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rowanjacobsen's profile
Rowan Jacobsen
Rowan Jacobsen
Rowan Jacobsen
@rowanjacobsen

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Rowan Jacobsen

@rowanjacobsen

Author of nine books. Recent pieces in Outside, Smithsonian, Scientific American, others. Occasional stomper of sacred grapes.

rowanjacobsen.com
Joined June 2010

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    Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

    Last month, I wrote a piece for MIT TR on gain-of-function cov research. The piece included quotes from Ralph Baric, the UNC scientist who pioneered the work. Baric is a fascinating guy, so we continued the conversation with him... 1/37https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/26/1030043/gain-of-function-research-coronavirus-ralph-baric-vaccines/ …

    8:03 AM - 26 Jul 2021
    • 86 Retweets
    • 193 Likes
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    20 replies 86 retweets 193 likes
      1. New conversation
      2. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        The piece ran shortly after Sen. Rand Paul accused Anthony Fauci of funding GoF research in Wuhan. Now Paul has done it again. Fauci didn't do a good job of explaining or defending GoF research. Baric does. 2/37 https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/20/if-anybody-is-lying-here-senator-it-is-you-fauci-tells-sen-paul-in-heated-exchange-at-senate-hearing.html …pic.twitter.com/zHGwYpK0aJ

        2 replies 6 retweets 29 likes
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      3. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        I started by asking Baric to define GoF. He takes the long view. One thing that often gets lost is that the NIH “pause” on funding in 2014 didn’t cover all GoF; just certain experiments involving SARS, MERS, or flu. 3/37pic.twitter.com/zDc9wceYPI

        6 replies 7 retweets 19 likes
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      4. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        Here’s the Govt’s own definition of GoF: “Research that improves the ability of a pathogen to cause disease.” That’s it. Simple. Clearly, many of the experiments discussed in the debate qualify. But that doesn’t mean they were covered by the “pause.” 4/37 https://www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse/documents/gain-of-function.pdf …pic.twitter.com/pHynfrGmYL

        3 replies 4 retweets 17 likes
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      5. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        One complication: what’s SARS? Is it just the original index sequence? Does it include variants? How many mutations before it’s not SARS anymore? When they made the rule, no one expected labs to be hauling closely related viruses out of caves and running experiments on them. 5/37

        3 replies 5 retweets 20 likes
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      6. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        As Baric mentions, the genomes of WIV1 & SHC014 are just a few percent different from SARS. Ditto for the viruses in the now infamous "Rich Gene Pool" paper Paul & Fauci were waving around... 6/37

        2 replies 2 retweets 17 likes
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      7. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        If Fauci’s defense is that they weren’t technically SARS, that’s weak, because the spirit of the rule was to prevent risky experiments on these kinds of viruses... 7/37

        2 replies 8 retweets 42 likes
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      8. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        If his defense is that the experiments weren’t intended to improve the ability of the pathogens to cause disease, that’s also weak, because it was clear that that was one possible outcome of the work. To see that clearly, let’s take a little detour… 8/37

        2 replies 5 retweets 24 likes
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      9. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        First to the pivotal 2013 paper in which the WIV announced the discovery of SHC014 and WIV1, the two closest relatives of SARS (95%). Of the 5 key contact points where the SARS spike binds to the human ACE2 receptor, WIV1 shared 2. SHC014 shared 0. 9/37https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12711 …

        1 reply 5 retweets 16 likes
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      10. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        Based on that, the WIV guessed that SHC014 wouldn’t be able to infect humans. The assumption was that SARS spike, and variations on it, was the magic formula. When they cultured WIV1 and found it could infect human cells, though not as well as SARS, this all fit the model. 10/37

        1 reply 3 retweets 13 likes
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      11. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        But as Baric showed in his 2015 “Potential for Emergence” paper, things were more complicated. His SHC014-SARS chimera replicated well in human cells and caused robust disease in mice, though it wasn’t lethal like SARS. 11/37https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12711 …

        1 reply 4 retweets 22 likes
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      12. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        Baric gave a cogent & pithy presentation on this work at the 2014 NAS symposium on GoF. It’s only a few minutes long. Well worth watching. He makes a strong case that there is no substitute for the information provided by these kinds of experiments. 12/37https://youtu.be/Aw-nR6-4kQQ?t=489 …

        1 reply 5 retweets 20 likes
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      13. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        As an aside, note that in this talk, Baric refers to his chimera—which was the model for the later chimeras the WIV would make with NIH funding—as a “chimeric, gain-of-function virus.”... 13/37https://youtu.be/Aw-nR6-4kQQ?t=658 …

        3 replies 21 retweets 65 likes
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      14. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        Pre-pandemic, no one hesitated to refer to this kind of work as "GoF." It was a broad category. The questions involved whether such work was worth the risk, and whether the pause was too broad in scope. (Baric makes a compelling case that it was.) 14/37

        1 reply 5 retweets 33 likes
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      15. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        A second aside: When I asked Marc Lipsitch, a well-known critic of some GoF work, how this compared to the H5N1 flu experiments, he said the low risk and higher benefits put it in a different category. “GoF” is not a useful term. “PPP” is better. 15/37pic.twitter.com/3J1XZt3f5B

        3 replies 6 retweets 21 likes
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      16. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        Baric followed up his 2015 paper with a sequel in which he made an infectious clone of WIV1 and tested it in humanized mice. It wasn’t as bad as SARS, but it was still bad, killing the mice about two days later. These are serious viruses. 16/37https://www.pnas.org/content/113/11/3048 …

        1 reply 10 retweets 34 likes
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      17. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        This was risky technology in two ways: risk of pathogen escape, and risk of information escape. In the interview, Baric spells out the extensive lengths he goes to to prevent pathogen escape, including working with emergency responders and local hospitals on protocol. 17/37pic.twitter.com/KDiPbeZ4J5

        2 replies 3 retweets 24 likes
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      18. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        I wonder how many other BSL 2/3 biolabs have similar operating procedures? 18/37

        2 replies 3 retweets 25 likes
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      19. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        Of note: Baric says that he, the NIH, and the journal decided together not to publish the sequence of the chimera with the paper. 19/37pic.twitter.com/nvs1ZNdvRo

        1 reply 6 retweets 27 likes
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      20. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        It's clear that the NIH recognized the danger of this knowledge/technology falling into the wrong hands. But if it thought that not publishing the sequence was enough, that was probably naive. 20/37

        1 reply 4 retweets 16 likes
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      21. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        Ironically, after covid broke out, there was so much suspicion over Baric’s experiments that he was forced to release the sequence to prove it wasn’t related to SARS-CoV-2. “It’s a Catch-22” he told me. 21/37

        3 replies 5 retweets 25 likes
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      22. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        One takeaway from Baric’s two papers: the SARS spike might not be special after all. Lots of SARS-like viruses might be able to cause disease in humans, and we couldn’t really tell from the genetic code or other assays. The prudent thing was to treat them all as dangerous. 22/37

        1 reply 5 retweets 27 likes
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      23. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        But this isn’t what happened. Instead, for the “Rich Gene Pool” paper, the WIV made multiple chimeras using newly discovered SARS-like viruses and tested their infectivity in cells. Three of the viruses replicated well. 23/37https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1006698 …

        1 reply 7 retweets 24 likes
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      24. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        Although it was unknown whether the viruses could cause disease in humans, the experiments were conducted in a BSL-2 lab. How do we know? Two sources: 1. A 2017 WIV thesis about the work, which details the methods. (h/t @TheSeeker268 ) 24/37https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uZrBG5A720aLGtVI4kPp6nJM7FuuolwO/edit …

        1 reply 19 retweets 51 likes
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      25. Rowan Jacobsen‏ @rowanjacobsen 26 Jul 2021

        2. Zhengli Shi, who confirmed the BSL levels to me by email: “There was no evidence that bat viruses found in China cause illness in humans and we were recommended to do virus culture in BSL-2 labs.” She also noted that they did use negative airflow and biosafety cabinets. 25/37

        5 replies 13 retweets 51 likes
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      26. End of conversation

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