Hubris, Humanity’s Albatros

We all know what hubris is. You can look up the definition in any standard English dictionary, but the determining the appropriateness of the word to any specific episode of human behavior is analogous to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s dictum on pornography, “I know it when I see it”. Hubris is not a new concept, it’s an Ancient Greek word, generally used back then to describe a particular type of human action which failed to recognize obvious, likely negative results. The ancient Greeks attributed the ensuing disaster as retribution from the Gods—that should be translated today as, from nature. It seems likely that the scientific, engineering and social strides of the past 150 years or so have increased the chances of human beings behaving with hubris, especially in terms of a disregard for negative consequences of behavior directly related to interactions with nature.

The events of the last week highlight this trend. The Titanic was billed as “Unsinkable” when it sailed to its doom on the maiden voyage in 1912. Technological improvements in ship building, trumpeted by the media, fostered this sense of man’s triumph over nature, and the trend has continued over the last century with the advent of the vaccine and antibiotic era in medicine, space travel and the computer/internet revolution. People in the entire stretch of human existence prior to this understood that any ship you might get aboard could sink; if you built your house on the beach it might be destroyed by storm, or that climbing a mountain like Everest might very well prove fatal. The five unfortunate sight-seers aboard the Titan this week are just the latest example of hubris fanned by the intoxication with modern technology. The other side of this coin is the modern reaction of utter shock and dismay when predictable catastrophes ensue. When something like the 1986 Challenger disaster, or this week’s Titan implosion happens, many people are conditioned to react with, “Our best engineers and scientists worked on this—how can something like this happen in this day and age”. (Ok maybe not the best engineers and scientists in the case of Titan, but warranted parts from Home Depot).

Why would I be writing about this? Simply because I see a parallel in the scientific, infectious disease world. Yesterday, in compliance with the law passed by Congress, the Biden Administration declassified the redacted report of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence entitled “Potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Origin of the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Of course this document has no proof of either of the two main competing theories, but it does provide, from presumably the highest level of our intelligence gathering apparatus, confirmation of the state of bio-security precautions at the WIV, and elevates them out of the realm of “conspiracy theory”.

We also know from the NIH that they eventually (belatedly) learned that humanized mice infected with a SARS like bat virus into which a furin cleavage site had been spliced at the WIV, experienced a 75% mortality compared to 0% with the natural virus. When it comes to GOF (gain of function research), despite what you may have heard in Congressional testimony, or through the filter of the US media—the Potter Stewart litmus test seems good enough for any sentient being. The report of the Director of National Intelligence, then examines safety precautions at WIV.

As I noted above, this report does not assign a binary conclusion to the origin of the SARS2-COV19 Pandemic. Whether it’s important to even know is now being questioned by some, and even though I am firmly on the side of thinking that scientific certainty would be valuable—I can acknowledge the reasonable debate. If a definite answer has no impact on future scientific hubris, then it would be interesting but of little practical value. Virologists, Vaccine researchers and Molecular Biologists are already chaffing and complaining about the new NIH rules for increased data reporting, which are designed to minimize the opportunity for scientists to skirt the rules on GOF research (as was done at the WIV). That’s disturbing to me when we know that multiple episodes of lethal pathogens have leaked from even high level bio-security labs over and over. Following the initial presumed zoonotic spill-over of SARS1 to humans in July of 2003, there were four more outbreaks of the disease in 2004 related to research laboratory leaks. These occurred in level 3 containment labs in Singapore and China, and in a level 4 complex in Taipei. The worst of these accidents was in China where 9 cases were identified resulting in hospital spread. The deadly Marburg Virus famously leaked from a German lab with limited, but deadly consequences. In 2015 a very dangerous bacteria, Burkholderia pseudomallei, considered a potential bio-weapon, leaked from one of the most secure laboratory facilities in the US at the Tulane National Primate Research Center in Louisiana, causing infection in their primate colony which was remote from the lab where the bacteria was worked on. Despite extensive efforts, the failure which allowed this to happen as never been identified. That bacteria, which formerly was endemic only to limited areas of Southeast Asia and Australia, has now been found contaminating soil in areas of the American Gulf Coast, as a result of investigation into several human cases from the region. This is unlikely to have anything to do with the lab leak at Tulane, the bacteria has been infiltrating the US via products from Asia for several years—the outbreak with four cases linked to aroma therapy oil in 2021 is an example.

Some scientists involved in vaccine research will tell you that it’s absolutely essential that this type of research be allowed to “safely” continue if we are to be able to respond adequately to future infectious disease events with pandemic potential. (A minority have raised serious objections). To my knowledge no vaccine ever developed to date has been the result of prior GOF research. I will also tell you that it is an inevitable consequence of human hubris that laboratory leaks of dangerous pathogens will occur in the future. What sort of GOF is of most interest to these scientists? That would generally involve taking a virus from nature, with the potential to be quite nasty, but limited ability to infect humans, and increasing the virus’ infectivity for humans. Potential gains from such research would occur if the scientists accurately predicted which virus, from among the thousands in the wild, was likely to acquire the ability to infect us and spread person to person, and then accurately predicted the mutational pathway most likely to achieve this, and then used their creation to develop a vaccine. I think the likelihood of all those conditions being met: predicting the most likely virus, the most likely changes to occur in nature’s level 10 laboratory, and then creating a safe effective vaccine without extensive human testing, are slim to none—while the probability of continued lab leaks is certain. I also think it is quite possible that coming advances in AI, when it is trained to specifically address problems in this area, may render the creation of more dangerous viruses in the lab moot. There is no doubt that if your academic career has been built around expertise in this highly specialized niche within the biological sciences, that you will be vigorous, and no doubt quite convincing in your defense of the turf.

Thanks for spending a few minutes with “Clear and Present Thinking”. I appreciate you leaking this information to everyone you think would enjoy this. I have already sent this missive on Hubris to Vladimir Putin and also to Yevgeny Prigozhin, so if they’re in your contacts list….I suggest taking a hammer and bleach to the hard drive. Prigozhin, widely considered the most successful caterer in history, no doubt convinced his customer Putin that an army runs on its stomach. With the ensuing indigestion of the last 24 hours however, it appears Priggy may be off to a retirement dacha in Belarus. If he is smart he will be employing reliable food tasters for quite a while.