"Ok, we've proven that these reckless virologists killed tens of millions by negligently releasing an extremely dangerous virus, causing a giant global crisis. Who cares?"
Imagine it was just discovered that burning coal caused millions of deaths via air pollution. This would and should be big news! We would be able to do something about it, stop future deaths by finding alternative energy sources. And if it was known that key 'coal science researchers' had hidden this information for the benefits of their prestige and funding, we could do something about them too.
Even that understates the issue because coal is really useful, it sustains technological civilization. GoF research provides at best modest gains to research. It would be like discovering that ultra-high altitude balloons killed millions of people. Obviously you just ban the balloons.
So, which is it – gain-of-function research comparable to millions of deaths from coal burning or hypothetical high-altitude air balloons?
We don't have any data to actually make the switch in this comparison. It is just purely emotional. Gain-of-function might be only marginally useful (like high altitude balloons) or it could open ways to innovative technologies that will cure cancer or Alzheimer or whatever.
My argument is twofold - even if GoF was really valuable, we should still try hard to mitigate the risk. There are types of GoF research that are more or less risky - using humanized mice to acclimatize viruses to our biology is the most dangerous. That particular type is what people have been doing with COVID as recently as a couple of weeks ago. We could also have this work done somewhere extremely remote like St Helena's island or similar locations.
Furthermore, I'm confident that GoF is not valuable for society. We create a whole bunch of more dangerous viruses - what do we do with that information? There are hundreds, thousands, millions of combinations of deadly viruses from different animals and precursors. We can't create pre-emptive vaccines for all of them, for diseases that we invented. It's essentially busywork for virologists - of course they're in favour of it. And let's not pretend that there's no precedent for this stuff leaking. People studying COVID leaked it from a Taiwanese lab, there've been leaks of anthrax and smallpox. Let's not make novel, extremely dangerous diseases!
Of course, we should do GoF research very carefully and with proper safeguards. But saying that it should be banned completely is a different kind of proposal. I have no idea how valuable is GoF research as these things are very complicated but it is not always easy to predict future benefits.
I am less concerned about some occasional leaks. Covid might have leaked from the lab (with or without GoF research) but what I understand, potentially it could have arisen naturally too. Every walking immunosuppressed individual (e.g., HIV patient with poor adherence to medication or organ transplant recipient) is a breeding place of new viral mutations. In the past such people didn't live long. Today due to improved medical care their numbers are increasing significantly. I wouldn't suggest that we should stop providing medical care to such people and let them die as soon as possible out of fear that they could leak some kind of mutated supervirus.
Let's say 7 million died from COVID, which is about what the Worldometer figure is at. If there was even a 10% chance that this research caused the lab leak, then that's about 700,000 deaths! Plus a considerable amount of inconvenience, expense, rage and so on.
COVID was extremely bad, like dropping multiple high-yield nuclear bombs on major cities. There might be some unclear benefits from risky activities like flying armed nuclear bombers over major cities and hoping there's no accident. I could imagine that's convenient for the flight crew, they can use nearby airport infrastructure which is vaguely realistic if you want to disperse your nuclear forces and increase survivability...
But these benefits don't outweigh the gigantic costs and consequences! Unclear benefits don't cut it. We shouldn't be doing GoF work at all, let alone in the slapdash, devil-may-care way we've been doing it. You wouldn't leave nuclear bombs lying around at major airports without a very good reason.
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Notes -
What's the point?No, really -- let's say you win. You've convinced the entirety of the western public that COVID-19 was made in a Chinese biolab. Okay, now what?I have 180°'d on my opinions, thanks.
"Ok, we've proven that these reckless virologists killed tens of millions by negligently releasing an extremely dangerous virus, causing a giant global crisis. Who cares?"
Imagine it was just discovered that burning coal caused millions of deaths via air pollution. This would and should be big news! We would be able to do something about it, stop future deaths by finding alternative energy sources. And if it was known that key 'coal science researchers' had hidden this information for the benefits of their prestige and funding, we could do something about them too.
Even that understates the issue because coal is really useful, it sustains technological civilization. GoF research provides at best modest gains to research. It would be like discovering that ultra-high altitude balloons killed millions of people. Obviously you just ban the balloons.
So, which is it – gain-of-function research comparable to millions of deaths from coal burning or hypothetical high-altitude air balloons?
We don't have any data to actually make the switch in this comparison. It is just purely emotional. Gain-of-function might be only marginally useful (like high altitude balloons) or it could open ways to innovative technologies that will cure cancer or Alzheimer or whatever.
My argument is twofold - even if GoF was really valuable, we should still try hard to mitigate the risk. There are types of GoF research that are more or less risky - using humanized mice to acclimatize viruses to our biology is the most dangerous. That particular type is what people have been doing with COVID as recently as a couple of weeks ago. We could also have this work done somewhere extremely remote like St Helena's island or similar locations.
Furthermore, I'm confident that GoF is not valuable for society. We create a whole bunch of more dangerous viruses - what do we do with that information? There are hundreds, thousands, millions of combinations of deadly viruses from different animals and precursors. We can't create pre-emptive vaccines for all of them, for diseases that we invented. It's essentially busywork for virologists - of course they're in favour of it. And let's not pretend that there's no precedent for this stuff leaking. People studying COVID leaked it from a Taiwanese lab, there've been leaks of anthrax and smallpox. Let's not make novel, extremely dangerous diseases!
Of course, we should do GoF research very carefully and with proper safeguards. But saying that it should be banned completely is a different kind of proposal. I have no idea how valuable is GoF research as these things are very complicated but it is not always easy to predict future benefits.
I am less concerned about some occasional leaks. Covid might have leaked from the lab (with or without GoF research) but what I understand, potentially it could have arisen naturally too. Every walking immunosuppressed individual (e.g., HIV patient with poor adherence to medication or organ transplant recipient) is a breeding place of new viral mutations. In the past such people didn't live long. Today due to improved medical care their numbers are increasing significantly. I wouldn't suggest that we should stop providing medical care to such people and let them die as soon as possible out of fear that they could leak some kind of mutated supervirus.
Let's say 7 million died from COVID, which is about what the Worldometer figure is at. If there was even a 10% chance that this research caused the lab leak, then that's about 700,000 deaths! Plus a considerable amount of inconvenience, expense, rage and so on.
COVID was extremely bad, like dropping multiple high-yield nuclear bombs on major cities. There might be some unclear benefits from risky activities like flying armed nuclear bombers over major cities and hoping there's no accident. I could imagine that's convenient for the flight crew, they can use nearby airport infrastructure which is vaguely realistic if you want to disperse your nuclear forces and increase survivability...
But these benefits don't outweigh the gigantic costs and consequences! Unclear benefits don't cut it. We shouldn't be doing GoF work at all, let alone in the slapdash, devil-may-care way we've been doing it. You wouldn't leave nuclear bombs lying around at major airports without a very good reason.
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