Researcher Calls 1st Marburg Virus Outbreak A ‘Lab Leak,’ Here’s Why Experts Pushed Back

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A researcher tweeted what he called a “fun fact” about the Marburg Virus that’s currently spreading and threatening lives in Tanzania and Equatorial Guinea. But various experts around the world didn’t seem to find what he had posted on Twitter to be too “fun” or provide all of the relevant facts.

The Marburg virus itself is certainly not fun. It belong to the same Filoviridae family as the Ebola virus and is similar in many very bad ways. Being similar to Ebola virus is typically a bad thing as few people will say, “I like you. You are kind of like the Ebola virus.” As I described for Forbes in August 2022, Marburg virus disease (MVD) can have a case-fatality rate of between 24% and 88%, depending on how quickly one can get good medical care. Tanzania has just declared its first-ever MVD outbreak that so far has had eight reported cases and five reported deaths. That was one month after Equatorial Guinea announced its first-ever outbreak nine confirmed cases and seven deaths since February.

Here’s a fact. Scientists have long considered the origins of the Marburg virus to be natural, that the virus has been jumping from other animals to humans. The World Health Organization (WHO) clearly indicates thatRousettus aegyptiacus bats are considered natural hosts for Marburg virus.” The virus was first noticed in 1967 when an outbreak occurred in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany. That prompted scientists to name it the Marburg virus, although in theory it could have been named the Frankfurter virus instead. As has been emphasized by the WHO, this 1967 outbreak, “Was associated with laboratory work using African green monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops) imported from Uganda.”

Yet, Justin Kinney, PhD, an Associate Professor and Cancer Center Member at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, didn’t mention this monkey business when he tweeted the following on March 25: “Fun fact: Marburg virus is named after Marburg, Germany—where the virus does not naturally occur—because the first documented outbreak was caused by a lab leak at the Behringwerke industrial plant there.” Of note, it’s not clear from his Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory bio how much actual infectious disease or public health work Kinney has done. Nevertheless, his tweet prompted a number of “oh-no-he-didn’t” type of responses from various experts around the world who do have quite a lot of experience studying viruses and outbreaks.

For example, Isabella Eckerle, MD, DTMH, a Professor and Co-Head of the Centre for Emerging Viral Diseases at the University of Geneva tweet-responded calling what Kinney posted, “Fake news. The virus was not a lab leak in Marburg but it infected laboratory workers through sick monkeys from Uganda. They were important as experimental animal models.”

Gigi Kwik Gronvall, PhD, a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Associate Professor of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, quickly responded to Kinney’s fun facting, “This is absolutely false and why on earth would you make that up?”

Then there was this “Fun fact” reply from Björn Meyer, PhD, a virologist at the Otto-von-Guericke University: “Fun fact: you are misreprepresenting how it came to it by omission. Infected green monkeys from Uganda were shipped to Germany and (then) Yugoslavia. At the time no virology work there. Guess you actually don’t like the animal transportation part, right?!”

As a final example, Angela Rasmussen, PhD, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, clearly disagreed with the fun-ness or the factuality of Kinney’s tweet: “Let’s be clear: Marburg virus did not emerge due to a ‘lab leak.’ This ‘fun fact’ is neither fun nor factual with regard to emerging viruses,” as you can see here:

Yeah, it’s all fun and games until someone uses the words “lab leak,” which has become quite a loaded term of late. That’s because some have tried to claim that the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was bioengineered in a Wuhan, China, laboratory and either accidentally or deliberately released the virus. Some politicians and personalities have continued to push these claims without providing much concrete evidence despite most of the existing evidence supporting a natural origin of the Covid-19 coronavirus. Sure, in other contexts the words “lab leak” could in theory mean a lot of different things. For example, it could mean a Labrador retriever peeing on the carpet while it chases after something. But these days when referring to viruses you’ve gotta be clear.

Rasmussen felt that the term “lab leak” was not appropriate in the 1967 MVD outbreak context. Instead, she indicated that the term “lab-acquired” was more applicable in the following tweet: “The initial outbreak of Marburg was lab-acquired, but it was not a lab escape in this context because they did not know they were handling Marburg. ‘Lab leak’ or ‘lab escape’ describes a lab-acquired infection from intentionally working with that particular pathogen.”

After the response to his March 25 “lab leak” tweet was, shall we say, less than positive, Kinney subsequently clarified that he didn’t mean to suggest that the 1967 Marburg virus outbreak was from a bioengineered or lab altered virus. For example, the next day, on March 26, he tweet-responded the following about that outbreak, “It was the first documented outbreak of Marburg virus. It was not the source of Marburg virus, which had been and still is is present in the wild.” Yet, Kinney continued to insist that his use of the term “lab leak” was appropriate. For example, Kinney responded to Eckerle’s tweet with, “The outbreak resulted from research-related activities. That is a lab leak,” and “Zoonosis from animals captured and studied for research purposes is a lab leak.”

In general, one could argue semantics until the Rousettus aegyptiacus bats come home. However, in this case, the key thing to remember is that whenever you use the words “lab leak,” it’s important to clarify immediately what specifically you mean. There are certain words that you shouldn’t just drop into a conversation and then leave with further elaboration. These include words such as “positive test”, “urine everywhere”, and, of course, “lab leak.” When you mention the words “lab” and the origins of the Marburg virus, perhaps make it clear that you aren’t suggesting about the origins of the virus that isn’t supported by scientific evidence. After all, doing so is only natural.

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