Rationally Speaking #137 - Marc Lipsitch on, "Should scientists try to create dangerous viruses?"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

New York City Skeptics

Society & Culture, Skepticism, Science, Philosophy

4.6 • 787 Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2015

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A controversial field of research is "gain-of-function," in which scientists take a virus (like a strain of flu) and attempt to make it more dangerous, for example by making it transmissible in mammals when it had previously been solely an avian flu. The motivation is to learn how viruses might mutate in nature so that we can be prepared -- but what if those engineered "superbugs" escape the lab and start a pandemic? In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Harvard professor of epidemiology Marc Lipsitch argues that the risks outweigh the benefits, and that we should halt gain-of-function research as soon as possible.

Marc Lipsitch is Professor of Epidemiology with primary appointment in the Department of Epidemiology and a joint appointment in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases. He directs the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, a center of excellence funded by the MIDAS program of NIH/NIGMS. He is also the Associate Director of the Interdisciplinary Concentration in Infectious Disease Epidemiology.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Want to read rationally speaking and not just listen to it?
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0:08.2	That's rationally speakingpodcast.org.
0:28.4	Music Rationally speaking is a presentation of New York City Skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.
0:33.6	For more information, please visit us at n.ycptics.org.
0:46.8	Thank you. For more information, please visit us at NYC Skeptics.org. Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.
0:53.9	I'm your host, Julia Galef, and with me today is our guest, Professor Mark Lipsich.
1:00.0	Mark is a professor of epidemiology and the director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics
1:05.8	at the Harvard School of Public Health. Mark, welcome to the show.
1:09.6	Thank you. It's nice to be here.
1:12.6	So Mark has been one of the leading voices, a warning about the dangers of a particular kind of research
1:20.8	called, which some people call gain of function research. And we're going to be discussing
1:26.6	today in this episode the potential
1:29.2	risks of this kind of research, potential benefits as well, and whether or not the scientific
1:35.4	community should in fact proceed with this research going forward. Mark, maybe to kick things off,
1:40.8	you could just briefly explain what gain of function research is and what has
1:46.4	happened in the world in the last, say, four years that makes this an issue now.
1:51.7	Gain of function is a term that is used very broadly in biology to describe an approach to
1:59.2	biological experiments where one uses genetic techniques or natural selection
2:06.0	or artificial selection techniques to try to add some function to a living organism or in this
2:14.0	case a virus. That's what has been of concern in the last few years is the application of this very
2:25.6	valuable appropriate technique to study a function that is quite concerning to many people,
	...

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