Scientists Are Creating New, Incurable Diseases in Labs

Microbiologist Ashley Sabol works in the disease outbreak lab at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Microbiologist Ashley Sabol works in the disease outbreak lab at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. David Goldman/AP

Is that reasonable?

Swine flu, or H1N1, had been dead for 20 years when it suddenly re-emerged in 1977 with a curious twist. The new strain was genetically similar to one from the 1950s, almost as though it had been sitting frozen in a lab since then. Indeed, it eventually became clear that the late-70s flu outbreak was likely the result of a lowly lab worker’s snafu.

Lab accidents like that are extremely rare. Still, two scientists are now arguing that it’s not worth continuing to create new, transmissible versions of deadly viruses in labs because the risk that the diseases will escape and infect the public is too great.

The H5N1 avian flu killed two dozen people in Hong Kong in 1997. It has only killed about 400 people worldwide since then, though, because it doesn’t pass easily from human to human.

In recent years, scientists have found a way to make H5N1 jump between ferrets, the best animal model for flu viruses in humans. They say they need to create a transmissible version in order to better understand the disease and to prepare potential vaccines.

That worries people like Marc Lipsitch and Alison P. Galvani, two epidemiologists who write in a PLoS Medicine editorial today that creating these types of new infectious agents puts human life at risk. They estimate that if 10 American laboratories ran these types of experiments for a decade, there would be a 20 percent chance that a lab worker would become infected with one of these new super-flus and potentially pass it on to others.

“The concern is that you're making something that doesn't exist in nature and combines high virulence for people with the ability to transmit efficiently,” Lipsitch told me.

Accidents involving lab-grown pathogens aren’t just the stuff of sci-fi movies. A Singaporean lab worker was inadvertently infected with SARS in 2003. In 2004, a Russian scientist died after accidentally sticking herself with a needle contaminated with Ebola at a Siberian lab. In April, Paris’ Pasteur Institute lost2,000 vials containing the SARS virus. And in March, the Galveston National Laboratory in Texas lost a vial containing Guanarito virus, which causes "bleeding under the skin, in internal organs or from body orifices like the mouth, eyes, or ears.”

The medical world seems perpetually torn between the desire to eliminate horrific diseases entirely and the need to preserve them for future study. Thanks to vaccination, smallpox was eradicated in 1980, but there are still two samples of it living in labs—one in the U.S. and one in Russia. Some scientists argue that those vials should be destroyed because there’s a chance they could be used in bioterrorism. There is no cure for smallpox, and it kills a third of its victims. The rest suffer permanent scarring from the thousands of “pox,” or fluid-filled cysts.

“The hazard is, could it ever by accident or by evil design leave those two containments and actually be introduced into the population again and spread?” William Schaffner, chair of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville told ABC News. The World Health Assembly is deciding this week whether to destroy the vials.

Most labs have near-bulletproof safety standards, with workers wearing plastic hoods and working behind heavy steel doors. Still, leaks can happen because of failures in respiratory equipment, Lipsitch said, or if a worker accidentally touches their eyes or nose with a contaminated glove.

“We have data from past experience in various labs that human infection in those labs are not a common event, but with enough labs working for enough years, it's been observed over and over again,” Lipsitch said. “Marburg and Ebola viruses have both infected lab workers at a higher level of containment than these [H5N1] experiments.”

He added that past lab accidents haven’t resulted in worldwide spread partly because the viruses weren’t as contagious in those cases.

“In the case of Ebola and Marburg—they aren't that readily transmissible,” he said. “In the case of SARS, which has been involved in at least three separate lab accidents, there was onward transmission in one case, but it was contained, so we got lucky.”

Lipsitch suggests that, rather than breed the new mammal-transmissible viruses, scientists just use pieces of the H5N1 strain for their research or work on ancestors of the virus.

The scientists conducting the ferret-based H5N1 experiments went through a year-long voluntary moratorium after a controversy over the studies’ safety flared in 2011. In January 2013, they declared that the experiments would resume because the lab conditions for the experiments met the necessary safety checks. “Because H5N1 virus transmission studies are essential for pandemic preparedness and understanding the adaptation of influenza viruses to mammals,” they wrote in Science, “researchers who have approval from their governments ... have a public health responsibility to resume this important work.”

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.