticipate that such a risk assessment will
show that the risks are unjustifiable,’ Professor Lipsitch states in a
paper he published last month.
But
despite such calls from their academic colleagues, Kawaoka and other
scientists, such as Professor Ron Fouchier at Erasmus Medical Centre in
Rotterdam, insist that what they are doing is right, and maintain that
their work is safe and therefore ethical.
But
as every scientist knows, there is no such thing as a sure bet. There
is always a chance that, one day, someone will walk out of Professor
Kawaoka’s laboratory in Wisconsin feeling under the weather.
If that happens, then we must hope and pray that those same scientists find a cure —before millions die.
No comments:
Post a Comment