https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Testimony-Qu...
It references a great deal of information from https://project-evidence.github.io/
And I've found Jamie Metzl's collection of resources interesting as well: https://jamiemetzl.com/origins-of-sars-cov-2/
1) We'll never actually know the answer
2) Even if we did, it wouldn't change anything about what we ought to do
There's no way China would be "punished" for something if it was a lab leak, and there's no way that [the actually dangerous end of] GoF research is a good risk-reward tradeoff anymore in light of instant mRNA vaccines.
Every breath spent pointing fingers on origin is another breath not spent on the remediations we have to do no matter who's responsible.
We feel differently about this. Personally, I find all the evidence collected so far quite compelling. And I believe humanity has a responsibility to our children to investigate all worldwide pandemics to the fullest extent possible.
> Even if we did, it wouldn't change anything about what we ought to do
Whether or not it would change what we ought to do, it would absolutely change what we actually do. I think there would be broad public support for increased safety procedures at a minimum. The testimony I linked offers additional suggestions.
Your scenario of ending all GoF research might be on the table, or might not, but there is a broad range of less dramatic options available. Among them, locating GoF research labs away from densely populated metropolitan areas and international airports.
And more subtle issues along those lines.
It's a bit like an air crash investigation. You have several million killed and want to understand what happened so as to try to prevent the next one.
So, after the process of inserting Gene A into a batch of bacteria you need to figure out which of the bacteria actually picked up Gene A so you can proceed to the next step of your experiment. So, what you do is you pair Gene A with Gene B, which is a very light resistance to a very specific antibiotic. Now, after you perform the electroporation, you plate the bacteria on agarose gel, let colonies start to develop, and then lightly dose the gel with the antibiotic.
The surviving bacterial colonies are those which have incorporated both Gene A and Gene B (because they are paired). It's just a way of filtering bacteria after electroporation so you can do further work. It's not dangerous to people because A) this antibiotic resistance was already found in nature, B) it's a resistance to a very specific antibiotic, not all antibiotics, and C) you're doing this in a protected lab.
This is an incredibly standard process, to the point where - again - I did this in a Biotech 102 program at community college. You could sign up for a classes where you learn to do this, right now.
I have a question, why not pair Gene A with something still detectable but less "dangerous", like a gene that change body color, or emit different color under UV light.
Sorry i am totally noob here
These are reasonable, but...
> C) you're doing this in a protected lab.
...this one is problematic. It's not taking the concerns of the people you're talking to seriously; namely, that no lab can be protected enough, that there's always a chance of leaking, and that the more GoF research is done the higher chance something is going to leak.
If nothing else, not registering that you even understand someone's concern is a sure-fire way to get them to ignore everything else you say.
And, I'm not sure exactly what your attitude is, but at least the way you put it here does sound overconfident. Sure, protocols should be safe if they're all followed; but the protocols are followed by people, and people make mistakes. Just take a look at all the nuclear accidents that have happened in spite of protocols.
Your best bet, I think, would be to lean on A and B: "There are strict protocols in place around labs to keep things from leaking; but even in the very unlikely event that something like this does leak, it won't really have any impact: as I said, the antibiotic resistance is a mutation that evolved by itself in the wild already; it won't make things worse than they already are."
EDIT: Or, at least, to say: "Look, I know it sounds really scary, but if you'd seen the protocols, you see how basically impossible they are to screw up. <brief descripiton of why it's unlikely to leak even if implemented by lazy or incompetent people.>"
The point is to let people know that you hear and understand their concern, and then to educate them about why their concern is unfounded.
EDIT2: This comment seems to be controversial; it's had at least 3 upvotes and 2 downvotes, which surprises me. Any downvoters care to explain?
You do this by including antibiotic resistance genes alongside your modification. Now all modified cells are resistant to the antibiotic. Then you apply a small amount antibiotic to kill the unmodified cells. Now you only have the cells with your interesting modification.
This is the mainstay of molecular biology. Every lab biologist has done it. We even do it as college students in lab practicals.
Banning the use of antibiotic resistance genes in biological research is effectively banning all wet lab medical research.
Conveniently ignoring the fact that they're literally feeding the stuff to livestock to improve growth rates / feed efficiency [1]. Talk about dangerous gain-of-function "research". Industrial vat grown protein cannot come soon enough [2].
This specific use of antibiotics resistance is also extremely common. Pretty much every single microbiology experiment starts this way, and every time you want to genetically modify bacteria you do this. This includes every time you want to produce any protein, because you need genetically modified bacteria for that. This is a large part of all labwork in this field.
As the article notes, the antiobiotic used is one that isn't used for humans. So there is not significant additional danger due to that modification. The bacterium itself is much more dangerous than most that are handled in the lab, but that's why they're in a BSL-3 lab.
They then released the new framework of multi-layered review to clearly define the tradeoffs and how they were managed, and resumed funding for those that could meet the improved criteria.
ie it was standard research advancing regulatory risk management.
The evidence for zoonotic origin of SARS-COV2 is very strong[0] and the conspiracy theorists as usual have little more than speculation.
[0] https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annur...
However, @hackingonempty's comment shows how dangerous over politicising these topics can be. Claiming lab-accident origin as a conspiracy theory stifles debates like the one linked.
Take a report from the first link where experts in the field still give a 21% chance to lab leak definitely takes it out of the range of conspiracy theories.
The only reason it was "removed" as a plausible origin was politics.
> asked how likely it is that COVID-19 originated from natural zoonosis, experts gave an average likelihood of 77% (median=90%). In fact, four out of five experts stated that a natural zoonotic origin was more than 50% likely. > However, consensus was not complete. Across all experts, the average likelihood they gave for a research-related accident origin was 21%. Overall, one out of five experts reported a 50% or greater chance for an origin other than natural zoonosis.
The "conspiracy theorists" include the director of the CDC at the time who was actually in contact with the Chinese CDC and also a virologist, and also the chair of the one official investigation which visited Wuhan in the early days.
>Obvious evidence against the laboratory leak allegation is that the first documented cases of COVID-19 were not linked to the WIV nor in the same geographical region of Wuhan (44). The WIV laboratory of Prof. Zhengli Shi, who has been the subject of abundant accusations because of her work on bat coronaviruses (10, 11, 13), is located more than 30 km from the Huanan market epicenter. Clearly, if the virus first emerged at the WIV, then that location should be the site of at least some of the earliest cases or linked to those cases. It is not.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S07554...
https://www.newsweek.com/controversial-wuhan-lab-experiments...
https://www.newsweek.com/covid-lab-leak-china-virus-nuclear-...
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/10/covid-origins-invest...
https://www.propublica.org/article/senate-report-covid-19-or...
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bies.202000...
