Writer dwallacewells and epidemiologist mlipsitch discuss the risks and roots of gain-of-function research
An electron micrograph of an apoptotic cell infected with the SARS-COV-2 virus. Photo: Image Point FR/NIH/NIAID/BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Nothing has changed but the narrative. A majority of Americans now believe that the coronavirus emerged from a lab, not nature, and in recent weeks a new openness to the lab-leak theory has taken over “nearly all mainstream media,” as my colleague Jonathan Chait put it.
But the question of blame is a complicated one, even if one credits the lab-leak theory, since, as Baker documented, the work being done at the Wuhan Institute was in partnership with American scientists and institutions, and was funded in part by both the NIH and the Pentagon.
I think that last year the theory lay mostly dormant because everybody who had the relevant expertise was busy and was trying to focus on fighting the pandemic rather than investigating the origins.My idea of the narrative change is that the WHO report [which dismissed the lab-leak theory out of hand] came out. A lot of people were very frustrated by that.
The media has understandably been really confused. I said to someone yesterday, I don’t really like groups of scientists standing on a pedestal and saying, we believe X, and you should believe X. I think it’s much better to say we believe in X because A,B, C, and D—that’s a very different thing. So then how do we proceed? How should we? Presumably as part of this narrative shift, the American public and to some degree, the global public, is becoming at least more aware of this kind of research and its potential risks, and presumably at least to some degree, more concerned about it. How should we go about addressing those risks? As far as I understand the closest we’ve come in, the U.S.
But while that might be safer, doesn’t it also offer less value in terms of vaccine development, compared to working on pathogens that were designed to be transmissible in humans? I think the even Tombroader principle is that high-risk, low-reward work should not be done. Low-risk, high-reward should be done. And the off-diagonals are harder, right? High-risk, high-reward, low-risk low-reward.
I think it’s hard to say what the role of the U.S. is, but I am somewhat optimistic that it’s greater than some other people think. For better or worse, if you get published in Science, you’re a big shot. If you get published in Cell — technically that’s Dutch, I guess. And if you got published in Nature, which is British, you’re a big shot. If you get published anywhere else, you’re not as big a shot.
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