Good day all. I saw this story last week and couldn’t believe anyone could be as stupid as this scientist. How stupid is he? Ever hear of Spanish Flu? This virus hit during World War One and killed between 50-100 million people. This bonehead has modified another virus making it even more dangerous!
The scientist in question, Yoshihiro Kawaok has done this before, including trying to revive the original Spanish Flu virus. Here are the gory details from The Independent:
A controversial scientist who carried out provocative research on making influenza viruses more infectious has completed his most dangerous experiment to date by deliberately creating a pandemic strain of flu that can evade the human immune system.
Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has genetically manipulated the 2009 strain of pandemic flu in order for it to “escape” the control of the immune system’s neutralising antibodies, effectively making the human population defenceless against its reemergence.
What the hell is this guy doing anywhere near a laboratory?
Most of the world today has developed some level of immunity to the 2009 pandemic flu virus, which means that it can now be treated as less dangerous “seasonal flu”. However, The Independent understands that Professor Kawaoka intentionally set out to see if it was possible to convert it to a pre-pandemic state in order to analyse the genetic changes involved. The study is not published, however some scientists who are aware of it are horrified that Dr Kawaoka was allowed to deliberately remove the only defence against a strain of flu virus that has already demonstrated its ability to create a deadly pandemic that killed as many as 500,000 people in the first year of its emergence.
Does this idiot understand what he’s doing? Oh, I have no doubt he understand the technical parts of what he’s doing, but has he given any thought at all to what might happen if these modified viruses escape the lab, or worse, are stolen? Obviously not, although others in the field have thought about it and what this jackass has done.
“He took the 2009 pandemic flu virus and selected out strains that were not neutralised by human antibodies. He repeated this several times until he got a real humdinger of a virus,” said one scientist who was present at Professor Kawaoka’s talk.
“He left no doubt in my mind that he had achieved it. He used a flu virus that is known to infect humans and then manipulated it in such a way that it would effectively leave the global population defenceless if it ever escaped from his laboratory,” he said.
“He’s basically got a known pandemic strain that is now resistant to vaccination. Everything he did before was dangerous but this is even madder. This is the virus,” he added.
Well, I see he has the entire community in agreement that he is a nutcase. At least he did this work in a highly secure laboratory. Umm, not really.
The work was carried out at Wisconsin University’s $12m (£7.5m) Institute for Influenza Virus Research in Madison which was built specifically to house Professor Kawaoka’s laboratory, which has a level-3-agriculture category of biosafety: one below the top safety level for the most dangerous pathogens, such as Ebola virus.
Well, I think this bozo’s work is at least as dangerous as working with the Ebola virus. So this lab isn’t where this work should be done. It looks like the university agreed.
However, this study was done at the lower level-2 biosafety. The university has said repeatedly that there is little or no risk of an accidental escape from the lab, although a similar US Government lab at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta with a higher level-3 biosafety rating was recently criticised over the accidental exposure of at least 75 lab workers to possible anthrax infection.
Level 2? LEVEL 2?!?!? I admit that I am NOT a biologist or a scientist, but I would think that if you are working on something with the potential to END ALL HUMAN LIFE, you would do it in the most secure labs available. Or better yet, not do it AT ALL! God, why do I feel like I’m in a John Ringo novel? I also have a few questions for the blithering idiots who let this go forward and funded it. Weren’t they paying any attention at all?
Professor Kawaoka’s work had been cleared by Wisconsin’s Institutional Biosafety Committee, but some members of the committee were not informed about details of the antibody study on pandemic H1N1, which began in 2009, and have voiced concerns about the direction, oversight and safety of his overall research on flu viruses.
“I have met Professor Kawaoka in committee and have heard his research presentations and honestly it was not re-assuring,” said Professor Tom Jeffries, a dissenting member of the 17-person biosafety committee who said he was not made aware of Kawaoka’s work on pandemic H1N1, and has reservations about his other work on flu viruses.
“What was present in the research protocols was a very brief outline or abstract of what he was actually doing…there were elements to it that bothered me,” Professor Jeffries said.
Only elements professor? What did you do to put a stop to this? Whine a little bit? Well, at least you are feeling a little bit of discomfort, unlike the other members of that committee.
Rebecca Moritz, who is responsible for overseeing Wisconsin’s work on “select agents” such as influenza virus, said that Professor Kawaoka’s work on 2009 H1N1 is looking at the changes to the virus that are needed for existing vaccines to become ineffective. “With that being said, this work is not to create a new strain of influenza with pandemic potential, but [to] model the immune-pressure the virus is currently facing in our bodies to escape our defences,” Ms Moritz said.
Again, I’m just a layman, but it looks to me that this was something that both the United States and the Soviet Union was doing back in the Cold War days. They called it “Biological Warfare” I believe. One of the reasons we shut down our program, besides ethics, (Something you seemed to have missed in school), is that making a disease like this can and will blow back on your own populations. Letting this clod engineer a virus that can get around the human immune system tells me that you and all those others on that so-called “Oversight” committee should not be let out unaccompanied by an adult.
The article goes on in some depth on other elements of this clowns work, but in my mind it all boils down to one thing. These academics should be locked up for our own good. Has it occurred to Dr. Kawaok and all those others who allowed him to proceed that he is now a prime target for a terrorist kidnapping attempt? There is this little group of malcontents currently making a big mess in Iraq that would love to get their hands on him or people like him. As much as I hate to say this, here is a classic case where Congress needs to step in and shut this fool down and rake that university over the coals.
We all make jokes about the “Zombie apocalypse” and a lot of people have made a lot of money writing books or making movies about some virus or bioweapon that gets out. In fact, there is a serious on the cable network TNT called “The Last Ship” that is dealing with that very plot line. I would very much like to keep things like this in the realm of make believe and not have it actually happen. Now if you will excuse me, I need to go order some biological warfare suits.
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
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In the “What the hell was he thinking?” department – #angercentralarchives http://t.co/4aJX3uyiCo
While I love the Musings of the Angry Webmaster, I have to say that there is a lot of hyperbole in the article that misrepresents the work done by Kawaoka.
They performed a very simple viral selection assay very similar to ones we regularly conduct in our lab with HIV-1. They exposed 2009 H1N1 influenza to human antibodies and found viruses that were able to grown in the presence of those antibodies.
They then found mutations that the virus itself made to determine how the virus can evade the immune system.
The fact is, influenza is always mutating in the wild to evade the immune system. Work like that which was carried out by Kawaoka’s lab is vital to understanding how the virus evolves and how we can make the immunizations for influenza better. What we find in the lab in these selection studies has often already been seen in the wild and if it hasn’t, it isn’t usually too long in coming.
With regards to the safety issue, I would have to see what they did and how they did it. I suspect that they used the hemaggluttinin or neuraminidase from the pandemic 2009 H1N1 strain in a different, attenuated strain which is not capable of human infection. There are many other possible ways to do the experiment such that it is safe to perform at BSL-2. BSL-3 containment is necessary when working with live infectious virus that is capable of human infection. Even then, the mortality rate of influenza, the ability to make vaccines against influenza, and the fact that we have at least one drug that is effective against influenza means that it is a totally different story from viruses like Ebola. People infected with ebola have incredibly high mortality rates and there is no vaccine or effective treatment for ebola infection.
Do you guys think we don’t know the risks and take appropriate precautions? Do you think WE want to get infected? Do you check to see if a gun is unloaded by pointing it at your head and pulling the trigger? Obviously, care needs to be taken with this type of research but it is this kind of research that leads to new treatments, new drugs, and better vaccinations. Is that something you want to be against?
I make no claims to being a scientist or biologist, and would prefer that someone, (Or a whole bunch of someones), knowledgeable in the field go over what Kawaoka is doing and how everything is being secured. Anything that can give a leg up to bio-terrorists, no matter how beneficial, has to be carefully monitored. The idea that he made something designed to bypass the immune system seems to me, a layman, to be rather worrying.
What could happen if Dr. Kawaoka were kidnapped and tortured by a terrorist group? as I mentioned, I don’t want to be in a real life version of a John Ringo novel. 😉
What I read in the original article concerned me, and the recent news coming out of the CDC, (And how they’ve been screwing up themselves), makes me start pricing biohazard suits. (Do you get a better deal buying in bulk?) 😉
I am a virologist/molecular biologist/biochemist. A whole bunch of someones have gone over what Kawaoka is doing in the form of the Institutional Review Board (IRB). We are required to submit our protocols to the IRB for approval and the article that you linked to discusses the fact that their protocol was approved by the biosafety committee at the University of Wisconsin. If they were doing these experiments at biosafety level 2, then I strongly suspect that they were not using infectious virus. We often use virus that can only complete one round of infection then becomes non-functional so that we can do things at BSL-2 under conditions where it is much easier and cheaper than working at a stricter biosafety level.
I don’t know how things are in Kawaoka’s lab, but I suspect that they have secured access to the facility. We use key cards to access our buildings. There are cameras watching all public areas (which you must pass through to get to the secure areas). As far as terrorism is concerned, there are plenty of unfriendly States that are doing virus research (Iran, North Korea, etc.). I doubt they’d need to kidnap Kawaoka. Besides, there are thousands of other people doing viral research in the United States. How would you propose preventing any of them from being kidnapped? How do you keep anyone with information or skills potentially valuable to terrorists from being kidnapped/tortured? My recommendation certainly wouldn’t fly at any university I am aware of…
Speaking of John Ringo, I can’t wait to read Islands of Rage and Hope. I’ve got it pre-ordered. Finally, yes, you do get bulk discounts. If you are worried about influenza, an appropriate respirator/facemask, good hygiene, and avoiding infected people is sufficient to greatly mitigate the risk of infection. http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/masks.htm
Then I will bow to your knowledge. I still want you and others to take a look at the lab. IIRC, they said it was a level two out of four. Us commoners, when we see something like this want to know that the security is equivalent to gold repository at Fort Knox.
As to the kidnapping, I was thinking more along the lines of your garden variety terrorists, such as ISIS. They look wacky enough to use bioweapons. Insha Allah and all that.
Now to order those suits and resell them to the really paranoid at an excessive profit. (I’m just an amateur paranoid. Hopefully I’ll go pro soon. *grin*)
And I’ve heard the publishing date has been pushed back a week on the next book. 🙁
I’m watching it intently so I can grab the Kindle version.
I realize I didn’t make something clear. The article talks about how the virus is able to evade the immune system. That is false. The immune system adapts and would certainly develop antibodies against this different form of influenza. The changes don’t give the influenza the ability to evade the immune system, it just means that the current vaccine against that particular form of influenza would be ineffective. That means that a vaccinated person could be infected but they would mount an immune response to the virus and, in most cases, ultimately defeat the virus.
By the way, any opinions on that Smallpox virus they found in a storeroom, apparently forgotten? They’ve tested two of six vials and found the virus stuff viable.
I heard about that. The virus was still contained. No one was exposed. While it sounds surprising that virus dating somewhere between 1946 and 1964 was still alive, it sounds like it was severely attenuated by the extended storage. That being said, losing track of something like smallpox is a big deal and illustrates the need for good inventory management. If there were an unscrupulous person working in that lab to find such a virus, I imagine that it might be worth a lot to the wrong buyer.
My nightmare there would be someone just tossing the box, not realizing what it was and accidentally breaking open one or more vials. I make no claims on how strong or “fresh” the virus is, but any is bad in my mind.
We did wipe it out for a reason after all. 😉
Small pox is not a virus with which you would want anyone to make any mistakes. We’ve pretty much wiped it out but until it is all destroyed, it isn’t really gone. That being said, the DNA sequence of small pox is known…
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