Post Reports10 Apr 2023

The virus hunters

An especially risky kind of virus hunting aims to identify new viruses in animals that have yet to jump to humans. Imagine trips to distant caves and wrangling bats to pull blood and DNA samples. The hope is to use that knowledge to be a step ahead and develop therapeutics and surveillance that could help prevent a future outbreak or, worse yet, a deadly pandemic from erupting.

But a year-long Post investigation by David Willman and Joby Warrick has found that such research may be putting the world at greater risk for the very thing it’s trying to contain, as a result of potential leaks and accidents in the wild and in the labs. The Post discovered that the world lacks oversight for such high-risk research, yet a main driver of its expansion in recent

years has been the United States. Experts within the administration have been raising red flags.

The covid-19 pandemic, Willman and Warrick continue, is forcing difficult and uncomfortable conversations around doing such research and how to responsibly prepare for and prevent the next big pathogen threat to humans.

“There are thoughtful, well-informed scientific experts who are saying, ‘look, it’s time for a reckoning. We have observable lessons from the pandemic. We need to apply those,’” Willman tells Post Reports.

How controls on ‘gain of function’ experiments with supercharged pathogens have been undercut despite concerns about lab leaks.

NIH biosecurity advisers urge tighter oversight of pathogen research

Lab-leak fears are putting virologists under scrutiny

What we know about the origin of covid-19 and what remains a mystery.

Don’t miss a chance to experience Post Reports live! Post Reports senior host Martine Powers will be in conversation with author Curtis Sittenfeld at Sixth & I in Washington, D.C., at 7 p.m. on April 13. Get tickets here.

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(1939)

Goodbye from "Post Reports"

Just over seven years ago, we launched this daily news podcast from The Washington Post.Our goal was to bring you inside our newsroom, sharing our reporting with listeners to help make sense of what w...

6 Feb 8min

A surprise Kennedy Center makeover

In his second term, President Donald Trump has gone on a mission to reinvent the Kennedy Center, the beloved performing arts venue in Washington, D.C.Trump promised to overhaul the center’s programmin...

3 Feb 18min

A teddy bear, an ice skate: What remains from last year's deadly D.C. plane crash

In late January of last year, an American Eagle flight and a U.S. Army helicopter collided above the Potomac River, killing everyone aboard both aircraft. It was the deadliest flight disaster in the U...

2 Feb 15min

Jason Rezaian, Iran and the costs of press freedom

Ten years ago this month, Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian was freed from Iran’s Evin prison. He and his wife, Yeganeh, had been arrested at their home in Tehran and falsely accused of espiona...

31 Jan 37min

Is Minneapolis a turning point in Trump's presidency?

Since the killing of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minnesota, President Donald Trump and his administration are feeling the pressure — not only from Democrats, but also from members ...

30 Jan 35min

The quest to ‘destructively scan’ all the world’s books

In early 2024, executives at artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic ramped up an ambitious project they sought to keep quiet. It was code-named Project Panama, and internal documents filed in cour...

29 Jan 27min

Why smaller houses can make us happier

Houses in the United States keep getting bigger, but the people in bigger houses aren’t necessarily happier. Bigger homes often come with higher costs and more maintenance and can pull people further ...

28 Jan 20min

How Kristi Noem transformed immigration enforcement

After both Renée Good and Alex Pretti were shot and killed by Department of Homeland Security officers in Minneapolis this month, the story from the agency’s secretary, Kristi L. Noem, was that these ...

27 Jan 24min