France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes • Hacker News Board

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#91

Post by mannykannot » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #42

> Jaumain’s family has filed both criminal charges and an administrative suit against INRAE, alleging a range of problems at Jaumain’s lab. She had not been trained in handling dangerous prions or responding to accidents and did not wear both metal mesh and surgical gloves, as she was supposed to, says Julien Bensimhon, the family’s lawyer. The thumb should have been soaked in a bleach solution immediately, which did…

Your second quote is the reason why: the administrative controls that are supposed to prevent this sort of incident at any of the labs inarguably failed in this case, and there is no reason to believe they will not fail again.

In addition, these controls may be based on false and overly-optimistic assumptions about the risk these pathogens pose.

For either of these reasons, returning to the status quo ante may not be an adequate response. In general, administrative and procedural controls are inferior to uncircumventable physical barriers.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#92

Post by hammock » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

rs999gti wrote: post #73

Reventlov wrote: post #5

From Wikipedia [1]: « Prions are misfolded proteins with the ability to transmit their misfolded shape onto normal variants of the same protein. They characterize several atal and transmissible neuro degenerative diseases in humans and many other animals. It is not known what causes the normal protein to misfold, but the abnormal three-dimensional structure is suspected of conferring infectious properties, collapsing…

> Basically, you get infected, you die. Avoid cannibalism and you should be fine. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/09/06/482952588/wh...

>Avoid cannibalism and you should be fine.

And animal brains, and the areas around experimental research labs...

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#93

Post by jtbayly » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #56

Prions are weird. I was at UCSF during the time they went from a fringe theory to an established fact and a nobel prize. The professor who studied them (Prusiner) had to overcome tons of resistance and the experiments were heroic (often waiting months for mice to die). It's really funny that everybody resisted it until somebody mentioned that there was a plausible physical mechanism of refolding catalysis.

Makes complete sense that there was resistance until a viable mechanism was proposed. Otherwise it just sounds like voodoo.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#94

Post by hammock » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

relax88 wrote: post #54

marcodiego wrote: post #30

Scary. I think and airborne human transmissible prion disease that kill in a few years is the kind of event that can bring our society back to prehistoric living in just a few decades. Hope it never happens.

Is this even possible? By what mechanism could a prion disease become airborne? Viruses have evolved to more easily infect cells in the respiratory tract for this specific purpose, but prions are much less sophisticated. It seems there may be some evidence they can evolve, but enough to hijack cellular machinery in such a way that they could increase the concentration in the respiratory tract enough to transmit? Seem…

Maybe we should research it

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#95

Post by dmix » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #56

Prions are weird. I was at UCSF during the time they went from a fringe theory to an established fact and a nobel prize. The professor who studied them (Prusiner) had to overcome tons of resistance and the experiments were heroic (often waiting months for mice to die). It's really funny that everybody resisted it until somebody mentioned that there was a plausible physical mechanism of refolding catalysis.

This bit in the article drove home how difficult it would be:

> The two types of CJD can only be distinguished through a postmortem examination of brain tissue.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#96

Post by dekhn » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:26 PM UTC

jtbayly wrote: post #93

dekhn wrote: post #56

Prions are weird. I was at UCSF during the time they went from a fringe theory to an established fact and a nobel prize. The professor who studied them (Prusiner) had to overcome tons of resistance and the experiments were heroic (often waiting months for mice to die). It's really funny that everybody resisted it until somebody mentioned that there was a plausible physical mechanism of refolding catalysis.

Makes complete sense that there was resistance until a viable mechanism was proposed. Otherwise it just sounds like voodoo.

No, because the underlying data demonstrated that there was a statistically significant death effect occurring, with a wide range of evidence implicating prions, before there was a mechanism. You shouldn't require a plausible mechanism to trust your experiments (seen this a hundred times, like in RNA enzymes, heart of the ribosome, various dna-is-the-heritable-agent experimetns).

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#97

Post by hammock » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:26 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #51

Kinda a morbid question but could you just sever the finger moments after the prick? Or would the blood pump so fast that the prion(s) is already in your body.

At the very least a tourniquet could be considered. It only takes one protein to get through though.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#98

Post by marcellus23 » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #69

mschuster91 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does every lab have to be shut down for 3 months? Auditing everyone and their processes takes a while.

Why would you audit processes when the allegation is that someone got infected because she wasn't following the processes?

She hadn't been trained in how to handle prions. Doesn't that sound like a process problem to you?

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#99

Post by marcellus23 » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

choeger wrote: post #24

gonzo41 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to the exciting world of duel use microbiology research. There's plenty of people are doing stuff that walks the line between learning new things and creating ways to weaponize germs. It's all a question of good governance.

> duel use microbiology research This typo demands an xkcd!

no it doesn't.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#100

Post by josefx » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #42

> Jaumain’s family has filed both criminal charges and an administrative suit against INRAE, alleging a range of problems at Jaumain’s lab. She had not been trained in handling dangerous prions or responding to accidents and did not wear both metal mesh and surgical gloves, as she was supposed to, says Julien Bensimhon, the family’s lawyer. The thumb should have been soaked in a bleach solution immediately, which did…

I think the report finding that there were no safety violations is the most damning. You have 100 researchers dealing with a deadly disease, 17 had lab accidents during their work, 5 of them may have suffered fatal exposure with no training how to mitigate this? What are the mandated safety procedures if none where violated? Wear a labcoat and pray that you wont die ten years from now?