Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Guess What Just Went Viral in China?
Xi didn’t actually admit that the coronavirus now devastating large swathes of China had escaped from one of the country’s bioresearch labs. But the very next day, evidence emerged suggesting that this is exactly what happened, as the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology released a new directive entitled: “Instructions on strengthening biosecurity management in microbiology labs that handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus.”
It’s probably nothing.
Published in Science & Technology
The creation of a chimeric SARS-like virus has scientists discussing the risks of gain-of-function research.
Folks, this just isn’t that hard to connect the dots.
Even a weekend comedy television anchor can do it.
Now for the bonus round:
Your tax dollars hard at work. What if the origin of the Chinese outbreak was a US lab? Well, we certainly couldn’t complain that US tax dollars weren’t hard at work ensuring that future generations won’t have to face this terrible debacle because either they’ll have cured it or they’ll have wiped out the human species in which case they’ll never be born.
When looked at that way, its really win-win if you drink between 24 and 48 ounces of Russian vodka in the space of about 2 hours.
Additional bonus round:
Would “gain of function” be a euphemism for creating offensive biological agents? If it isn’t, then I think Jeffrey Epstein killed himself.
WHAT
Certainly that could be an application of that kind of research. But I saw nothing in that article in The Scientist to even hint that there could be a way researchers could identify that kind of bioengineering in a virus to distinguish it from a natural mutant. But I’ve read not read any of the other articles you linked to.
There is nothing in this article that even hints that the SARS-COV-2 had to have been created in a lab.
“Gain of function”
That’s a separate article, and it talks about research to create such viruses with new functions as being a thing, but it suggests no characteristic signature of any such a virus to identify it as a lab-created one.
Please read Comment #61 and the associated article.
Been there, done that in Comment #66.
This is totally separate from the analysis from India?
Very interesting. I might like to take a look at something about this.
Last I heard, some other scientists had rebutted the ones from India. The science itself was lost on me, and I didn’t even quite get around to figuring out the logic.
What indeed.
Am I supposed to conclude from this that it’s possible to engineer a coronavirus bioweapon and conclude from that that it also happened in this particular situation?
What sort of argument in that? That’s like saying knives are possible murder weapons, and therefore Mr. Boddy was murdered by Col. Mustard with the knife. We need more evidence than that.
This article you link here may well do a good job establishing the possibility of a particular conspiracy theory. Perhaps, if the allegations from the Indian scientists or the French scientists recently mentioned, were established, then we’d have some interesting evidence.
Indeed. How will I ever have a happy life without at least two friends from every dang subspecialization of biology?
Ok, let’s observe that the science is almost sure to be well over 90% lost on me.
But I can manage the logic.
It looks like the logic here is very odd: Your conclusion is that this particular virus was man-made because of what’s in these paragraphs. And what’s in these paragraphs is–bolded above–the assumption that it’s man-man, not any evidence that it’s man-made.
Where’s that assumption coming from?
(In this article on a different topic, it looks like a simple case of bad writing.)
The 2015 article clearly shows the chimera like virus had already been created in North Carolina. In other words its existence and origin are old news.
Good grief people. Work with me here. “Gain of function” is a euphemism for a bio engineered virus that “gains functions” which means “increasing virulence”. When you see “gain of function” that means bio weapons which is why they wanted to ban the research in 2013!!
The 2015 article predicted the future?
Or is there some other evidence that it was about exactly the same virus?
Work with me here, bro: Click back to the article Reticulator refers to as “this article.” The word “gain” does not even appear in it. If you’re making some other connection, maybe try being a little more explicit.
No, it is not. “Gain of Function” means “the bug can do something it could not before.” The main purpose is to try and get ahead of microbial evolution. If we know X mutation is bad news, we can sound the alarm sooner. We could also research what drugs are effective in treating the dangerous pathogen when it shows up in the wild. I was at a talk for a researcher that works with a reconstituted version of the 1918 influenza virus, and studies how protective modern vaccines and treatments are. We get that this could have shady uses – that’s why it falls under the umbrella of “dual use research of concern.” Every research at the institution work with gets his research screened by the Institutional Biosafety Committee. They can stop research, get your grant pulled, and generally ruin your day. Every protocol is screened for DURC, and evaluated for threats to the public and the researchers. A lot of research has minor versions of DURC, like letting a virus infect different cells so you can use the virus to deliver your modified DNA to the cell.
There was a long and involved analysis of this situation after a pair of less scientifically justified gain-of-function papers came out. I know one of the people involved with the big committee that developed this guidance.
If you are concerned about about biosafety and research going off the rails, please reach out to your local research university, and ask to be a public member of the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) Every IBC is required to have members from the general public, and their purpose is specifically to represent the outside pair of eyes not in the research silo. They usually meet once a month or less often.
Do you have any evidence that COVID-19 / nCoV-19 is equivalent to the SARS – bat coronavrius chimera created in 2015? What percentage of homology are we talking about? All coronaviruses have some degree of similarity – SARS and MERS are similar to each other. I saw the livescience article – that was just on the production and purification of the spike protein, along with determining its structure. That’s not relevant to the 2015 chimera you mentioned.
I had read about a potential espionage incident at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada, where Chinese researchers did a transfer of biological samples to China without permission. They got fired and I believe deported.
This is good information. Thank you.
Frankly, the big problem I see with this up-front is that a resulting economic downturn could result in Bernie or someone (almost) equally ridiculous, being elected in November.
No, it is not. “Gain of Function” means “the bug can do something it could not before.”
Really?
Find the name Epstein in this article
I have read about gain of function research before, you know. It is a big topic in biosafety. It has to be carefully monitored.
However, it is not equivalent to bioweapons research. That’s pretty damn gratuitous.
Also, while I think it is plausible COVID-19 is orginally from a Chinese lab, you cannot just claim it is engineered, especially engineered in the US, without some solid evidence.
Look what I found!
A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence
Vineet D Menachery, Boyd L Yount Jr, Kari Debbink, Sudhakar Agnihothram, Lisa E Gralinski, Jessica A Plante, Rachel L Graham, Trevor Scobey, Xing-Yi Ge, Eric F Donaldson, Scott H Randell, Antonio Lanzavecchia, Wayne A Marasco, Zhengli-Li Shi & Ralph S Baric
Nature Medicine volume 21, pages1508–1513(2015)
A Corrigendum to this article was published on 06 April 2016
This article has been updated
Zhengli-Li Shi & Ralph S Baric sitting in a tree…next comes “prophylactic modalities revealed poor efficacy” in a baby carriage!
Too bad I spent most of high school biology class either following the therapeutic advice of Cheech and Chong or trying to look up Becky Sue’s sun dress when the air conditioning broke down.
Ok, so there’s solid evidence that it’s possible to modify a bat coronavirus so that it does some stuff this one does.
And Paladin’s remark ” ‘Gain of Function’ means ‘the bug can do something it could not before’ ” being correct, that new ability could well be to infect humans.
Is there any evidence that the coronavirus killing people now is the same as the one engineered then? Is there any evidence that the changes to the coronavirus could not have been the result of natural mutations?
If we have solid evidence that there is a knife in the mansion, we still need more evidence before we accuse Col. Mustard of using it in the library.
Is there any evidence that the changes to the coronavirus could not have been the result of natural mutations?
Sure. Its the result of natural mutations and Wu Han being in that paper is just a massive coincidence. And Epstein didn’t kill himself. Did you notice the active verbs in the article?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu_LCNLillU
After all, its not like China has a reputation for murdering its own citizens or anything is it?