No evidence supports lab leak existential risks – nothing distinguishes lab pathogens from normal disease

Another potential biorisk is the threat posed by unintentional release of pathogens from research laboratories. Ord notes that biological research is progressing quickly:

Progress is continuing at a rapid pace. The last ten years have seen major qualitative breakthroughs, such as the use of CRISPR to efficiently insert new genetic sequences into a genome and the use of gene drives to efficiently replace populations of natural organisms in the wild with genetically modified versions. Measures of this progress suggest it is accelerating, with the cost to sequence a genome falling by a factor of 10,000 since 2007 and with publications and venture capital investment growing quickly. This progress in biotechnology seems unlikely to fizzle out soon: there are no insurmountable challenges looming; no fundamental laws blocking further developments.

That’s fair enough. But how do we get from there to a 1/30 chance of existential catastrophe?

Ord begins by discussing the advent of gain-of-function research, focusing on a Dutch researcher Ron Fouchier who passed strains of H5N1 through ferrets until it gained the ability to be transmitted between mammals. That is, by now, old news. Indeed, we saw in Part 12 of this series that the US Government commissioned in 2014 a thousand-page report on the risks and benefits of gain-of-function research. That report made no mention of existential risks of any kind: the largest casualty figure modeled in this report is 80 million.

Does Ord provide an argument to suspect that gain-of-function research could lead to existential catastrophe? Ord goes on to discuss the risks of laboratory escapes. These are, again, well-known and discussed in the mainstream literature, including the government report featured in Part 12 of this series. Ord concludes from this discussion that:

In my view, this track record of escapes shows that even BSL-4 is insufficient for working on pathogens that pose a risk of global pandemics on the scale of the 1918 flu or worse—especially if that research involves gain-of-function.

But this is simply not what is at issue: no one thinks that pandemics like the 1918 flu or COVID-19 pandemic pose a 1/30 chance of irreversible existential catastrophe by 2100. Perhaps the argument is meant to be contained in the final phrase (“1918 flu or worse“), but if this is the view, it isn’t an argument, merely a statement of Ord’s view.

Aside from a list of notable laboratory escapes, this is the end of Ord’s discussion of risks posed by unintentional release of pathogens from research laboratories. Is this discussion meant to ground a 1/30 risk of existential catastrophe by 2100? I hope not, because there is nothing in the way of new evidence in this section, and very little in the way of argument.