U.S. Suspends Risky Disease Research
The government will cease funding “gain-of-function” studies that make viruses more dangerous

October 23, 2014 |By Sara Reardon and Nature magazine

The US government surprised many researchers on October 17 when it announced that it will temporarily stop funding new research that makes certain viruses more deadly or transmissible. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is also asking researchers who conduct such ‘gain-of-function’ experiments on influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) to stop their work until a risk assessment is completed — leaving many unsure of how to proceed.

“I think it’s really excellent news,” says Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, who has long called for more oversight for gain-of-function research. “I think it’s common sense to deliberate before you act.”

Critics of such work argue that it is unnecessarily dangerous and risks accidentally releasing viruses with pandemic potential — such as an engineered H5N1 influenza virus that easily spreads between ferrets breathing the same air. In 2012, such concerns prompted a global group of flu researchers to halt gain-of-function experiments for a year (see Nature http://doi.org/wgx; 2012). The debate reignited in July, after a series of lab accidents involving mishandled pathogens at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.

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