by On January 4, 2024, a group of Chinese researchers at the Beijing University of Chemical Technology uploaded a preprinted study to the bioRxiv (Bio-Archive) servers. The paper, which has not yet gone through the peer review process, describes a study that tested the lethality of the coronavirus on mice. The virus was genetically modified to more accurately study how diseases affect humans. According to the study, all the mice injected with an active version of the virus died within eight days of infection.
The study was shared by scientists on the X platform (previously known as Twitter) who discussed the benefits of conducting the research and its results.
Cell culture adaptation of pangolin virus SARS-CoV-2r appears to produce lethal hACE2 mice late brain infection.
Beijing Univ Group, preprint published 4 Jan’24. https://t.co/mW4E8Ry7V3— MJ Allen (@MJnanostretch) January 7, 2024
With the spread of the study on social media, tabloids such as The Daily Mail and the New York Post also picked it up, attaching fearful headlines to the story, claiming among other things that the researchers created the virus. That was not true.
Below, we break down some of the main rumours.
First: The preprint and study are real. During the COVID-19 pandemic, BioArchives became a tool through which researchers could quickly share information and advances with their colleagues without going through the long and arduous academic publishing process. It is a reliable source; however, as papers uploaded to the site have not been peer-reviewed, scientific results must be taken with a grain of salt.
Second: The virus used in the experiment is not a “new, mutated strain of COVID,” as claimed in The New York Post’s headline about the study. Coronaviruses are a family of viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, that share similar structures. The specific coronavirus used in the study, GX_P2V, was isolated from a pangolin coronavirus in 2017. Perhaps the most accurate comparison is to call SARS-CoV-2 and GX_P2V “cousins”.
Third: The virus has evolved since its original isolate, but it is somewhat unfair to claim that scientists “created” the virus. Given that coronaviruses (and viruses in general) are known to rapidly change their genetic instructions, it is not surprising that the virus used in the study has changed since its isolation. In the paper (and in previous research from the same group), the researchers note that this particular version of GX_P2V had the mutation because it had adapted better to the cell cultures in which it was grown.
Fourth: The study was very small. Because you can’t inject someone on the street with a virus you don’t know much about, researchers used lab mice instead. These mice were genetically modified to contain the human proteins that SARS-CoV-2 uses to enter cells. The researchers used only 12 of these mice to study the lethality of the virus, and only four were added to the live virus, and all died. Although this is indeed a 100% fatality rate, there is not enough data about the virus to cause panic.
Fifth: At least one researcher had former ties to the Chinese military, as claimed by The Daily Mail. This was a point made by many on social media, suggesting that the Chinese military was building a bio-weapon that it could use to destroy its political enemies.
The research was carried out by a team including Tong Yigang, a professor who studied and taught at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, part of the army’s research division. Tong is not currently affiliated with that institution, and Snopes was unable to find other evidence that would confirm or deny possible ties to the Chinese military.
What worried most people, virologists and conspiracy theorists alike, was the rationale behind the study. There are two possible explanations for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic: the zoonotic transmission hypothesis, which means that an infected animal transmitted the disease to zero patients, and the laboratory leakage hypothesis, which means that there were no safety protocols in a laboratory where the pathogen there. being followed effectively and the patient has not been infected with coronavirus since.
Unfortunately, neither can be completely ruled out, but as Snopes reported, most, but not all, scientists and government agencies accept the animal-to-human hypothesis.
However, in the wake of the pandemic, virologists are exploring safety procedures to ensure their research does not pose a threat to the general public. Here’s where the academic criticism of the study lies: Figures like Francois Balloux, director of the Institute of Genetics at University College London, criticized the X researchers for not considering whether the potential results were worth the risks of the study. do.
I was looking at the preview. It’s a terrible study, scientifically completely pointless. I don’t see anything remotely interesting that could be learned from infecting a strange breed of humanized mice with a random virus. On the contrary, I could see how things like that could go wrong…
— Professor Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) January 10, 2024
The downsides, of course, could be another global pandemic. Snopes reached out to Balloux, along with the study researchers and other experts in the field. We’ll update this story if we hear back.
Sources:
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