Biocontainment in Gain-of-Function Infectious Disease Research

Lipkin, W. Ian

I n the movie Contagion, Laurence Fishburne (as Ellis Cheever), Chief of Special Pathogens at the Centers for Disease Control, tells Jennifer Ehle (as Ally Hextall), an Epidemiological Intelligence Service officer coordinating research on the fictional henipavirus MEV-1, to move all research from BSL-3 (biosafety level 3) to BSL-4. She, in turn, calls Elliott Gould (as Ian Sussman), a university professor and virologist, telling him to "cook his samples." He protests, saying that restricting work to a few BSL-4 laboratories will slow progress. Gould acquiesces but continues his research, ultimately finding a way to grow the virus and make a vaccine. Gould's character is loosely based on my experiences during the West Nile virus outbreak in 1999. Although our team identified the causative agent, political wrangling delayed permitting and shipment of the virus to our laboratory. To expedite diagnostics and drug development, I decided to recover the virus by transfecting genomic viral RNA.