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| Topic | Scientists created a Superpowerful Sars 2.0 in 2015 |
| Tony_Biggie_Pun 04/11/20 8:35:27 PM #10: | The article in question https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wnxqnm/ethical-questions-arise-after-scientists-brew-super-powerful-sars-20-virus Furthermore, the study comes in the wake of a US government announcement of a moratorium on federal funding for research that focused on the viruses that cause SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), as well as those that cause influenza and MERS. This study began before that ban was created, so it was grandfathered in and allowed to run to completion. In order to study the virus in a lab, scientists created a "chimaeric virus," or a hybrid made of protein and the structure of a SARS virus. Critics say that the benefit isn't worth it to isolate a virus that, theoretically, could escape the lab and infect people. "If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory," Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, told Nature. The virus in question, a strain of bat coronavirus, is similar to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the disease that triggered widespread panic during an outbreak in Asia in 2002 and 2003 that spread to 29 countries, infected about 8,000, and killed over 700 people. After the outbreak, scientists concluded that the virus likely jumped from a species of bat to humans through a process called zoonotic transfer. --- ... Copied to Clipboard! |
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