Pandemic from the laboratory: Virus research carries risks and side effects

If the coronavirus pandemic was the result of a laboratory accident, it was the worst accident in human history. Seven million deaths, several trillion dollars in economic damage, and months of lockdowns around the world: Even the Chernobyl reactor accident pales in comparison.

There is still no evidence that the coronavirus actually escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, nor is there any evidence for a natural origin. What remains is the fundamental question: Are we doing enough to prevent a lab-grown pandemic?

According to President Trump, the answer is apparently no. The coronavirus pandemic is the result of dangerous research, according to the US government's new COVID-19 website. Now, Trump is taking action. By executive order on Monday, he severely restricted funding for "dangerous gain-of-function research." In particular, no more US funds for these purposes are allowed to flow to countries like China.

Gain-of-function research refers to experiments in which pathogens acquire functions that make them more dangerous. This could include improved airborne transmissibility or the ability to better evade the immune system.

The debate about this type of research has been raging for several years. In 2011, Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier improved the adaptability of avian influenza viruses to mammals in the laboratory by repeatedly infecting ferrets with the virus. Thanks to the researchers' intervention, the deadly virus was more easily transmissible between animals, a capability that could potentially make it a pandemic virus. Fouchier himself described the resulting virus to the journal Science as "probably one of the most dangerous viruses that can be created."

The research caused a sensation. The US subsequently imposed a four-year ban on similar research. However, the ban was lifted during Trump's first term in 2017.

Scientists have been very cautious about such research projects ever since, says virologist Silke Stertz. She is a professor of virology at the University of Zurich and also works there as a biosafety officer. Ensuring safety in the laboratory takes up a large part of her time, "because it's very important," she says.

She finds it problematic that research like Fouchier's is no longer taking place. Such experiments could help understand what makes influenza viruses easily transmissible between humans – this knowledge is still lacking. Therefore, viruses circulating in different animals are difficult to monitor, and it's almost impossible to detect early on when a new virus strain becomes dangerous. "The risk of not knowing is much greater than the risk of conducting such experiments under high safety conditions," says Stertz.

Zoonoses, in which pathogens jump from animals to humans, do occur again and again. Historically, pandemics have frequently arisen this way, from the Spanish flu to the plague. In such cases, research forms the basis for effective protection of the population: the better scientists understand a pathogen, the faster it can be contained, treated, and prevented with a vaccination.

Scientists are aware that this research on pathogens can be potentially risky. It's not for nothing that every laboratory has protective measures in place. The principle applies: the more dangerous the pathogen, the more comprehensive the protection.

While researchers working with one pathogen are adequately protected by wearing a lab coat and gloves, for another, they require a full-body suit with a filtered air supply. The degree of isolation of the laboratory from the outside world also varies considerably. At the highest security level, the laboratories are hermetically sealed from the outside world; nothing is allowed in or out, and employees can only leave the laboratory through a shower, where they carefully wash their entire bodies.

It becomes particularly dangerous when the risk posed by an experiment is assessed as lower than it actually is.

Critics accuse the Wuhan laboratory of this. Supporters of the hypothesis that the coronavirus originated in the Wuhan laboratory often argue that experiments there were conducted at too low a safety level.

At the beginning of March, virologists Ian Lipkin and Ralph Baric even warned in the New York Times about the "alarming virus research" still being conducted at the institute in Wuhan. Based on a research publication by scientists in Wuhan, Lipkin and Baric concluded that the institute was only working on potentially lethal and highly contagious viruses at the second of four possible safety levels. This, they wrote, is insufficient.

But the researchers in Wuhan did not violate any rules or laws. A local committee decides which experiments are conducted and at which safety level—in this case, biosafety officers at the Wuhan institute. They approved the proposed experiments with these safety precautions.

The World Health Organization (WHO) does provide detailed guidelines and recommendations on how to ensure the safety of research. However, these rules are not internationally binding. Instead, most countries have their own laws that regulate how exactly these recommendations are implemented and who monitors their implementation. Trump's latest executive order will do little to change this, as it only applies to research conducted with American funding.

At first glance, this sounds reckless. But in reality, it's hardly possible or sensible to make uniform decisions on biosafety issues worldwide. The simple principle "The more dangerous the pathogen, the higher the safety level" is less clear than it sounds.

Scientists are constantly modifying pathogens as part of their research. Gain-of-function research, in which pathogens acquire dangerous new abilities, is very rare. Much more frequently, researchers deliberately "amputate" a pathogen so that it can no longer reproduce and is less dangerous. In addition, scientists regularly work with new variants of pathogens. These could be new virus samples from a bat cave in China or simply a well-known pathogen with a single new mutation.

In order to meaningfully determine the risk and the appropriate safety precautions, each research project must ultimately be assessed individually.

And there is another problem: Even in high-security laboratories, there have been outbreaks of pathogens in the past.

In 2003, a student in a high-security laboratory in Beijing became infected with the SARS-1 virus and passed it on to her mother, who died. An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease among cows in the United Kingdom in 2007 likely originated in a pharmaceutical company's laboratory. Even SARS-CoV-2 has been proven to have escaped from a laboratory once . In November 2021, almost two years after the pandemic began, a young researcher in a high-security laboratory in Taiwan became infected with a virus variant that was not even circulating in Taiwan at the time.

These outbreaks could be traced back to deficiencies in infrastructure or poorly enforced safety rules. Ultimately, human error creates a residual risk that a pathogen could escape from the laboratory, even under the highest security precautions.

Should particularly risky research be banned altogether? It's a question of weighing up the pros and cons, similar to the so-called "trolley" problem: A railcar is rolling along a track toward a group of people who would die if it collided. These are the pandemics of natural origin that threaten us at any time. By flipping a switch, the railcar's trajectory can be changed. This is the research that can protect us from the worst consequences of a pandemic. But even on the new track, the railcar might run over people—if an accident in the laboratory causes a disease to break out that otherwise wouldn't have existed.

Through careful work, comprehensive safeguards, and strict controls in the laboratory, the risks of research can be minimized. However, no one has yet provided a clear solution for achieving its benefits without the risks.