Your article “Why the next pandemic could be lab-made” (Big Read, November 18) rightly warns about the dangers of so-called gain-of-function research. What it failed to mention is that we don’t even appreciate the full scope of those dangers because of the pervasive opaqueness around laboratory biosafety.
Currently, laboratories doing such bioengineering research are not required to tell the public what they are doing — even when there is an accident. Our survey of biosafety officers from early 2020 highlights how little we know. In the survey, 63 per cent of respondents admitted that they don’t report accidents to anyone outside of their organisation, and almost none do so publicly or immediately.
Given that, it is unsurprising that the FT had to rely on the Freedom of Information Act to obtain evidence of lax safety practices at the Influenza Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Laboratories pursuing high-risk research have long maintained that their safety is impeccable, without much data backing their claims. And keeping a lab accident a secret can be dangerous. If someone is possibly infected and labs fail to report this publicly, it becomes impossible to monitor possible spread or act to prevent future mishaps.
Not all labs have a problem with public reporting. The Galveston National Laboratory is an outstanding example, listing every lab accident in the past 15 years publicly on its website. Similarly, the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility — the latest high-containment laboratory in the US — is exemplary in championing the need for transparency. Recently, leading biosafety figures argued that this degree of openness should be a universal practice.
By reporting accidents and near-misses transparently, we can reduce the risk of repeating them.
David Manheim
Visiting Researcher, Technion, Israel
Institute of Technology, Rehovot, Israel
Joshua Teperowski Monrad
Researcher, Biosecurity Research Group
Future of Humanity Institute
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Letter: Reporting accidents at laboratories must be universal practice
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