At the end of 2021, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quietly added “chimeric viruses” – viruses that contain genetic material derived from two or more distinct viruses – to its list of most dangerous pathogens.

The CDC designated this type of research as a “restricted experiment” that requires approval from the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services – an executive branch department of the US federal government created to protect the health of Americans. The CDC believes that immediate regulatory oversight of these experiments is essential to protect the public from the potential consequences of a release of these viruses.

It is possible that at least one lab in the US is interested in conducting experiments to produce a more dangerous version of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID. The experiments would add genetic material from the original SARS virus, which first emerged in 2003, to the SARS-CoV-2 strain to create an aggressive “chimeric virus”.

We say it is “possible” that chimeric coronaviruses have been made because we simply do not know for sure. US labs are not obliged to publicly report, explain, or justify such experiments. And this highlights a larger issue.

The current approach to preventing high-risk pathogen research is piecemeal and reactive. It does not foster a larger public debate about whether the potential societal benefits of such research outweigh the very significant risks. The world lacks a comprehensive approach to biorisk management that incorporates biosafety, biosecurity and oversight of “dual-use research”, research that is intended to provide a clear benefit, but which could easily be misapplied to do harm.

Read full story at The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/have-hybrid-coronaviruses-already-been-made-we-simply-dont-know-for-sure-and-thats-a-problem-176077

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