Perspective: PandemicsGlobal Pandemic Threat: “Human Error” Leak of Lab Virus Now a “Substantial Probability”
Lynn Klotz, Senior Science Fellow at the Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation said: “There is a substantial probability that a pandemic with over one hundred million fatalities could be seeded from an undetected lab-acquired infection.” Laboratories run by Ron Fouchier in the Netherlands and Yoshihiro Kawaoka in Madison, Wisconsin have begun a “research enterprise” aimed at creating mammalian-airborne-transmissible, highly pathogenic, avian-influenza live viruses. Such viruses could be transmitted through the air, similar to seasonal human influenza.
Lynn Klotz, Senior Science Fellow at the Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation said: “There is a substantial probability that a pandemic with over one hundred million fatalities could be seeded from an undetected lab-acquired infection.” Laboratories run by Ron Fouchier in the Netherlands and Yoshihiro Kawaoka in Madison, Wisconsin have begun a “research enterprise” aimed at creating mammalian-airborne-transmissible, highly pathogenic, avian-influenza live viruses. Such viruses could be transmitted through the air, similar to seasonal human influenza.
Brian McGleenon writes in the Express that through November 2018, 14 laboratories have been identified in this enterprise.
Klotz argues the likelihood of one of those viruses escaping from a lab is “as high as 30 percent, a risk too dangerous to live with”.
These viruses are examples of lab-created potentially pandemic pathogens, or PPPS.
The risk of a man-made pandemic from a lab escape is not hypothetical, lab-originated viral outbreaks have occurred before.
Klotz states: “The historical record reveals lab-originated outbreaks and deaths due to the causative agents of the 1977 pandemic flu, smallpox escapes in Great Britain, Venezuelan equine encephalitis in 1995, SARS outbreaks after the SARS epidemic, and foot and mouth disease in the UK in 2007.”
He added: “Ironically, these labs were working with pathogens to prevent the very outbreaks that they ultimately caused.”
Because there is no international regulatory body to control the research with micro-organisms that could potentially wipe out most of humanity, Mr Klotz argues for a ban on the most hazardous pathogens, and on mutating these.
