Designer pathogensHow Do We Know Whether a Virus Is Bioengineered?

Published 11 August 2020

Since the onset of the pandemic, theories – or, rather, conspiracy theories – and no-evidence assertions argued that the coronavirus was intentionally engineered by Chinese scientists as a potential bioweapon, despite the consensus of scientists and intelligence experts that the virus’s genetics indicate that it is most likely a zoonotic pathogen. The scientists relied on a Finding Engineering-Linked Indicators (FELIX) analysis to reach their conclusion, but there are other detection tools – trouble is, these other tools may be used to engineer viruses for bioattacks.

Since the onset of the pandemic, theories – or, rather, conspiracy theories – and no-evidence assertions argued that the coronavirus was intentionally engineered by Chinese scientists as a potential bioweapon, despite the consensus of scientists  that the virus’s genetics indicate that it is most likely a zoonotic pathogen.

In fact, on 30 April, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) announced that the virus was neither human-made not genetically modified. Pandora Report notes that the intelligence community came to this conclusion based, in part, on a Finding Engineering-Linked Indicators (FELIX) analysis, which found that the virus had not been engineered using foreign genetic sequences.

The specific story of the coronavirus aside, the detection of bioengineering is a “fraught task” because there are many methods to identify engineering in a virus, and there are many methods to engineer a virus. Tools such as FELIX are being deployed to “test the veracity of online stories claiming that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a laboratory” (see Sarah Scoles, “How Do We Know If a Virus Is Bioengineered?, Medium, 5 August 2020).

Though the result of the FELIX analysis provides evidence against the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 was the result of engineering, Dr. Filippa Lentzos clarifies that this finding only rules out certain types of bioengineering. While other methods for testing and detecting intentional adjustments to a virus exist, they share a critical limitation: reliance on the records of known organisms and known “signatures of engineering.” These tools aim to increase biosecurity, but they have the potential for dual-use purposes – offense and defense.

Further, Dr. Gregory Koblentz, Director of GMU’s Biodefense Graduate Program, says that these detection tools send a message to the world that such research is “driven by this perception that the diffusion of increasingly sophisticated biotechnology is creating new potential threats that we are not prepared to detect.” Put simply, the United States is signaling that it considers biothreats as clear and present dangers.