Marc Lipsitch Harvard Epidemiologist on COVID-19 and the dubious art of "gain-of-function" research
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Marc Lipsitch is an American epidemiologist and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is also the Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. He is currently working on modeling the transmission of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Lipsitch attended Yale University, where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy in 1991. He attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, studying zoology, and received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1995. There, he studied under Robert May and Martin Nowak. He then returned to the United States for his postdoctoral fellowship at Emory University from 1995 to 1999. During that time, he worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before joining the faculty at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
\\nLYRICS: The Terrible Tale of Gain-of-Function Research Under the Streetlight
\\nI was reading in the Lancet just the other day
\\nAbout the risk and benefits of gain-of-function
\\n
\\nHow some thought it desirous
\\nGive functions to a virus
\\nOf virulence and transmissibility
\\n
\\nThereby enabling assessment
\\nto inform investment
\\nIn preparedness plans for pandemics
\\n
\\nBut what was the cause of the funding pause?
\\nHuman error in high containment labs
\\n
\\nGain-of-function
\\nStrange instructions
\\nVague assumptions
\\nGain-of-function
\\n
\\nWe can\'t even predict
\\nHow influenza hits
\\nFrom one season to the next
\\n
\\nInstead of understanding these
\\nAnd improving the vaccines
\\nThey look for answers where the looking\'s good
\\n
\\nTesting out the \'ifs\'
\\nAnd sequencing the \'whats\'
\\nLike, how about if this virus was airborne
\\n
\\nCos if we know, how transmission goes
\\nWe\'re better prepared to prevent it
\\n
\\nGain-of-function
\\nInsane construction
\\nPlain dysfunction
\\nGain-of-function
\\n
\\nFrom ferret, to ferret
\\nReally is there merit?
\\n
\\nResearch it, regret it
\\nDisaster you\'ll inherit
\\n
\\nFrom mammal to mammal
\\nIt\'s utterly disparate
\\n
\\nDon\'t get it? Don\'t sweat it?
\\nIt\'ll kill if you let
\\n
\\n"Why are you looking under the streetlight?
\\nDo you think the answer\'s over there"
\\nThe searcher answered with a spurious riposte
\\n"No, but the light is brighter over here"
\\n
\\nGain-of-function
\\nInsane construction
\\nPlain dysfunction
\\nGain-of-function
\\n
\\nStrange instructions
\\nVague assumptions
\\nGain-of-function