The bad path of “Gain of function” of viruses

To begin with, I don't know if things are becoming clearer or it is getting even more complicated, (you think wrong and you will be right) the truth is that scientists from the Wuhan laboratory, yes from the controversial laboratory of the alleged leak, have obtained 8 new viruses on an island densely populated, among them a covid variable, if another, called CoV-HMU-1.

Among the new pathogens they also found the following; two new pestiviruses that are related to yellow fever and dengue, a new astrovirus that is a family of viruses that cause infections such as stomach viruses, two new parvoviruses that can cause flu-like symptoms and two new papillomaviruses from a family of pathogens that can cause genital warts and cancer in people.

It is the first time that this type of virus has been detected in specimens of Edwards' giant long-tailed rat or in the Sikin rat species. Scientists attribute the appearance of these rare viruses to the fact that Hainan, despite being home to 9 million of people is an island and they see it as feasible that more unknown viruses could be found in isolated places or where similar circumstances exist, they wrote the following: “these results improve our knowledge about the classification of viruses and their host range and suggest the existence of viruses very diverse yet to be discovered viruses that have evolved independently in single hosts in inaccessible areas, if these viruses cross the host barrier, they are very likely to cause zoonoses.

The disease that is transferred from an animal to a human is called zoonosis. The Chinese study concludes with a request: “the pathogenicity and impact that these new viruses can generate in humans and animals should be evaluated in subsequent studies.”

Pathogenicity is the ability of an organism to cause a disease. Scientists also agree on the high risk of zoonoses in rodents because they are spread over very large areas, there is a great diversity of species and they have a great capacity to reproduce. They migrate in groups and concentrate in densely populated, humid and warm places such as central and southern China and this, the researchers wrote, provides them with many opportunities to interact with humans.

Some experts have warned that testing high-risk pathogens in laboratories located in densely populated areas could cause new pandemics and question the so-called “gain-of-function” experiments that convert viruses into superviruses and then study how to combat them, and that is what what they do in the P4 laboratory in Wuhan.

Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch, for example, suggests that man cannot believe that he is going to design the same supervirus that nature would end up generating by itself, because it is something as improbable as it is crazy, which is why subsequent prevention studies would not be worth anything either. , so in his opinion these trials, given their lack of transparency and supervision, are only endangering society, he said the following: “they have almost no value in terms of predicting pandemics and pose extreme risks because all their scientific validity is based on create something that is inherently dangerous.”

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