Virology in Peril and the Greater Risk To Science

Abstract

L ate in 2019, a new zoonotic viral pathogen entered the human population: severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It spread rapidly and relentlessly, inflicting great harm. Governments were unprepared to deal with it. Health care workers had to learn how to treat patients on the fly, devoting countless hours to care and putting themselves at risk. Schools and businesses closed, and most of the world found itself under lockdowns and other types of restrictions. Uncertainty loomed. How many people would get sick and die? What would the effects be on the economy? How far behind would our children fall in their education and social skill development? How long would it take to find a cure or a vaccine? Fortunately, with respect to the last question, the scientific research enterprise was up to the task. Scientists who had been studying coronaviruses quickly redoubled their efforts, and hundreds of other virologists spun up efforts to understand this virus. Wise investments in basic research over prior decades meant that there was a wealth of knowledge on the shelf that could be used to develop vaccines rapidly (1). Companies that were developing new technologies accelerated their efforts to produce effective vaccines. Within a year, an amazing time frame that we think few scientists would have predicted, we began to immunize the population and drive down the incidence of serious illness and death. Parallel efforts led to the rapid development of monoclonal antibody therapies and small-molecule antiviral agents. Rapid diagnostic tests were developed, and we went from relying on relatively slow nucleic acid amplification methods that took days in the early days of the pandemic to home tests that provide a result in minutes. Virologists and evolutionary scientists tracked the evolution of the virus and rapidly provided information on the emergence of new variants , creating a viral forecast mechanism that has provided almost real-time information on the changing pandemic. This has all happened in less than 3 years and resulted in a great reduction in mortality. As such, we should be celebrating the virology community and the allied scientific communities. Remarkably, despite the fact that the virology community made critical contributions to a remarkably successful response to the CoV disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, it finds itself under attack. The bulk of this attack comes under the guise of concern about gain-of-function (GOF) research and persistent concerns about the origin of SARS-CoV-2. What began 10 years ago as a civil, scholarly debate over the experiments aimed at addressing whether highly pathogenic avian H5N1 influenza could become transmissible from human to human has devolved to include almost all experiments in which respiratory pathogens are genetically manipulated. While much of the conversation remains courteous and thoughtful, an ever-increasing fraction has become a negative, knee-jerk reaction. All virological research is being viewed with suspicion, with the criticisms often playing out in social, online, and traditional news media environments. This type of behavior is not going to serve society well in the long run. The perception that virologists are not paying attention to the possible risks of their research is simply wrong