BIOSAFETY LAB LEVEL 4

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assalamualaikum warahmatullah,

Pembaca yg dihormati,

Kita sedia maklum  akan pandemic Covid-19 yang masih lagi dialami di kebanyakan negara di dunia ini.Sehingga kini pandemic ini sedang diuruskan dengan mengamalkan norma baru  (SOP) dan juga melalui program vaksinasi di kebanyakan negara.

We  are also aware about the initial location of the pandemic - the Wuhan epicentre back in 2019, and since then onwards there have been  many posed  questions regarding the  whats and  the hows. Various  theories about the source of the virus are discussed and talked about at various levels of the public. This topic has drawns quite a lot of attention though.  One of the reasons could be that (I think) people would patch things up to fit  their  assumptions  according to their prior knowledge, information , belies and experiences etc. So, debunking the source of the pandemic - culd be the  gold mine for conspiracy theories enthusiasts as there wil be so many angles to latch onto . To date, two plausible theories which appear to favour our logics , and these include   : The lab leak and the zoonotic transmission. The plausiility of the latter theory has been pretty much adderssed in Nature a while back. The former however is quite interesting - The lab leak theory.

So, bila discused pasal Lab leak ni, agaian beberapa isu and implikasi muncul tentang keselamatan makmal makmal yg digelar BIOSAFETY LAB  level 4  yg sesetangah daripada kita sedia maklum akan jenis penyeidikan patogen yang dijalankan.

Berikit adalah paparan artikel yang menceritakan tentang biosafety lab level 4.

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Fifty-nine labs around world handle the deadliest pathogens – only a quarter score high on safety

June 14, 2021 8.45am EDT

Authors

• Filippa Lentzos
  Senior Lecturer in Science and International Security, King's College London
  
  

Senior Lecturer in Science and International Security, King's College London
Profile
Dr Filippa Lentzos is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Science & International Security in the Department of War Studies, and Co-Director of the Centre for Science & Security Studies, at King’s College London. She is also an Associate Senior Researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI); a biosecurity columnist at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; Co-Chair of the new IEEESA Industry Connections program on ‘Driving responsible innovation of AI, life sciences and next generation biotech’; and the NGO Coordinator for the Biological Weapons Convention.

Dr Lentzos is the editor of Biological Threats in the 21st Century: The Politics, People, Science and Historical Roots (Imperial College Press, 2016). Her research and teaching focuses on biological threats and how to guard against them. She has published widely on issues related to transparency, confidence-building and compliance assessment of biodefence programs and high-risk bioscience; emerging technologies, governance and responsible innovation; biopreparedness simulations and field exercises; information warfare and deliberate disinformation related to global health security; and intelligence, biological threat assessment, and intelligence-academia engagement.

She received a PhD in sociology from the University of Nottingham, and spent the next ten years at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), before joining King’s College London in 2012.

Experience
2021–present

Senior lecturer, King's College London

• Gregory Koblentz
  Associate Professor and Director of the Master's in Biodefense, George Mason University
  
  

Gregory D. Koblentz is an Associate Professor and Director of the Biodefense Graduate Program at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government. He is also the Managing Editor of The Pandora Report, a weekly newsletter dedicated to biodefense and global health security. Dr. Koblentz is also a member of the Scientist Working Group on Biological and Chemical and Security at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, DC.In 2016, he briefed the United Nations Security Council on the impact of emerging technologies on the threat posed by non-state actors armed with weapons of mass destruction.
Dr. Koblentz is the author of Strategic Stability in the Second Nuclear Age (Council on Foreign Relations, 2014) and Living Weapons: Biological Warfare and International Security (Cornell University Press, 2009) and co-author of Editing Biosecurity: Needs and Strategies for Governing Genome Editing (George Mason University and Stanford University, 2018) . His research and teaching focus on understanding the causes and consequences of the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons to state and non-state actors and the impact of emerging technologies on international security. He received a PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a MPP from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Experience
2007–2021

Associate Professor, George Mason University
Disclosure statement

I am affiliated (on a pro bono basis) with the Scientists Working Group on Chemical and Biological Security at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. I am also a pro bono consultant on the ethical, legal, and social implications of genome editing for DARPA and am a pro bono consultant to the World Health Organization on dual-use research issues. I have served as a paid consultant on a project related to dual-use research run by the Nuclear Threat Initiative and was a paid consultant on the grant that Filippa Lentzos received to conduct the research upon which this article is based.

Filippa Lentzos does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

source :

https://theconversation.com/fifty-nine-labs-around-world-handle-the-deadliest-pathogens-only-a-quarter-score-high-on-safety-161777?

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Did the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 result from high-risk research gone wrong? Regardless of the answer, the risk of future pandemics originating from research with dangerous pathogens is real.

The focal point of this lab-leak discussion is the Wuhan Institute of Virology, nestled in the hilly outskirts of Wuhan. It is just one of 59 maximum containment labs in operation, under construction or planned around the world.

Known as biosafety level 4 (BSL4) labs, these are designed and built so that researchers can safely work with the most dangerous pathogens on the planet – ones that can cause serious disease and for which no treatment or vaccines exist. Researchers are required to wear full-body pressurised suits with independent oxygen.

Spread over 23 countries, the largest concentration of BSL4 labs is in Europe, with 25 labs. North America and Asia have roughly equal numbers, with 14 and 13 respectively. Australia has four and Africa three. Like the Wuhan Institute of Virology, three-quarters of the world’s BSL4 labs are in urban centres.

Location of BSL4 labs. https://www.globalbiolabs.org/map, Author provided

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With 3,000m2 of lab space, the Wuhan Institute of Virology is the largest BSL4 lab in the world, though it will soon be overtaken by the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility at Kansas State University in the US. When it is complete, it will boast over 4,000m2 of BSL4 lab space.

Most labs are significantly smaller, with half of the 44 labs where data is available being under 200m2 – less than half the size of a professional basketball court or about three-quarters the size of a tennis court.

Around 60% of BSL4 labs are government-run public-health institutions, leaving 20% run by universities and 20% by biodefence agencies. These labs are either used to diagnose infections with highly lethal and transmissible pathogens, or they are used to research these pathogens to improve our scientific understanding of how they work and to develop new drugs, vaccines and diagnostics tests.

But far from all of these labs score well on safety and security. The Global Health Security Index, which measures whether countries have legislation, regulations, oversight agencies, policies and training on biosafety and biosecurity, is instructive. Led by the US-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, the index shows that only about one-quarter of countries with BSL4 labs received high scores for biosafety and biosecurity. This suggests plenty of room for improvement for countries to develop comprehensive systems of biorisk management.

Membership of the International Experts Group of Biosafety and Biosecurity Regulators, where national regulatory authorities share best practices in this field, is another indicator of national biosafety and biosecurity practices. Only 40% of countries with BSL4 labs are members of the forum: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, UK and the US. And no lab has yet signed up to the voluntary biorisk management system (ISO 35001), introduced in 2019 to establish management processes to reduce biosafety and biosecurity risks.

The vast majority of countries with maximum containment labs do not regulate dual-use research, which refers to experiments that are conducted for peaceful purposes but can be adapted to cause harm; or gain-of-function research, which is focused on increasing the ability of a pathogen to cause disease.

Three of the 23 countries with BSL4 labs (Australia, Canada and the US) have national policies for oversight of dual-use research. At least three other countries (Germany, Switzerland and the UK) have some form of dual-use oversight, where, for instance, funding bodies require their grant recipients to review their research for dual-use implications.

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Rising demand for BSL4 labs
That still leaves a large proportion of scientific research on coronaviruses carried out in countries with no oversight of dual-use research or gain-of-function experiments. This is particularly concerning as gain-of-function research with coronaviruses is likely to increase as scientists seek to better understand these viruses and to identify which viruses pose a higher risk of jumping from animals to humans or becoming transmissible between humans. More countries are expected to seek BSL4 labs, too, in the wake of the pandemic as part of a renewed emphasis on pandemic preparedness and response.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has served as a stark reminder of the risks posed by infectious diseases and the importance of a robust biomedical research enterprise for saving lives, we also need to keep in mind that such research can carry risks of its own. Good science and smart policy, however, can keep those risks in check and allow humanity to reap the benefits of this research.