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Maximum safety laboratories for conducting the most dangerous biological research have proliferated over the past decade, with scientists warning that lax controls in some places could lead to another pandemic.
At least 59 laboratories with a maximum level of biosafety (BSL-4) are planned, under construction or in operation in 23 countries around the world, including the United Kingdom, the United States, China, India, Christmas and Côte d’Ivoire. There are Chinese facilities at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, now in the middle of a refurbishment U.S. intelligence research To find out if Covid-19 could escape from his lab.
Gregory Koblentz, associate professor of biodiversity at George Mason University, and Filippa Lentzos at King’s College London. mapped the facility, of the 42 laboratories that had planning data available, found that half had been built in the last decade.
Three-quarters of all BSL-4 laboratories were in urban areas. And only three of the 23 countries have national policies that offer oversight of so-called dual-use research, where experiments conducted with civilian targets can also be adapted for military purposes.
“Communications are certainly improving, such as in the UK and the US, in countries that have reported on the media, but we are still not where we want to be,” said Lentzos, an expert in science and international security. “The more work you do, the more accidents will happen.”
The rapid expansion of such facilities, especially in countries such as China, has raised concerns about leakages of hazardous substances.
“The greater the number of organizations and the number of individuals who have access to these dangerous agents, the greater the risk,” said Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University. “Accidents and leaks are already occurring in very large numbers, especially in places with lower biosecurity standards. We need to strengthen the rules of biosafety and biosafety around the world. “
U.S. intelligence officials are investigating whether the Wuhan Institute may have played any role in the origin of Covid-19. China’s facility hosts more than one of the world’s most controversial BSL-4 laboratories “function gain”Research on bat-related pathogens prior to the pandemic, according to Ebright.
As U.S. agencies conclude, Covid-19 has already turned its attention to biomedical research into deadly pathogens, many of which are not under international police or oversight.
According to the World Health Security Index, referenced by Koblentz and Lentzos, a poor quarter of countries with laboratories working in BSL-4 have “high” levels of biosafety readiness, such as the United States and the United Kingdom. One-third, including China, have “medium” levels, and 41 percent have “low” levels, such as South Africa.
Lentzos and Koblentz’s research raises concerns among many scientists about the large number of accidents involving biomedical research, even in the safest facilities.
In the U.S., the Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control jointly monitor the use of 67 types of toxins and other potentially hazardous materials. According to their latest report, in 2019 such substances were lost 13 times in the US and accidentally released 219 times. This led to more than 1,000 people undergoing medical assessments and some taking preventive drugs. However, no one has identified the infected disease.
Surveillance of local U.S. facilities intensified after 2001, when an attacker killed five people by sending anthrax from a U.S. Army medical research laboratory at Detraque Fort Fort to various media outlets and two members of Congress.
Surveillance of U.S. home facilities intensified after 2001, when anthrax came from a U.S. military medical research lab and sent to the media and two members of Congress © Stephen Jaffe / AFP via Getty
The anthrax attacks of 2001 are not the only example of the failure of laboratory safety in recent decades.
In 2004, there were nine people Infected with Sars and one person died after two researchers were individually exposed to the virus while working at the Chinese Institute of Virology in Beijing. In November 2019, a month before the first case of Covid-19 was confirmed, more than 6,000 people in northwest China they were contaminated with brucellosis, a bacterial disease with flu-like symptoms after escaping from a vaccine plant.
China has been particularly keen to build more high-security laboratories to strengthen the capacity of its scientific research. Former president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences of China, both attached to the state of Chunli, wrote an article last year warning of the country’s “clear shortcomings” in higher biosafety laboratories compared to the US.
Guangdong Province announced in May that it plans to build between 25 and 30 biosafety laboratories and BSL-4 laboratories over the next five years.
But some Chinese officials have warned that there is poor security at existing facilities. In 2019, Yuan Zhiming, director of the BSL-4 laboratory at the Wuhan Virology Institute, wrote a review of safety deficiencies in Chinese laboratories. “Some high-level BSLs are not essential enough for normal operating processes, however, they are essential,” Yaun wrote, adding that maintenance costs are “generally neglected”.
“Due to limited resources, some BSL-3 laboratories have very minimal or no operating costs in some cases,” he said. In 2020, the central government passed a new law to improve national standards for biosafety.
Critics say that hiding in China around the activities of these facilities makes it difficult to know what security is. In January 2020, Beijing told biosafety laboratories working on Sars-Cov-2 samples that they needed government permission to provide information about the virus.
Critics say secrecy in China about activities at facilities such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology makes it difficult to know how safe they are © Shepherd Hou / EPA
Many scientists have said that international research on the origin of Covid-19 has shown that China’s approach has shown problems in conducting high-risk experiments in the country. In March, 13 countries criticized China for not providing full access to data and samples related to the onset of the pandemic by international experts.
“What we have seen so far in connection with the Wuhan Institute of Virology is a laboratory that is open and non-transparent about the type of work it is doing,” Lentzos said. “When you have these types of labs, you need to make sure they are open, transparent and in touch with your classmates.”
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