| 双语新闻 Bilingual News | 双语对照阅读 分级系列阅读 智能辅助阅读 在线英语学习 |
|
| 双语新闻 Bilingual News | 双语对照阅读 分级系列阅读 智能辅助阅读 在线英语学习 |
| [英文] [中文] [双语对照] [双语交替] [] |
| On the heels of President Biden’s abrupt order to U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, many scientists reacted positively, reflecting their push in recent weeks for more information about the work of a virus lab in Wuhan, China. But they cautioned against expecting an answer in the three-month time frame of the president’s request. | 在拜登总统突然下令美国情报机构调查新冠病毒来源之后，许多科学家做出了积极反应，这反映出，他们最近几周努力希望获得中国武汉一家病毒实验室工作的更多信息。但他们也告诫说，不要指望能在总统要求的三个月内得到答复。 |
| After long steering clear of the debate, some influential scientists have lately become more open to expressing uncertainties about the origins of the virus. If the two most vocal poles of the argument are natural spillover vs. laboratory leak, these new voices have added a third point of view: a resounding undecided. | 在长期回避争论之后，一些有影响力的科学家最近开始更愿意表达对病毒起源的疑问。如果争论中最激烈的两极是自然溢出和实验室泄漏理论，这些新的声音增加了第三个观点：一种确凿的不确定性。 |
| “In the beginning, there was a lot of pressure against speaking up, because it was tied to conspiracies and Trump supporters,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University. “There was very little rational discussion going on in the beginning.” | “一开始，有很多人不愿意发声，因为这与阴谋和特朗普的支持者联系在一起，”耶鲁大学(Yale University)免疫学家岩崎明子(Akiko Iwasaki)说。“一开始，很少有理性的讨论。” |
| Virologists still largely lean toward the theory that infected animals — perhaps a bat, or another animal raised for food — spread the virus to humans outside of a lab. There is no direct evidence for the “lab leak” theory that Chinese researchers isolated the virus, which then infected a lab worker. | 病毒学家在很大程度上仍然倾向于这样的理论：受感染的动物——可能是蝙蝠，或其他作为食物而被饲养的动物——在实验室外将病毒传播给人类。“实验室泄露”理论认为，中国研究人员分离出病毒，然后感染了一名实验室工作人员，目前没有直接证据支持这一理论。 |
| But China’s integral role in a joint inquiry with the World Health Organization made its dismissal of the lab leak theory difficult to accept, Dr. Iwasaki and 17 other scientists argued in the journal Science this month. | 但在本月的《科学》(Science)杂志上，岩崎博士和其他17位科学家称，中国在与世界卫生组织(World Health Organization)的联合调查中所扮演的重要角色，使得中国对实验室泄漏理论的否定令人难以接受。 |
| “I typically only speak about a topic publicly if I have some new scientific result that makes me confident about a new discovery or conclusion,” said one of the organizers of that letter, Jesse Bloom, who studies the evolution of viruses at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. “In the case of SARS-CoV-2 origins, I still am not confident about what happened.” | “我通常只在有了一些新的科学成果、使我对新的发现或结论有信心的时候，才会公开谈论一个话题，”这封信的组织者之一、弗雷德·哈金森癌症研究中心(Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center)研究病毒进化的杰西·布鲁姆(Jesse Bloom)说。“对于SARS-CoV-2的起源，我仍然不确定发生了什么。” |
| But “as time went on, it became clear that not saying anything about the origins was being interpreted as agreeing with the idea that the virus definitely originated from a zoonosis,” he said, referring to an animal spillover. | 但他说，“随着时间的推移，很明显，如果对源头问题不置一词，就会被理解为同意病毒肯定源自人畜共患病的观点，”他指的是动物传染的理论。 |
| On Wednesday, two weeks after that letter was published, President Biden called on intelligence agencies to “redouble their efforts” and deliver a report to him within 90 days. On Thursday Mr. Biden said he expected to release the report to the public. | 周三，也就是这封信公布两周后，拜登总统呼吁情报机构“加倍努力”，在90天内向他提交一份报告。拜登周四表示，他预计将向公众公布这份报告。 |
| While researchers generally welcome a sustained search for answers, some warn that those answers may not arrive any time soon — if ever. | 虽然研究人员普遍欢迎持续寻找答案，但一些人警告说，这些答案就算可以找到，也可能不会很快到来。 |
| “At the end of this process, I would not be surprised if we did not know much more than we know now,” said W. Ian Lipkin, a virologist at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University who was one of the first U.S. scientists to visit China in early 2020 and consult with public health authorities there. | “这个过程结束的时候，如果我们知道的东西不比现在更多，我也不会感到惊讶，”哥伦比亚大学梅尔曼公共卫生学院(Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University)的病毒学家W·伊恩·利普金(W. Ian Lipkin)说，他是第一批在2020年初访问中国并向那里的公共卫生当局咨询的美国科学家之一。 |
| China’s lack of cooperation with the W.H.O. has long fueled suspicions about how the coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2, had emerged seemingly from nowhere to seize the world. | 中国与世卫组织欠缺合作，长期以来致使人们怀疑被称为SARS-CoV-2的冠状病毒是如何凭空出现以席卷全球的。 |
| In February 2020, the Chinese government agreed to host a scientific mission, but it came under fire from critics because it was constructed as a cooperative study with international experts and Chinese scientists, and the Chinese controlled access to data. In addition, the mission had no mandate to investigate laboratories where research on viruses was conducted. | 2020年2月，中国政府同意接待一个科学考察团，但遭到批评，因为该考察是作为与国际专家和中国科学家的合作研究而构建的，而且中国控制了对数据的访问。此外也没有授权调查进行病毒研究的实验室。 |
| In early days, speculations even circulated that a Chinese biological warfare program had produced the virus. In March 2020, Dr. Lipkin and colleagues published a letter in which they dismissed that possibility. | 在早期，甚至有传言说中国的生物战计划制造了这种病毒。2020年3月，利普金及其同事发表了一封信，驳回了这种可能性。 |
| “There was no evidence to suggest this had been weaponized,” Dr. Lipkin said. “I haven’t changed my view on that.” | “没有证据表明该病毒被武器化了，”利普金说。“我的看法没有改变。” |
| Evolution was more than capable of brewing a new pandemic virus, he and other experts said. Bats and many other animals are hosts to coronaviruses. When an animal is infected by two strains of coronaviruses, they can swap genetic material in a process called recombination. | 他和其他专家说，自然的演化完全有能力制造一种新的大流行病毒。蝙蝠和许多其他动物都是冠状病毒的宿主。当一只动物被两种冠状病毒感染时，它们可以交换遗传物质，这一过程被称为重组。 |
| But some scientists thought it was too soon to conclude something similar happened in the case of SARS-CoV-2. After all, the coronavirus first came to light in the city of Wuhan, home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers study dozens of strains of coronaviruses collected in caves in southern China. | 但一些科学家认为，对于SARS-CoV-2是否也是以类似方式出现，下结论还为时过早。毕竟，冠状病毒首先是在武汉市发现的，那里是武汉病毒研究所所在地，那里的研究人员研究数十种在中国南方洞穴中采集的冠状病毒。 |
| Still, that a top lab studying this family of viruses happens to be located in the same city where the epidemic emerged could very well be a coincidence. Wuhan is an urban center larger than New York City, with a steady flow of visitors from other parts of China. It also has many large markets dealing in wildlife brought from across China and beyond. When wild animals are kept in close quarters, viruses have an opportunity to jump from species to species, sometimes resulting in dangerous recombinations that can lead to new diseases. | 尽管如此，研究这个病毒家族的顶级实验室恰好在流行病出现的城市，完全可以是巧合。武汉是一个比纽约市还大的城市中心，来自中国其他地区的游客源源不断。它还拥有许多大型市场，交易从中国各地及其他地区带来的野生动物。当野生动物被密集饲养时，病毒有机会从一个物种跳到另一个物种，有时会制造出危险的重组，从而导致新的疾病。 |
| That lab’s research began after another coronavirus led to the SARS epidemic in 2002. Researchers soon found relatives of that virus, called SARS-CoV, in bats, as well as civet cats, which are sold in Chinese markets. The discovery opened the eyes of scientists to all the animal coronaviruses with the potential of spilling over the species line and starting a new pandemic. | 该实验室的研究是在另一种冠状病毒导致2002年SARS流行病之后开始的。研究人员很快在蝙蝠和中国市场上出售的果子狸身上发现了这种被称为SARS-CoV的病毒的近亲。这一发现让科学家们大开眼界，关注任何有可能跨越物种界线并引发新的大流行的动物冠状病毒。 |
| Virologists can take many measures to reduce the risk of getting infected with the viruses they study. But over the years, some accidents have happened. Researchers have gotten sick, and they’ve infected others with their experimental viruses. | 病毒学家可以采取许多措施来降低被他们研究的病毒感染的风险。但这些年来也发生过意外。研究人员因他们用于实验的病毒而患病并感染他人。 |
| In 2004, for example, a researcher at the National Institute of Virology in Beijing got infected with the coronavirus that causes SARS. She passed it on to others, including her mother, who died from the infection. | 例如，2004年，北京国家病毒研究所的一名研究员感染了导致SARS的冠状病毒。她随后把病毒传染给了其他人，包括她的母亲，后者最终死于感染。 |
| In 2020, the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic became a new front in a long-running debate over lab security, one that turns on the question of whether the risks of studying and sometimes manipulating animal viruses outweigh the potential for that work to help guard against future outbreaks. | 在2020年，新冠大流行的起源成为了一场关于实验室安全的长期辩论的新战线，这一辩论引发了一个问题，即研究动物病毒并有时对其进行操作的风险，是否大于其帮助防范未来疫情爆发的好处。 |
| “This kind of research has been controversial,” said Filippa Lentzos, a biosecurity researcher at King’s College London. | “这种研究一直存在争议，”伦敦国王学院 (King’s College London)生物安全研究员菲利帕·伦佐斯(Filippa Lentzos)说。 |
| Chinese scientists and government officials have denied that the Covid-19 pandemic was the result of a lab leak. And a number of outside scientists also dismissed the idea. | 中国科学家和政府官员否认新冠大流行是实验室泄漏的结果。许多外部科学家也否决了这个想法。 |
| Robert Garry, a virologist at Tulane Medical School and a co-author of Dr. Lipkin’s letter, observed that Chinese scientists would have to have collected SARS-CoV-2 and then grown it in a colony of cells, but somehow never publish any details of it even as they published reports on other coronaviruses for years. | 杜兰医学院(Tulane Medical School)病毒学家、利普金那封信的合著者之一罗伯特·加里(Robert Garry)注意到，中国科学家必须要收集到SARS-CoV-2并且在细胞群中培养，但是在多年来发表了其他许多冠状病毒的报告的情况下，这种病毒却始终没有发表过任何相关的详情。 |
| “It makes no sense to me. Why did they hold onto the virus?” Dr. Garry said. | “这是说不通的。他们为什么要把这个病毒留着不发？”加里说。 |
| Other scientists felt that, at the very least, the possibility of a lab leak should be explored. But when Trump administration officials claimed the virus might be a bioweapon, some researchers said, it cast a shadow over the idea of a lab leak. | 其他科学家认为，至少应该探索实验室泄漏的可能性。但一些研究人员表示，当特朗普政府官员声称该病毒可能是一种生物武器时，这给实验室泄漏的假设蒙上了一层阴影。 |
| Those researchers pinned their hopes on a joint inquiry by the W.H.O. and China, even as the Chinese government repeatedly tried to bend the investigation to its advantage. | 这些研究人员把希望寄托在世卫组织和中国的联合调查上，尽管中国政府一再试图使调查对自己有利。 |
| At the same time, believers in the possibility of a lab leak were trying to prepare the ground for scientists to speak more openly about their misgivings. In a series of open letters, a collection of researchers that became known as the Paris group took pains to express concerns about the joint inquiry and uncertainty over the virus’s origins without overtly selling the lab leak theory. | 与此同时，相信存在实验室泄漏可能性的人正试图为科学家们更公开地谈论他们的疑虑做好准备。在一系列公开信中，一群被称为巴黎小组的研究人员煞费苦心地表达了对联合调查和病毒起源不确定性的担忧，但并未公开宣传实验室泄漏的理论。 |
| “I toned down some of the letters myself,” said Nikolai Petrovsky, a professor of medicine at Flinders University in Australia. “The minute we went too far down the path that we think it’s a lab leak, it was just going to be crucified.” | “我自己淡化了信中的一些措辞，”澳大利亚弗林德斯大学(Flinders University)的医学教授尼古拉·彼得罗夫斯基(Nikolai Petrovsky)说。“一旦我们走得太远，说我们认为这是实验室泄漏，我们会被骂得体无完肤。” |
| In March 2021, the W.H.O.-China team released a report that dedicated only four out of 313 pages to the possibility of a lab leak, without any substantial data to back up their conclusion that it was highly unlikely. | 2021年3月，世卫组织-中国团队发布了一份报告，在313页的报告中只用了四页篇幅讨论实验室泄漏的可能性，结论是极不可能发生，但没有任何实质性数据支持他们的结论。 |
| Dr. Iwasaki and like-minded scientists decided they had to push back with their own letter. “We feel that it’s really time to speak up about it, and get more science behind what’s going on,” she said. | 岩崎和与她观点相似的科学家们决定不得不自己写信进行反击。她说：“我们觉得现在是时候站出来说了，并对真相进行更多科学研究。” |
| Yet Dr. Iwasaki stressed that she did not see a clear case for a lab leak. “I’m completely open-minded about the possibilities,” she said. “There’s so little evidence for either of these things, that it’s almost like a tossup.” | 然而，岩崎强调，她没有看到实验室泄漏的明确证据。“我对各种可能性持完全开放的态度，”她说。“这两种说法的证据都太少了，几乎都有可能。” |
| Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and co-author of the letter with Dr. Iwasaki, said that it made other scientists more comfortable talking about what they did and did not yet know about the pandemic’s origins. “That’s what we wanted to have happen,” he said. | 哈佛大学陈曾熙公共卫生学院(Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health)流行病学家、该信合著者之一马克·利普西奇(Marc Lipsitch)说，这让其他科学家能够更自由地谈论他们对大流行起源已知和未知的事情。“这就是我们希望出现的，”他说。 |
| Speaking recently to the former New York Times journalist Donald McNeil Jr., Dr. Lipkin said he was dismayed to learn of two coronavirus studies from the Wuhan Institute of Virology that had been carried out with only a modest level of safety measures, known as BSL-2. | 利普金最近对前《纽约时报》记者小唐纳德·麦克尼尔(Donald McNeil Jr.)说，他对武汉病毒研究所的两项冠状病毒研究感到惊愕，这些研究是在安全级别较低的生物安全二级(BSL-2)实验室进行的。 |
| In an interview with The Times, Dr. Lipkin said this fact wasn’t proof in itself that SARS-CoV-2 spread from the lab. “But it certainly does raise the possibility that must be considered,” he said. | 在接受时报采访时，利普金说，这一事实本身并不能证明SARS-CoV-2是从实验室传播的。“但它确实增加了纳入考量的可能性，”他说。 |
| Earlier this month, Dr. Garry of Tulane argued that the genetic variations in early cases of Covid-19 in Wuhan could be explained by wild animals being brought to animal markets in the city. “If you suppose that the viruses came in through the wildlife trade, then it’s pretty simple and straightforward,” he said. | 本月早些时候，杜兰医学院的加里认为，武汉早期新冠病例的遗传变异可以用野生动物被带到该市的动物市场来解释。“如果你认为病毒是通过野生动物贸易带来的，那么这非常简单明了，”他说。 |
| Even if SARS-CoV-2 jumped from bats or other animals to humans outside of a lab, as Dr. Garry suspects, it will be hard to find airtight proof for that pathway. When animals die, they take their viruses with them. | 即使SARS-CoV-2是从蝙蝠或其他动物身上跳到实验室外的人类身上——就像加里所怀疑的那样——也很难找到该途径的确凿证据。当动物死亡时，病毒也会一同死去。 |
| While scientists have fairly good evidence for how two coronaviruses — the cause of SARS and MERS — jumped from bats to humans, the origins of the other four coronaviruses that infect humans remain a mystery. | 虽然科学家们有相当明确的证据证明两种冠状病毒——SARS和MERS的病因——是如何从蝙蝠传染给人类的，但其他四种感染人类的冠状病毒的起源仍然是谜。 |
| “Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t,” Dr. Garry said. “It can take decades.” | “有时你很幸运，有时你没那么幸运，”加里说。“这可能需要几十年。 |
OK阅读网 版权所有(C)2017 | 联系我们