Scientists are increasingly concerned about leaks in biological laboratories

The theory that the coronavirus could be the result of scientific experiments shed light on the work of the world’s safest biological laboratories.

Although the evidence linking SARS-CoV-2 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China is strictly circumstantial, several experts they want controls to be tightened in these facilities for fear that accidental leaks could trigger the next pandemic.

Wuhan laboratory belongs to the safest category, commonly referred to as Biosafety Level 4, or BSL4.

These labs are designed to operate safely with the most dangerous bacteria and viruses that can cause serious illness. for which there are no known treatments or vaccines.

“There are HVAC filtration systems, so the virus cannot escape through the exhaust duct; all wastewater leaving the facilities is treated with chemicals or at high temperatures to make sure nothing is alive, ”Gregory Koblentz, director of the biodefense graduate program at AFP, told AFP. George Mason University.

The researchers themselves they are highly qualified and they wear hazmat suits.

There are 59 such installations worldwide., according to a report Koblentz co-wrote and published this week.

Sometimes in high level facilities accidents can happen, and much more frequently in lower level labs, of which there are thousands.

Background

Human H1N1 virus fled in 1977 to the Soviet Union and China and it has spread all over the world.

In 2001, a mentally handicapped employee of an American biological laboratory sent anthrax spores across the country, killing five people.

Two Chinese researchers exposed to SARS in 2004 they spread the disease to others, killing one.

In 2014 it was discovered a handful of smallpox vials during a US Food and Drug Administration move.

Lynn Klotz, senior researcher at the Center for the Control and Non-Proliferation of Weapons, has sounded the alarm bells for many years on security threats public that these installations involve.

“Human errors represent more than 70% errors in the laboratories, ”he told AFP.

There is a disagreement between the U.S. government, which funded research on the bat coronavirus in Wuhan, and some independent scientists, on whether this work was a controversial “gain-of-function” (GOF) investigation.

The research on the gain of function consists of modify pathogens to make them more transmissible, more deadly or better able to escape treatments and vaccines, all this to learn how to fight them better.

This area has been controversial for a long time.

To worry

Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch told AFP he feared “that a strain of the virus would be created and that if it infected a lab worker, it wouldn’t just kill that lab worker.” . but also cause a pandemic“Research is not necessary and does not contribute to the development of drugs or vaccines,” added molecular biologist Richard Ebright of Rutgers University.

In 2014, the US government announced a break in funding federal government of this type of work, which in 2017 gave way to a framework that would consider each request on a case-by-case basis. But the process has been criticized for its lack of transparency and credibility.

Already last year, a non-profit organization received funding from the United States as part of an investigation to “predict the potential for propagation” of the bat coronavirus to humans in Wuhan.

Asked by Congress this week, Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, they denied That this amounted to a for-profit investigation, but Ebright made it clear that it was.

None of this means that covid-19 has definitely left a lab; In reality, no solid scientific evidence in favor of the natural origin or the hypothesis of a laboratory accident, Ebright said.

But there are certain lines of circumstantial evidence in favor of the latter. For example, Wuhan is about 1,000 kilometers north of the bat caves which harbor the ancestral virus, very far from the area of ​​flight of the animals.

However, it is known that Wuhan scientists they made routine trips to these caves to take samples.

Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute, said there was no indication that research into risky pathogens had declined after the pandemic; In reality, “possibly expanded.”

Last year, Chan published research showing that unlike SARS, SARS-CoV-2 was not evolving quickly when another piece of circumstantial evidence has been detected for the first time in humans, which could indicate a laboratory origin.

Chan is considered a “undecided” As for the competing hypotheses, but she is not in favor of banning risk surveys, lest they go underground.

A solution “could be as simple as relocating these research institutes to extremely remote areas“, He said.

With Lucie Aubourg and Paul Handley. AFP Agency

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