2 years, 2 months ago

When is it OK to make germs worse in a lab? It's a more relevant question than ever

When is it OK to make germs worse in a lab? This process currently weighs the risks and benefits of experiments that might change "potential pandemic pathogens" in ways that could make them more dangerous. "The government really has a strong interest on behalf of all of us, in the public, in knowing when researchers want to make a virus more lethal or more transmissible, and understanding how that would be done and why that would be done, and whether the benefits are worth it," says Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "We are really talking about a small amount of research proposals," says Lyric Jorgenson, the acting associate director for science policy and the acting director of the Office of Science Policy at the NIH. "What this new recommendation is saying, is that even if you start with a virus that had no potential to cause an epidemic or pandemic, if you are doing research that will change that virus in a way where it could now cause an uncontrollable disease, or a widely spreading disease, that has to be reviewed by this new framework," says Inglesby.

NPR
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