The apocalypse as a rhetorical device in the influenza virus gain-of-function debate.

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.

EDITORIAL

Humans are notoriously poor at assessing future benefits and risks. Consider nuclear power, which was born from a program to develop a weapon of mass destruction. When nuclear power was developed for commercial purposes, the risk was thought to be minimal and no one anticipated the disasters at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. On the other hand, no one initially anticipated the benefits of radioactive nucleotides and radiation in medicine, archeological dating, smoke detectors, and sterilization of food and medical devices. In the mid-1970s, scientists fretted that recombinant DNA technology would unleash a plague of new infectious diseases and convened a conference at Asilomar that put in place a self-enforced moratorium until the process was better understood (1). Four decades later, no superbugs have appeared from recombinant DNA technology, and society is reaping the rewards of the molecular biology revolution in new drugs, DNA identification, personal genomics, and pest-resistant plants. In the late 1990s, many worried about the Y2K computer bug, which it was feared would cripple computer systems and associated infrastructure such as banking, but the new millennium came and went without a ripple. Today we have falling rates of vaccine acceptance because of widely believed yet discredited associations between vaccination and autism, with overwhelming evidence demonstrating that vaccines are safe and effective. Consequently, diseases that were considered controlled, such as measles, have become endemic again. These examples suffice to make the point that when assessing risks and benefits, humans need to be extremely humble, for their prediction record is poor.

In the past 3 years, the microbiology and infectious diseases communities, along with other interested parties, have been locked in a vigorous debate regarding the risks and benefits of the so-called gain-of-function (GOF) experiments involving influenza virus (for a review of the issues, see reference 2). The central nugget in the controversy is a disagreement on the risks and benefits of such experiments. Proponents of GOF experiments emphasize the potential gains in applied and basic science, while opponents focus on risk and a particular concern that such experiments could unleash an epidemic with untold suffering. Given that the controversy is based on a risk-benefit debate, that humans are notoriously bad at assessing risks and benefits, and that, as illustrated by the problems with vaccine acceptance, people do not necessarily believe scientific information, it is difficult to see how we are going to resolve this issue. However, the stakes in this debate are enormous, because they can influence the course of future research, with beneficial or deleterious consequences for our ability to handle future infectious disease threats. Hence, we have argued that we must get this right (2). In prior essays, we have considered the elements of the controversy and the epistemic value of GOF experiments (2, 3). Here, we focus on the rhetorical devices used in the debate with the hope that an analysis of how the arguments are being framed can help the discussion.

Rhetoric is defined as the art or skill of speaking or writing formally and effectively, especially as a way to persuade or influence people (4). Rhetoric is an ancient art that was a pillar of Western education for millennia but is seldom formally taught today. A rhetorical device, or a resource of language, is a technique used by speaker or writer in persuasion (5). Both proponents and opponents of GOF experiments use rhetorical devices in their efforts to convince others of the value of their positions. Proponents of GOF emphasize the potential benefits of the research and link the work to such potential benefits as the development of better vaccines, improvement of public health surveillance tools, and the acquisition of new basic science knowledge. For opponents of GOF, the arguments are all about the risks of such experiments, which range from nefarious use of the information to laboratory accidents unleashing new pandemics. Hence, both camps use history, with proponents of GOF emphasizing how discovery in science has translated into unanticipated advances and opponents of GOF citing a list of mishaps ranging from the reintroduction of an influenza virus into circulation from a presumed accidental laboratory release of influenza virus in 1977 to recent laboratory accidents. However, both sides struggle with the fact that prediction is difficult, as noted by Yogi Berra, who stated that “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

The apocalypse is a powerful rhetorical tool because the concept it is so well known to our culture. It was the title theme of popular films such as Zombie Apocalypse and Apocalypse Now. The apocalypse appears in the “end times” literature of many religions, where it a serves as a powerful rhetorical device arguing for faith. In science, a recombinant-DNA-driven apocalypse was invoked at the Asilomar Conference, which established a moratorium on certain experiments. Proponents of the likelihood that we are living at a time of human-made climate change often invoke apocalyptic scenarios to make their point. The apocalypse was invoked by some who feared that the large hadron collider would unleash the end of our world through a variety of calamities, and physicists actually carried out studies to debunk those claims. In the GOF debate, the repeated mention of the likelihood of a pandemic is an apocalyptic rhetorical device.

Who has the upper hand in the GOF debate? The answer to this question will be apparent only when the history of this time is written. However, it is possible that in the near future, arguments about risk will trump arguments about benefits, because the risk of a GOF experiment unleashing a devastating epidemic plays on a well-founded human fear, while the potential benefits of the research are considerably harder to articulate. In debates about benefits and risks, arguments based on positing extreme risks, however unlikely, are powerful rhetorical devices because they play into human fears. While we all agree that the risk of a GOF experiment unleashing a deadly epidemic is not zero, such an event would be at the extreme end of the likely outcomes from GOF experimentation. Arguing against GOF on the basis of pandemic dangers is a powerful rhetorical device because anyone can understand it. The problem with the use of apocalyptic scenarios in risk-benefit analysis is that they invoke the possibility for infinite suffering, irrespective of the probability of such an event, and the prospect of infinite suffering can potentially overwhelm any good obtained from knowledge gained from such experiments.

Repeatedly invoking the apocalypse can create a sophistry that we call the apocalyptic fallacy, which, when applied in a vacuum of evidence and theory, proposes consequences that are so dire, however low the probability, that this tactic can be employed to quash any new invention, technique, procedures, and/or policy. The apocalyptic fallacy is an effective rhetorical tool that is meaningless in the absence of objective numbers. We remind those who invoke the apocalypse that the DNA revolution went on to deliver a multitude of benefits without unleashing the fears of Asilomar and that the large hadron collider was turned on, the Higgs boson was discovered, the standard model in physics was validated, and we are still here. Hence, we caution individuals against overreliance on the apocalypse in the debates ahead, for rhetoric can win the day, but rhetoric never gave us a single medical advance.