Boundless Thinking | If virologists are forced to become vagrants, aren’t you afraid that the viruses in the lab will also wander around Shanghai?

In the cold rain of late spring at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Zhang Yongzhen, an internationally renowned virologist, slept on the ground surrounded by a group of security guards, becoming a homeless “vagrant researcher” at the entrance of the biological laboratory he led.

The Shanghai Public Health Center stated that it needed to renovate and upgrade some laboratories and had properly arranged for Zhang Yongzhen and his research team to move to other laboratories. Due to safety reasons, construction had to be closed, so people were not allowed to enter.

According to Professor Zhang Yongzhen, the Shanghai Public Health Center notified him of the decision to renovate the P3 laboratory in 1 minute, ordered the team to move out within 2 days, but did not allow anyone to go in and take away personal belongings, nor did it allow the team to participate in the relocation of experimental samples.

We don’t know what kind of irreconcilable disputes exist between the Shanghai Public Health Center and Zhang Yongzhen’s team that have led to such an embarrassing situation.

But I know that if this dog-eat-dog drama in scientific research is not handled properly, it could turn into a catastrophic disaster at any time.

People who have not worked in a biological laboratory may find it hard to imagine how complex and dangerous it is to move a biological laboratory that is in operation.

Just the freezers at minus seventy or eighty degrees Celsius, a power outage of 1 hour could destroy 3 years of youth for 5 PhD students. Precision instruments worth millions of dollars can be damaged by a bump, causing inaccurate readings, and sometimes foreign manufacturers have to be invited to come and repair them.

Not to mention the biological samples and toxic carcinogenic reagents in the biological laboratory that you never want to touch even a little bit… Relocation? If it’s not the researchers themselves, which freight forwarder would dare to take the job?

And to relocate a P3-level laboratory that studies viruses within 2 days…

Director Fan Xiaohong, let’s talk things over, don’t play with your life, okay?!

First, a P3-level biological laboratory is actually “unrelocatable.”

The so-called P3-level laboratory, because of the repeated bombardment of news during the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have some understanding of it, it refers to a biosafety protection level. Experiments involving highly sensitive unknown pathogens, experiments involving vaccine development that require extremely high cleanliness, must be carried out in laboratories at P2 and above.

It was in this P3 laboratory led by Professor Zhang Yongzhen that their team was the first in the world to measure the RNA sequence of the new coronavirus. If a hospital in China discovers a new unknown pathogen at this moment, people may still think of sending samples to Professor Zhang’s laboratory.

There are only 4 P3-level biological laboratories in Shanghai. As for P4-level laboratories, Shanghai has none, yes, not a single one. Professor Zhang’s P3 laboratory is the highest safety protection level laboratory in Shanghai.

P3 laboratories involve a whole set of biosafety control standards, it is not as simple as moving the instruments and equipment and personnel, changing the space environment, all the evaluation and certification have to start all over again, which is equivalent to rebuilding one in a different place.

Therefore, the Shanghai Public Health Center asking Zhang Yongzhen’s team to move to another place is essentially dismantling and revoking this P3 laboratory.

Then, changes to the P3 laboratory must be coordinated with the research team.

That being said, it’s not that P3-level laboratories are high-level and few in number that they cannot be dismantled or revoked. As the responsible research unit, the Shanghai Public Health Center certainly has the right to make overall planning adjustments and also has the right to revoke this laboratory.

But the premise is that in this process, you have to guarantee the bottom line of public safety, you cannot joke with the health of 30 million citizens of Shanghai, and you cannot gamble with the stable life of 8 billion people around the world.

This requires ensuring that the relocation process of the laboratory has a meticulous plan, careful execution, and most importantly, the relocation work is carried out with the support and cooperation of the original research team.

How do you deal with the different biological samples stored in dozens of liquid nitrogen tanks? The negative pressure laboratory is to be opened to the outside world, do you know where the disinfection focus is? In the fume hood, a 96-well plate, do you know what experiments it has done and how to safely dispose of it?

A biological laboratory in operation may have dozens of projects, hundreds of experiments, and thousands of samples at the same time in this space. Besides the personnel of the research team, who else can achieve “safe and orderly” relocation?

Once a dangerous pathogen is leaked or precious experimental samples are lost due to improper handling, how many heads can bear this responsibility?

Finally, if there is still a little room for communication, Professor Zhang Yongzhen would not have turned himself into a homeless person sleeping on the ground.

Scientists, especially top scientists like Researcher Zhang Yongzhen, are not afraid of unemployment. If he is willing, any developed country in the world will respectfully offer him a passport and a job. The same can be said for other universities or research institutes in China. Zhang Yongzhen was named one of the top ten scientists of 2020 by Nature magazine

If it’s just that he’s not happy himself, if it’s just that he’s being targeted by his superiors, if one place doesn’t keep him, there will be another place, just leave.

But there are also young teachers in the team, and master’s and doctoral students who are just starting their research careers, they also have to be “swept out”, this is what Professor Zhang Yongzhen is concerned about.

I can’t guarantee Zhang Yongzhen’s character, but I can be sure that the leaders of the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center who have allowed the situation to come to this point have no respect for public safety.