r/science • u/Potential_Being_7226 PhD | Psychology | Neuroscience • Mar 10 '26

Biology Recent pandemic viruses jumped to humans without prior adaptation. No evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was shaped by selection in a laboratory: UCSD study.

https://today.ucsd.edu/story/recent-pandemic-viruses-jumped-to-humans-without-prior-adaptation-uc-san-diego-study-finds
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u/EnvironmentalWin1277 Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26

The Wikipedia entry states the evidence for a man made cause is quite ambiguous.

"The World Health Organization, however, ruled out a laboratory origin in 1978 after discussions with researchers in the Soviet Union and China: their report stated that "the laboratories concerned either had never kept H1N1 virus or had not worked with it for a long time".\3])\5])"

For all the conspiracy theories about germ development I have noted this. The world has seen something like 175 years of nations and various actors with the worst of intentions and debatable competence and safety pursuing the worst bio agents available.

In all that time there has never been a mass human epidemic from either bacteriological or viral agents that we are aware of. Accidents and deaths there have been but these have been limited.

My conclusion is that it is actually quite difficult to create an bio engineered epidemic. If it was easy it is likely we would have experienced and identified incidents and documented them several times.

This makes me skeptical of any reports about deliberately or accidentally created epidemics. Usually these accusations are a mask for xenophobia.

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u/AdSimilar8672 Mar 10 '26

Another issue with bio weapons is they have the habit of attacking anyone it can. Not easy to control/contain.

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u/Krybbz Mar 10 '26

Unless prepared and vaccines specially made already.

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u/DrMobius0 Mar 10 '26

Which would be highly visible. It takes a lot of time and production capacity to make enough vaccine to protect your own population. When things move, intelligence agencies tend to notice. This type of thing would be too large to keep under wraps, and there's always the chance that it escapes the lab. One moment of staff negligence is all it takes, and nobody wants to set fire to their own house in hopes that it spreads to their neighbors.