A Controversial Virus Study Reveals a Critical Flaw in How Science Is Done - After researchers resurrected a long-dead pox, some critics argue that it's too easy for scientists to make decisions of global consequence.
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Last year, the world learned that researchers led by David Evans from the University of Alberta had resurrected a virus called horsepox. The virus hasn’t been seen in nature for decades, but Evans’s team assembled it using genetic material they ordered from a company that synthesizes DNA.
The work caused a huge stir. Horsepox is harmless to people, but its close cousin, smallpox, killed hundreds of millions before being eradicated in 1980. Only two stocks of smallpox remain, one held by Russia and the other by the United States. But Evans’s critics argued that his work makes it easier for others to re-create smallpox themselves, and, whether through accident or malice, release it. That would be horrific: Few people today are immunized against smallpox, and vaccine reserves are limited. Several concerned parties wrote letters urging scientific journals not to publish the paper that described the work, but PLOS One did so in January...
Cue an endlessly looping GIF of Jurassic Park’s Ian Malcolm saying,
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
...
“It’s not like anybody could synthesize horsepox,” Gronvall says.
True, says Kevin Esvelt from MIT, but that feat is now technically easier because Evans’s paper spelled out several details of how to do so. It’s conceptually easier to weaponize because his paper explicitly connected the dots to smallpox. And it will become logistically easier to carry out with time, as the underlying tech becomes cheaper. “In the long run, I’m worried about the technology being accessible enough,” Esvelt says...
08 Oct 2018, 1:51 am
