In the spring of 2004, Antonina Presnyakova was working at the Vektor Molecular Biology Research Institute near Novosibirsk, an isolated Russian city. One day the scientist accidentally pricked her finger with a needle while taking a blood sample from an infected guinea pig, and was rushed to the hospital. Two weeks later he died of Ebola.
Much has been said about the “hypothesis of a laboratory escape”, the theory according to which covid-19 would come from a research institute in Wuhan, China. In May, US President Joe Biden ordered intelligence to draw up a report on the credibility of this theory and deliver it on August 24. According to the American Biological Safety Association (Absa), which manages an archive of these kinds of incidents, infections produced in the laboratory (Lal) are worryingly frequent. Most cases have relatively mild consequences. The most common type of pathogen involved in Lal is brucella, a genus of bacterium that can cause flu symptoms and is easily treatable.
But in some cases, like Presnyakova’s, the consequences are extremely serious. Since 1970 there have been more than eight Ebola incidents, and five with SARS. People working in the lab were infected with dengue fever, HIV and the zika virus. In 2009, a professor of microbiology at the University of Chicago died after contracting the plague. The risk does not concern only those who work in the laboratory, because the lethal pathogens manage to get out of it with disturbing regularity. Only some cases are identified and registered by ABSA. In 1979, at least 68 people died when anthrax spores came out of a Soviet military facility and were blown away. In 2007, an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK was caused by a damaged pipeline inside the Pirbright Institute, a maximum security laboratory in Surrey.
Insufficient supervision
Between 1989 and 2002, an average of thirteen “exposure events” or incidents involving exposure to “potential bioterror agents” occurred each year at the US Biological Weapons Research Center in Fort Detrick, Maryland. even if only in five cases there was a contagion. According to the Global Times, a tabloid controlled by the Communist Party of China, more than ten thousand people were infected with brucellosis in 2019 due to a mistake while making a vaccine in Gansu, China.
A serious accident is enough to cause disaster. The chances of a catastrophe occurring are increasing. Over the last decade, more than twenty new “maximum biosafety” laboratories (with biosecurity level 4, or Bsl-4) have been inaugurated. One of the most recent, certified in 2017, is located inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology, at the center of the hypothesis on a possible origin in the laboratory of the covid-19 pandemic. Both the Vektor research institute and the Pirbright institute host laboratories with Bsl-4 certification. In addition, high-risk activities are sometimes also carried out in low-security facilities.
What can be done to prevent lethal pathogens from entering the outside world? Functional gain research was banned in the United States between 2014 and 2017 (gain-of-function), where pathogens are genetically manipulated to make them more lethal, more contagious, or both. Some researchers believe the ban should be reinstated, not least because many countries follow Washington’s example when it comes to biosecurity. A ban on this type of research could prevent a pathogen from escaping a US laboratory. But it is equally true that to better understand deadly viruses and develop a cure it is important to study them. At present, supervision is clearly inadequate. It would be essential to agree on international standards by funding an independent institution with the task of enforcing them. At least in this way we would have a defense against disasters.
(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)
.