公众应该了解多少关于危险病毒的研究?

公众应该了解多少关于危险病毒的研究?

U.S. officials are weighing the benefits and risks of proposed experiments that might make a dangerous pathogen even worse — but the details of that review, and the exact nature of the experiments, aren't being released to the public.

美国官员正在权衡拟议中的实验的好处和风险，这些实验可能会使危险的病原体变得更加糟糕，但审查的细节和实验的确切性质并未向公众公布。

Later this week, officials are to hold a meeting in Bethesda, Md., to debate how much information to openly share about this kind of controversial work and how much to reveal about the reasoning behind decisions to pursue or forgo it.

本周晚些时候，官员们将在马里兰州贝塞斯达举行会议，讨论公开分享多少关于这类有争议的工作的信息，以及披露多少关于决定是继续还是放弃这类工作背后的原因。

The meeting comes as the high stakes of this research are coincidentally being highlighted by events in China, where public health workers are grappling with an outbreak of a new coronavirus. The virus likely first arose in animals and seems to have acquired the ability to be transmitted from person to person.

此次会议召开之际，中国的一些事件恰好突显了这项研究的重大意义。中国的公共卫生工作者正在努力应对一种新型冠状病毒的爆发。该病毒可能首先在动物中出现，并似乎获得了人际传播的能力。

How animal viruses can acquire the ability to jump into humans and become contagious is exactly the question that some researchers are trying to answer by manipulating pathogens in the lab to explore what genetic changes alter their virulence and transmissibility.

动物病毒是如何获得进入人体并具有传染性的能力的，这正是一些研究人员试图通过在实验室里操纵病原体来探索是什么基因变化改变了它们的毒性和传染性来回答的问题。

'Potential pandemic pathogens'

潜在的传染病病原体

Scientists have argued for years over whether it's ever justifiable to do experiments that might create "potential pandemic pathogens" — viruses or other germs that are likely to be highly contagious from person to person and capable of causing a significant number of illnesses and deaths.

多年来，科学家们一直在争论，做可能产生“潜在的传染病病原体”的实验是否有道理。“潜在的传染病病原体”指的是病毒或其他细菌，它们可能在人与人之间具有高度传染性，能够导致大量的疾病和死亡。

Some think that if this research is to be done, it requires an unusual degree of transparency because it involves deliberately making a pathogen more risky.

一些人认为，如果要进行这项研究，就需要不同寻常的公开度，因为它涉及到故意增加病原体的风险。

"It seems to me that the review process should be very much weighted toward making sure that as many people as possible are satisfied that that risk is justified by some very large benefit to health and welfare of people," says Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who has been critical of past efforts to create genetically-altered bird flu viruses.

哈佛大学公共卫生学院流行病学教授马克·利普西奇说，“在我看来，应该非常重视审查过程，以确保尽可能多的人认为这种风险是合理的，因为它给人们的健康和福利带来了一些非常大的好处。”利普西奇一直对过去创造转基因禽流感病毒的努力持批评态度。

Those in favor of this virus tinkering say it's necessary to prepare for the possibility that an animal pathogen circulating out in nature might mutate in a way that lets it start sickening humans and spreading widely. It's not a theoretical danger; past pandemics, like the 1918 flu, killed millions.

那些支持这种病毒修补的人说，有必要为一种可能性做好准备，即一种在自然界中传播的动物病原体可能会发生变异，让它开始让人类生病并广泛传播。这不是理论上的危险;过去的大流行，比如1918年的流感，夺去了数百万人的生命。

That's why some researchers say they have to take worrisome viruses into the lab and tweak them in order to see what these germs are capable of. The findings could tell public health workers what potential dangers lie ahead, so that they can get ready with the right surveillance tools, vaccines and medicines.

这就是为什么一些研究人员说，他们必须把令人担忧的病毒带到实验室，对它们进行改造，以了解这些细菌的能力。这些发现可以告诉公共卫生工作者前方存在哪些潜在危险，以便他们能够准备好适当的监测工具、疫苗和药物。