Scientists in China have been accused of engineering a “frankenvirus” potentially capable of triggering a “diarrhoea fest” among humans. Swine acute diarrhoea syndrome coronavirus (SADS-CoV) originates in bats and has caused severe disease in piglets.

An outbreak of SADS-CoV hit a pig farm in Guangdong, China, in 2016, leading to the deaths of a number of piglets. The virus has since been detected in pig farms in five provinces of southern and central China, according to a research paper published in the Journal of Virology in November.

The 2016 outbreak was subsequently linked to bat samples collected from Guangdong, leading experts to ask if there was a risk of the virus crossing to humans. In the research paper, a team of scientists in China describe creating an infectious clone of the virus and the results of experiments on baby mice.

Their work, supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Key R&D Program of China, showed viruses with the bat SADSr-CoV S protein have the potential to spill over to humans and animals.

Dr Jessica Rose, who lists her qualifications as a B.Sc. in applied mathematics, an M.Sc. in immunology and a PhD in computational biology, accused those who engineer chimeric viruses of completely losing the plot.

In a post on her blog, Unacceptable Jessica, she wrote: “They are trying to rationalise and outpace Mother Nature with respect to viral recombination events.

“In doing so, they are risking creating far more deadly viruses that might never have come into existence without their tinkering, [which] could [have] potentially devastating consequences.”

She accused the “hubristic” researchers of engineering “frankenviruses” which have the potential to induce a “human-diarrhoea fest”.

Dr Rose said as a microbiologist she understood the value of monitoring the potential of viruses spilling over, but there was “only danger” in making new viruses which could lead to an actual pandemic in humans.

She added: “These novel viruses that didn’t exist before they made them… have the potential to kill humans by explosive diarrhoea if something goes wrong…Can their work developing these frankenviruses potentially lead to deadly explosive diarrhoea disease in humans?”

The scientist called for an end to so-called Gain of Function (GOF) research, which alters an organism’s genes in a bid to enhance how biochemical material functions.

GOF research, which is also known as “dual-use” research, involves experimenting with viruses and other pathogens which have the potential to cause a pandemic. Such research could uncover how infectious agents could become more transmissible or make people more unwell.

But the area is also controversial because some fear scientists risk making a more dangerous microorganism which could escape a lab and trigger a pandemic.

Some believe the COVID-19 pandemic, which claimed millions of lives around the world, emerged in this way.

Research co-author, Yun Luo, of Guangzhou Medical University, has been approached for comment.