Science
These authors wanted to push the COVID-19 lab-leak theory. Instead they exposed its weaknesses
On the Shelf
‘Viral: The Seek for the Origin of Covid-19’
By Alina Chan and Matt Ridley
Harper: 416 pages, $30
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Alina Chan, a molecular biologist on the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, has turn out to be one of many main exponents of the speculation that the virus inflicting the COVID-19 pandemic leaked from a Chinese language laboratory. Matt Ridley, a much-published science author and member of the British Home of Lords, emerged as a number one local weather change denier with a provocative Wall Avenue Journal op-ed in 2014.
The ebook they joined forces to put in writing, “Viral: The Seek for the Origin of COVID-19,” presents the case for the lab-leak speculation, presumably with the secondary purpose of creating the authors because the preeminent truth-tellers on the subject. (The ebook’s epilogue is titled “Fact Will Out,” a line from “The Service provider of Venice.”)
“Viral” involves bookstores amid a wave of hype. Its writer describes it as a “uniquely insightful ebook” by which the authors come “tantalizingly near a shaft that results in the sunshine” in regards to the pandemic’s origins.
In actuality, nevertheless, “Viral” is a laboratory-perfect instance of how to not write a couple of scientific challenge. The authors rely much less on the scientists doing the painstaking work to unearth the virus’ origin than on self-described sleuths who broadcast their doubtful claims, typically anonymously, on social media. In the long run, Chan and Ridley highlight all of the shortcomings of the speculation they got down to defend.
As Chan and Ridley acknowledge, figuring out the origin of the virus technically referred to as SARS-CoV-2 (or SARS2, for brief) is of paramount significance to humanity. “If we don’t learn the way this pandemic started,” they write, “we’re ill-equipped to know when, the place and the way the following pandemic might begin.”
But if the authors have been really involved with the origin of COVID-19, they might give correct because of the prevailing scientific judgment about it: that COVID was “zoonotic,” spilling over from contaminated animals to people through pure contact the best way most viruses identified to science have reached humankind. As virologists reported this summer time, the emergence of SARS2 bears unmistakable signatures of these prior zoonotic occasions. Chan and Ridley, nevertheless, pay inadequate consideration to the scientific consensus, or to the numerous analysis findings round which it has coalesced.
The speculation that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in the identical metropolis the place the pandemic first emerged, was initially championed in 2020 by ideologues within the State Division underneath then-President Trump. For them, blaming a pandemic on the Chinese language authorities and its laboratories served the twin functions of scoring factors towards a geopolitical adversary and distracting consideration from the Trump administration’s incompetent response.
In its authentic kind, the idea held that the Chinese language intentionally created the virus as a organic weapon. Over time, it devolved right into a declare that the virus originated in experiments to boost the infectivity of microbes being studied within the lab (so-called gain-of-function experiments) — and finally to the proposition that researchers on the institute unwittingly turned contaminated whereas doing fieldwork and carried the virus into the institute, from which it escaped by means of inattention. Blaming the Chinese language authorities for the pandemic has remained the one unchanging ingredient of the speculation.
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No proof in anyway has ever been produced for any of those variations. All that continues to be is an argument primarily based on unsupported conjecture and the absence of proof: Why don’t we all know extra in regards to the work on the Wuhan Institute, until the Chinese language authorities is hiding its guilt?
It’s true that the Chinese language authorities has obstructed investigations centered on the virology lab, however basing a conspiracy concept on authorities secrecy is a useless finish. The Chinese language are secretive about all issues, and in any case, there isn’t a authorities on Earth, together with the U.S., that welcomes snooping into its operations with the possible purpose of laying blame.
The authors make a lot of the situation of the virology institute within the metropolis the place the outbreak was recognized. Lab-leak theorists name this “circumstantial proof,” however it’s not a lot of a circumstance. Wuhan is a metropolis of greater than 9 million, corresponding to New York Metropolis or Los Angeles, and a significant transit and commerce crossroads for southeastern China. In Wuhan and its environs, interactions between customers and animals being offered at so-called moist markets are widespread.
It’s true that harmful microbes have escaped from analysis labs previously, although none have triggered a pandemic. However that doesn’t warrant the conclusion that the identical factor occurred in Wuhan, particularly with scientific findings weighing closely in favor of a zoonotic spillover.
“Viral” is constructed on imprecise innuendo, dressed up with assertions that will strike laypeople as believable however have lengthy since been debunked by skilled virologists. A complete chapter, for instance, is dedicated to the “furin cleavage web site,” a characteristic of the virus’ construction by means of which the enzyme furin makes the spikes on its floor — which it makes use of to penetrate and infect wholesome cells — more practical.
The furin web site was initially described by lab-leak advocates as so uncommon that it may have been positioned there solely by people. Virologists have since decided that the characteristic just isn’t all that uncommon in viruses just like SARS2, and in any case, it may have emerged by means of pure evolutionary processes well-known to consultants. Chan and Ridley place a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose gloss on these findings, writing that if the location “proves to have been inserted artificially, it confirms that the virus was in a laboratory and was altered. … If, then again, the furin cleavage web site proves to be pure, it nonetheless says nothing about the place the virus got here from.” Why write about it in any respect, then?
Opposite to the curiosity-piquing subtitle, the authors don’t inform us a lot that’s illuminating about how virologists really seek for the origins of recent viruses. They don’t seem to have spent a lot time, if any, watching consultants at work within the lab. At the very least which may have been fascinating as an explication of scientific strategies. As a substitute, what Chan and Ridley have carried out is place a conspiracy concept between hardcovers to masquerade as sober scientific inquiry.
Spoiler alert: Close to the tip of their ebook, Chan and Ridley acknowledge that they’ve performed a wild goose chase. “The reader might wish to know what the authors of this ebook assume occurred,” they write. “After all, we have no idea for positive. … We’ve got tried to put out the proof and observe it wherever it leads, however it has not led us to a particular conclusion.” After 400-odd pages of argument, studying that the authors don’t even emerge with the braveness of their very own convictions might depart readers feeling cheated.
That factors to the chief unanswered query raised by “Viral”: Who thought this ebook was vital at this cut-off date? In virological and epidemiological phrases, the seek for the origin of COVID-19 is in its infancy. Consultants in these fields know that the essential hyperlinks, the unique animal supply and the intermediate species that will have been the direct transmitter to people, might by no means be recognized; comparable inquiries have taken years, and a few have by no means reached a conclusion.
The lab-leak concept, if proved, would level to the necessity to tighten biosecurity at laboratories everywhere in the world. The zoonotic concept would remind us that human interactions with wildlife, a typical incidence in rural China, must be intently regulated. The disgrace of “Viral” is that it promotes a groundless concept that threatens to guide policymakers, in addition to members of the general public, down the unsuitable highway, to humankind’s enduring detriment.
Science
FDA sets limits for lead in many baby foods as California disclosure law takes effect
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week set maximum levels for lead in baby foods such as jarred fruits and vegetables, yogurts and dry cereal, part of an effort to cut young kids’ exposure to the toxic metal that causes developmental and neurological problems.
The agency issued final guidance that it estimated could reduce lead exposure from processed baby foods by about 20% to 30%. The limits are voluntary, not mandatory, for food manufacturers, but they allow the FDA to take enforcement action if foods exceed the levels.
It’s part of the FDA’s ongoing effort to “reduce dietary exposure to contaminants, including lead, in foods to as low as possible over time, while maintaining access to nutritious foods,” the agency said in a statement.
Consumer advocates, who have long sought limits on lead in children’s foods, welcomed the guidance first proposed two years ago, but said it didn’t go far enough.
“FDA’s actions today are a step forward and will help protect children,” said Thomas Galligan, a scientist with the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “However, the agency took too long to act and ignored important public input that could have strengthened these standards.”
The new limits on lead for children younger than 2 don’t cover grain-based snacks such as puffs and teething biscuits, which some research has shown contain higher levels of lead. And they don’t limit other metals such as cadmium that have been detected in baby foods.
The FDA’s announcement comes just one week after a new California law took effect that requires baby food makers selling products in California to provide a QR code on their packaging to take consumers to monthly test results for the presence in their product of four heavy metals: lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium.
The change, required under a law passed by the California Legislature in 2023, will affect consumers nationwide. Because companies are unlikely to create separate packaging for the California market, QR codes are likely to appear on products sold across the country, and consumers everywhere will be able to view the heavy metal concentrations.
Although companies are required to start printing new packaging and publishing test results of products manufactured beginning in January, it may take time for the products to hit grocery shelves.
The law was inspired by a 2021 congressional investigation that found dangerously high levels of heavy metals in packaged foods marketed for babies and toddlers. Baby foods and their ingredients had up to 91 times the arsenic level, up to 177 times the lead level, up to 69 times the cadmium level, and up to five times the mercury level that the U.S. allows to be present in bottled or drinking water, the investigation found.
There’s no safe level of lead exposure for children, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The metal causes “well-documented health effects,” including brain and nervous system damage and slowed growth and development. However, lead occurs naturally in some foods and comes from pollutants in air, water and soil, which can make it impossible to eliminate entirely.
The FDA guidance sets a lead limit of 10 parts per billion for fruits, most vegetables, grain and meat mixtures, yogurts, custards and puddings and single-ingredient meats. It sets a limit of 20 parts per billion for single-ingredient root vegetables and for dry infant cereals. The guidance covers packaged processed foods sold in jars, pouches, tubs or boxes.
Jaclyn Bowen, executive director of the Clean Label Project, an organization that certifies baby foods as having low levels of toxic substances, said consumers can use the new FDA guidance in tandem with the new California law: The FDA, she said, has provided parents a “hard and fast number” to consider a benchmark when looking at the new monthly test results.
But Brian Ronholm, director of food policy for Consumer Reports, called the FDA limits “virtually meaningless because they’re based more on industry feasibility and not on what would best protect public health.” A product with a lead level of 10 parts per billion is “still too high for baby food. What we’ve heard from a lot of these manufacturers is they are testing well below that number.”
The new FDA guidance comes more than a year after lead-tainted pouches of apple cinnamon puree sickened more than 560 children in the U.S. between October 2023 and April 2024, according to the CDC.
The levels of lead detected in those products were more than 2,000 times higher than the FDA’s maximum. Officials stressed that the agency doesn’t need guidance to take action on foods that violate the law.
Aleccia writes for the Associated Press. Gold reports for The Times’ early childhood education initiative, focusing on the learning and development of California children from birth to age 5. For more information about the initiative and its philanthropic funders, go to latimes.com/earlyed.
Science
NASA punts Mars Sample Return decision to the next administration
Anyone hoping for a clear path forward this year for NASA’s imperiled Mars Sample Return mission will have to wait a little longer.
The agency has settled on two potential strategies for the first effort to bring rock and soil from another planet back to Earth for study, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Tuesday: It can either leverage existing technology into a simpler, cheaper craft or turn to a commercial partner for a new design.
But the final decision on the mission’s structure — or whether it should proceed at all — “is going to be a function of the new administration,” Nelson said. President-elect Donald Trump will take office Jan. 20.
“I don’t think we want the only [Mars] sample return coming back on a Chinese spacecraft,” Nelson said, referencing a rival mission that Beijing has in the works. “I think that the [Trump] administration will certainly conclude that they want to proceed. So what we wanted to do was to give them the best possible options so that they can go from there.”
The call also contained words of encouragement for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, which leads the embattled mission’s engineering efforts.
“To put it really bluntly, JPL is our Mars center in NASA science,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate. “They are the people who landed us on Mars, together with our industry partners. So they will be moving forward, regardless of which path, with a key role in the Mars Sample Return.”
In April, after an independent review found “near zero probability” of Mars Sample Return making its proposed 2028 launch date, NASA put out a request for alternative proposals to all of its centers and the private sector. JPL was forced to compete for what had been its own project.
The independent review board determined that the original design would probably cost up to $11 billion and not return samples to Earth until at least 2040.
“That was just simply unacceptable,” said Nelson, who paused the mission in late 2023 to review its chances of success.
Ensuing cuts to the mission’s budget forced a series of layoffs at JPL, which let go of 855 employees and 100 on-site contractors in 2024.
The NASA-led option that Nelson suggested Tuesday includes several elements from the JPL proposal, according to a person who reviewed the documents. This leaner, simpler alternative will cost between $6.6 billion and $7.7 billion, and will return the samples by 2039, he said. A commercial alternative would probably cost $5.8 billion to $7.1 billion.
Nelson, a former Democratic U.S. senator from Florida, will step down as head of the space agency when Trump takes office. Trump has nominated as his successor Jared Isaacman, a tech billionaire who performed the first private space walk, who must be confirmed by the Senate.
NASA has not had any conversations with Trump’s transition team about Mars Sample Return, Nelson said. How the new administration will prioritize the project is not yet clear.
“It’s very uncertain how the new administration will go forward,” said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy for the Planetary Society, a Pasadena nonprofit that promotes space research. “Cancellation is obviously still on the table. … It’s hard to game this out.”
Planetary scientists have identified Mars Sample Return as their field’s highest priority in the last three decadal surveys, reports that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine prepare every 10 years in order to advise NASA.
Successfully completing the mission is “key for the nation’s leadership in space science,” said Bethany L. Ehlmann, a planetary scientist at Caltech in Pasadena. “I hope the incoming administrator moves forward decisively to select a plan and execute. There are extraordinary engineers at JPL and NASA industry partners eager and able to get to work to make it happen.”
Science
Panama Canal’s Expansion Opened Routes for Fish to Relocate
Night fell as the two scientists got to work, unfurling long nets off the end of their boat. The jungle struck up its evening symphony: the sweet chittering of insects, the distant bellowing of monkeys, the occasional screech of a kite. Crocodiles lounged in the shallows, their eyes glinting when headlamps were shined their way.
Across the water, cargo ships made dark shapes as they slid between the seas.
The Panama Canal has for more than a century connected far-flung peoples and economies, making it an essential artery for global trade — and, in recent weeks, a target of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s expansionist designs.
But of late the canal has been linking something else, too: the immense ecosystems of the Atlantic and the Pacific.
The two oceans have been separated for some three million years, ever since the isthmus of Panama rose out of the water and split them. The canal cut a path through the continent, yet for decades only a handful of marine fish species managed to migrate through the waterway and the freshwater reservoir, Lake Gatún, that feeds its locks.
Then, in 2016, Panama expanded the canal to allow supersize ships, and all that started to change.
In less than a decade, fish from both oceans — snooks, jacks, snappers and more — have almost entirely displaced the freshwater species that were in the canal system before, scientists with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama have found. Fishermen around Lake Gatún who rely on those species, chiefly peacock bass and tilapia, say their catches are growing scarce.
Researchers now worry that more fish could start making their way through from one ocean to the other. And no potential invader causes more concern than the venomous, candy-striped lionfish. They are known to inhabit Panama’s Caribbean coast, but not the eastern Pacific. If they made it there through the canal, they could ravage the defenseless local fish, just as they’ve done in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.
Already, marine species are more than occasional visitors in Lake Gatún, said Phillip Sanchez, a fisheries ecologist with the Smithsonian. They’re “becoming the dominant community,” he said. They’re “pushing everything else out.”
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