Article
Dated: Dec 19 2017
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih.html?referer=http%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com
A Federal Ban on Making Lethal Viruses Is Lifted
Dec. 19, 2017
Federal
officials on Tuesday ended a moratorium imposed three years ago on funding
research that alters germs to make them more lethal.
Such
work can now proceed, said Dr. Francis S. Collins, the head of the National
Institutes of Health, but only if a scientific panel decides that the benefits
justify the risks.
Some
scientists are eager to pursue these studies because they may show, for
example, how a bird flu could mutate to more easily infect humans, or could
yield clues to making a better vaccine.
Critics
say these researchers risk creating a monster germ that could escape the lab
and seed a pandemic.
Now, a government
panel will require that researchers show that their studies in this area are
scientifically sound and that they will be done in a high-security lab.
The
pathogen to be modified must pose a serious health threat, and the work must
produce knowledge — such as a vaccine — that would benefit humans. Finally,
there must be no safer way to do the research.
“We
see this as a rigorous policy,” Dr. Collins said. “We want to be sure we’re
doing this right.”
In
October 2014, all federal funding was halted on efforts to make three viruses
more dangerous: the flu virus, and those causing Middle East respiratory syndrome
(MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
But
the new regulations apply to any pathogen that could potentially cause a
pandemic. For example, they would apply to a request to create an Ebola virus
transmissible through the air, said Dr. Collins.
There
has been a long, fierce debate about projects — known as “gain of function”
research — intended to make pathogens more deadly or more transmissible.
In
2011, an outcry arose when laboratories in Wisconsin and the Netherlands
revealed that they were trying to mutate the lethal H5N1 bird flu in ways that
would let it jump easily between ferrets, which are used to model human flu
susceptibility.
Tensions
rose in 2014 after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention accidentally
exposed lab workers to anthrax and shipped a deadly flu virus to a laboratory that
had asked for a benign strain.
That
year, the N.I.H. also found vials of smallpox in a freezer that had been
forgotten for 50 years.
When
the moratorium was imposed, it effectively halted 21 projects, Dr. Collins
said. In the three years since, the N.I.H. created exceptions that funded ten
of those projects. Five were flu-related, and five concerned the MERS virus.
That
virus is a coronavirus carried by camels that has infected about 2,100 people since
it was discovered in 2012, and has killed about a third of them, according to
the World Health Organization.
Critics
of such research had mixed reactions. “There’s less than meets the eye,” said
Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist and bioweapons expert at Rutgers
University.
Although
he applauded the requirement for review panels, he said he would prefer
independent panels to government ones.
He
also wanted the rules to cover all such research rather than just
government-funded work, as well as clearer minimum safety standards and a
mandate that the benefits “outweigh” the risks instead of merely “justifying”
them.
Marc
Lipsitch, an epidemiologist who directs the Center for Communicable Disease
Dynamics at the Harvard School of Public Health, called review panels “a small
step forward.”
Recent
disease-enhancing experiments, he said, “have given us some modest scientific
knowledge and done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemics,
and yet risked creating an accidental pandemic.”
Therefore, he said, he hoped the panels
would turn down such work.
Michael
T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy
at the University of Minnesota, said he believed some laboratories could do
such work safely, but wanted restrictions on what they could publish.
“If
someone finds a way to make the Ebola virus more dangerous, I don’t believe
that should be available to anybody off the street who could use it for
nefarious purposes,” he said.
“Physicists
long ago learned to distinguish between what can be publicly available and
what’s classified,” he added, referring to nuclear weapons research. “We want
to keep some of this stuff on a need-to-know basis.”
A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 20,
2017, Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the
headline: U.S. Lifts Ban On Modifying Lethal Viruses.
