A Brief, Terrifying History of Viruses Escaping From Labs

[Shiloh]

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/techn...s_viruses_could_escape_from_laboratories.html

A Brief, Terrifying History of Viruses Escaping From Labs
How well-intentioned research with dangerous pathogens could put people at risk.
By Martin Furmanski


A version of this essay originally appeared in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

The public health danger posed by potentially pandemic-causing viruses escaping from laboratories has become the subject of considerable discussion, spurred by ?gain of function? experiments. The ostensible goal of these experiments?in which researchers manipulate already-dangerous pathogens to create or increase communicability among humans?is to develop tools to monitor the natural emergence of pandemic strains. Opponents, however, warn in a variety of recent research papers that the risk of laboratory escape of these high-consequence pathogens far outweighs any potential advance.

The danger of a manmade pandemic sparked by a laboratory escape is not hypothetical: One occurred in 1977, and it occurred because of concern that a natural pandemic was imminent. Many other laboratory escapes of high-consequence pathogens have occurred, resulting in transmission beyond laboratory personnel. Ironically, these laboratories were working with pathogens to prevent the very outbreaks they ultimately caused. For that reason, the tragic consequences have been called ?self-fulfilling prophecies.?...

 

[Giuseppe]

Re: A Brief, Terrifying History of Viruses Escaping From Labs

Luckily, the H1N1 that caused the ''children-pandemic'' during 1976-77 was a benign viral strain, and eventually the same virus circulated in human population until the 2009 H1N1pdm09 replace it.

H1N1 was replaced initially in 1957 by H2N2 ''Asian-flu'' pandemic virus, and since then, remained only in swine population.

We cannot exclude a priori a natural re-introduction of that H1N1 through animal reservoir.

More scary, perhaps, the Marburg incidents at Behring labs, mid-70, where a dozen of workers were exposed with fatal consequences.

Regulators, today, failed to address properly high risk experiments consequences if one of the super-H5N1 viruse would escape from the labs they was cultured.

Sic.

 

[JJackson]

Re: A Brief, Terrifying History of Viruses Escaping From Labs

We cannot exclude a priori a natural re-introduction of that H1N1 through animal reservoir.

I loaded up and compared the sequence data for 1957 and 1977 HA from H1N1 in humans a while ago to try and answer the 'was it a lab escape' question and remember that the homology was so high (almost identical) that there is almost no chance it was circulating undetected or reintroduced from pigs. No flu strain in the database has ever held that level of homology over 20 years let alone if it had been circulating in a different species. I also compared these human sequences to the 1977 swine data and again found no close matches.
The database has large holes but not that large.