Lab Leaks Are a Small But Real Risk in Ukraine. Russian Disinformation Is The True Threat

Two years into a global pandemic whose initial cause remains a subject of debate, Reuters, on March 11, published an especially jarring story: the World Health Organization, according to the news agency, had advised Ukraine to eliminate any high-threat pathogens it had in its biolabs, to reduce (and ideally eliminate) the chances that, were the Russian army to attack those facilities, pathogens would leak out and spread disease to the population. The risk of such a disaster—either through some terrible accident, or by nefarious design—is real, but thankfully, not quite as big of a threat as it might seem. For one thing, Ukraine does not have a single Biosafety Level (BSL) 4 within its borders—these are the highest-security labs, which are authorized to store the most dangerous pathogens (like the world’s last remaining samples of smallpox). Additionally, many pathogens stored in lower BSL labs are vulnerable to heat and sunlight, meaning they are unlikely to spread widely were they to escape those facilities—which have safeguards of their own to prevent that from happening. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The risk that the chaos of the war will unleash pathogens from Ukrainian labs is “extremely unlikely. But, yes, in theory, it’s a possibility,” says Filippa Lentzos, the co-director of the Centre for Science and Security Studies at King’s College London. Even in peacetime, accidents at laboratories around the...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Misinformation & Disinformation Source Type: news