There’s a central question that many scientists face: How can scientific discoveries drive humanity’s progress without posing a dire risk to it? As virus experts, we’re committed to research that uncovers pandemic threats and helps protect people from them. But we are concerned about how some scientists are experimenting with viruses in ways that could put all of us in harm’s way.
In a study published in the scientific journal Cell, a group of researchers reported the discovery of a coronavirus in bats that has the potential to spread to humans.
In a series of experiments, the scientists show that this virus, HKU5-CoV-2, can efficiently infect cells of humans and a wide range of other animal cells. The findings raise the possibility that humans and other animals could be infected by this virus. This coronavirus belongs to a subgroup of viruses that are classified alongside the one that causes MERS and that can have fatality rates far higher than that of the virus that caused the Covid pandemic.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, where many of the researchers work or have worked, is at the center of the controversy regarding the origin of the Covid pandemic. We do not imply that the institute is responsible for the Covid pandemic, nor do we have any certainty that this newly discovered virus has the potential to cause the next one. What worries us is the insufficient safety precautions the researchers took when studying this coronavirus.
Research laboratories have different levels of security, based on its categorization on a biosafety level scale, from BSL-1, the lowest, to BSL-4. Lower-security labs are used for studying infectious agents that either don’t cause disease in people or pose only moderate risk. The higher-security laboratories are for studying pathogens that can spread in the air and have the potential to cause lethal infections.
BSL-4 labs are the ones featured in movies where scientists walk around in what look like spacesuits with air hoses and shower in decontamination chambers when their work is done. BSL-3 labs limit access to specifically trained staff members, have locking double doors for enhanced security and specific air handling and sterilization systems. Workers wear head-to-toe personal protective equipment and are under medical surveillance for signs of laboratory-acquired infection that could pose a risk to others.
Decisions about what level of precaution is appropriate for research are typically made by a study’s lead scientist and an institutional biosafety committee that includes scientists, physicians, administrators and members of the local community.
The researchers behind the Cell paper began by studying the new virus in ways that do not require growing live virus — like through computer analysis. But after establishing that the virus can probably infect human cells, the researchers performed experiments with the fully infectious virus. They did not conduct these experiments in a BSL-3 or BSL-4 laboratory but in a laboratory described as BSL-2 plus, a designation that is not standardized and not formally recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and that we think is insufficient for work with potentially dangerous respiratory viruses.
This work was apparently approved by the local institutional biosafety committee and adhered to national biosafety standards. But it is not sufficient for work with a new virus that could have significant risks for people worldwide.
Herein lies a crucial problem that the world must address. Scientists and policymakers in the United States have spent years discussing and debating how to regulate risky virus research, sometimes contentiously. But this work happens in other countries, too — and not all countries approach questions about the safety of this work in the same way. So one country’s decisions about how to approach studying risky pathogens can go only so far.
Wherever in the world it happens, work with viruses that have the potential to become threats to public health should be restricted to facilities and scientists committed to the highest level of safety. As the leading international public health agency, the World Health Organization should take the lead in rigorously clarifying these standards. But we need other mechanisms to ensure that researchers worldwide follow the rules. Agencies inside and outside government that fund this sort of work should require proof that investigators meet global standards. Scientific journals should have similar standards for the studies they accept.
Last week was the 50th anniversary of the 1975 Asilomar Summit, where scientists came together to establish guidelines for research with genetically modified microbes. Today many more discoveries and threats are on the horizon. Potentially dangerous research should not be done without proper precautions to prevent deliberate or accidental spread.
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