EA - Why we should fear any bioengineered fungus and give fungi research attention by emmannaemeka

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Why we should fear any bioengineered fungus and give fungi research attention, published by emmannaemeka on August 18, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Someone asked me a question after my talk on climate change and emerging fungal pathogens. The question was, why should we give attention to fungi when we know the risk of bioengineering it can be low. Hence the weight given to viruses and bacteria. I thought through and wondered that it is interesting and the EA community should understand why this should be considered. I think in my opinion we need to take fungi very seriously for so many reasons:What we know that makes fungi pathogen interesting:There are only three known anitifungal drugs against major fungi pathogens which are not very effective. The available antifungals have narrow spectrus and high toxicity, and because of the plasticity of the fungi genome resistance is developed very easily. The seriousness of this issue was brought to fore during the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of secondary infections due to fungi pathogens were reported . The emergence of Azole resistance Aspergillus in Europe and environment is a concern as the mortality due to antibiotics resistance and limited drugs can get up to 100%.There are no vaccines for fungi. Currently, there are no immunotherapy or any vaccine available for any fungal infection. More research and funding is needed. Here is a nice paper that shows how close we are to finding a vaccine against any fungi pathogen.Candida auris the first fungi to have emerged as a result of climate change is a fungal pathogen. This is really interesting because this yeast behaves like bacteria and is naturally resistant to some antifungals. It is difficult to treat and led to the shutting down of hospitals . A Detroit hospital will stop taking patients temporarily as it tries to contain an outbreak of a rare, but potentially deadly and drug-resistant fungus. Find link to this new here. It was first discovered in 2009 and have now been reported in all the continents of the world. The CDC gives reasons why this pathogen is a problemWhy is Candida auris a problem? sourceIt causes serious infections. C. auris can cause bloodstream infections and even death, particularly in hospital and nursing home patients with serious medical problems. More than 1 in 3 patients with invasive C. auris infection (for example, an infection that affects the blood, heart, or brain) die.It's often resistant to medicines. Antifungal medicines commonly used to treat Candida infections often don't work for Candida auris. Some C. auris infections have been resistant to all three types of antifungal medicines.It's becoming more common. Although C. auris was just discovered in 2009, it has spread quickly and caused infections in more than a dozen countries.It's difficult to identify. C. auris can be misidentified as other types of fungi unless specialized laboratory technology is used. This misidentification might lead to a patient getting the wrong treatment.It can spread in hospitals and nursing homes. C. auris has caused outbreaks in healthcare facilities and can spread through contact with affected patients and contaminated surfaces or equipment. Good hand hygiene and cleaning in healthcare facilities is important because C. auris can live on surfaces for several weeks4. Fungi are the only species that have caused the complete extinction of a species. A newspaper reported thus "A deadly fungus that has driven more species to extinction than any other pathogen has spread across Africa unnoticed. Chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd for short, is a highly infectious fungus that affects frogs, toads, salamanders and other amphibians(Source). Although various diseases, such as white-nose syndrome resulting from the European fungu...