2024-01-21 14:41:00
the essentials Chinese scientists have succeeded in mutating a pangolin coronavirus immediately injected into mice. Result: all died. The editorial answers three questions on the subject.
Chinese researchers from the Beijing University of Chemical Technology have published their preliminary results regarding a study on the GX_P2V coronavirus from a pangolin tested on mice.
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Why such experiments?
The objective? Mutate the virus, give it more virulence and inject it into mice to observe its effects. And the result is disturbing since none of the mice survived. According to them, the cause of mortality is due to the increase in “the viral load of the virus in the brain”. The researchers justify their experience by the desire to prepare in the event of the appearance of a very dangerous virus.
A deadly virus for humans?
The first results worry the scientific community. Contamination of GX_P2V to humans is not impossible since the deceased mice had the same receptors on their cells as humans.
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“It is the gateway to human cells,” says Bruno Canard, research director at the CNRS. Questioned by the Figaro, he adds: “the characteristics of contagiousness can appear naturally.” If this phenomenon occurs, the virus might potentially contaminate human beings. It is now a matter of following the matter very closely.
Safe handling?
Only four years following the pandemic which caused millions of deaths, such an experiment is dangerous according to scientists. “It’s not responsible science,” criticizes François Balloux, professor of computational biology. He entrusts to New York Times not seeing the point of these experiments: “I don’t see anything vaguely interesting to be gained from forced infection […] of mice by a random virus. Conversely, I might imagine everything that might go wrong.”
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According to Bruno Canard, “no information is given on the level of security of the laboratory in which these manipulations took place.” He deplores the lack of transparency and the dangerousness of such an experiment: “The idea that this virus might escape is therefore entirely credible.”
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