It's a basic research tool used in viral vaccinology. The US had a ban on GoF research that was rescinded in 2018 in part so GoF work could be conducted on MERS.

Important detail: it wasn't even a ban. It was a moratorium that prevented public funding for GoF research. Privately funded research was still allowed.

Thanks! My only point here is to push back on any idea that GoF research on viruses is unprecedented or necessarily malign.

If a basic research tool kills 3.5 million people, then maybe it should stop being a basic research tool.

I do not think it is basic and, in the field, hugely controversial. They tried really hard to keep that discussion inside the field, not allowing the general public to have a say in if they want to tax-fund the creation of pandemic-potential viruses in BSL2 labs. Stuxnet would be comparable to GoF coronavirus. Stuxnet also got out and hit Germany. Think they did that to research better virus scanners?

> The Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have systematically thwarted efforts by the White House, the Congress, scientists, and science policy specialists to regulate GoF research of concern and even to require risk-benefit review for projects involving GoF research of concern.

> In 2014, the Obama White House implemented a “Pause” in federal funding for GoF research of concern. However, the document announcing the Pause stated in a footnote that: “An exception from pause may be obtained if head of funding agency determines research is urgently necessary to protect public health or national security”. Unfortunately, the NIAID Director and the NIH Director exploited this loophole to issue exemptions to projects subject to the Pause –preposterously asserting the exempted research was “urgently necessary to protect public health or national security”– thereby nullifying the Pause.

> In 2017, the Trump Administration announced a Potential Pandemic Pathogens Control and Oversight (P3CO) Framework that implemented a requirement for risk-benefit review of GoF research of concern. However, the P3CO Framework relies on the funding agency to flag and forward proposals for risk-benefit review. Unfortunately, the NIAID Director and the NIH Director have declined to flag and forward proposals for risk-benefit review, thereby nullifying the P3CO Framework.

I'm sitting next to someone who now works in the field and he disagrees with you. Moreover, you wrote a comment upthread suggesting that the real driver for all this work is military contracts, which is simply false. Perhaps you & I are best off not litigating this.

With what specifically? All of it, even the quote? If we are going to do an appeal to Oracle authority by proxy, I should at least get to interrogate it, and I agree, that would get tedious fast. Maybe he can comment?

I am not really suggesting the real driver of GoF of concern is military contracts, except maybe when looking at public funding sources.

> Meticulous investigation of U.S. government databases reveals that Pentagon funding for the EcoHealth Alliance from 2013 to 2020, including contracts, grants and subcontracts, was just under $39 million. Most, $34.6 million, was from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), which is a branch of the DOD which states it is tasked to “counter and deter weapons of mass destruction and improvised threat networks.”

> Most of the remaining money to EHA was from USAID (State Dept.), comprising at least $64,700,000 (1). These two sources thus total over $103 million.

https://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/peter-daszaks-ec...

I do think our back-and-forth can be useful, at least I learned something and removed some uncertainties.

It's a bad idea (regardless of whether it's how COVID originated or not), but there are theoretical benefits. Make a GoF virus, observe how it interacts with humanized nice, see how different therapeutic agents work.

The issue is that it's unlikely that any knowledge gained from the GoF research meaningfully accelerates the delivery of treatments or a vaccine, which is the hypothetical benefit that makes up for the increased risk of escape.

This argument has been brewing for at least a decade from scientists creating new variants of avian flu.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fears-grow-over-l...

The ostensible reason is research on what the range of possible threats are, where you would think that learning how to fight them would be part of that, but is instead surprisingly sometimes "not my department" according to Josh Rogin who wrote a book on this.

More unofficial and non-scientific reasons that may not necessarily be in play are weapons research, and fetishizing of harmful viruses by sociopathic scientists working alongside other scientists.

Antiviral drug design, learning probable epidemic spillover pathways, immunogenetics... of course, it is still too dangerous, especially without some sort of artificial kill switch.

Even a kill switch isn't that useful. You just need a single virion to manage to drop the gene that encodes the kill switch to get your doomsday device.

Two: Study how to counteract them if they jump species.

Biological weapons -although an option is a pretty poor option because one, it’s not very lethal, but it can be economically effective.

Source for your first point?

Josh Rogin, who wrote a book that covers the arc of events around COVID and the work at the Wuhan lab, says the opposite. He says the people doing GoF research generally consider counteracting the viruses to be not their department.

However, he's more of an Asia expert, not a lab expert, so he could be wrong about this. That's why I wonder if your source is the same source I had originally when I had the same belief.. my source at the time was simply my own guess based on common sense, but according to Josh that's not how the research is set up.

Furthermore, did our own government fund such research in China via third party research labs? This seems to be going even beyond the initial “conspiracies” for the virus.

Formally: Trying to predict spillover events. Ranking viruses by risk. They do this by having the virus infect human cells, so they can estimate if this would happen naturally in the future. Another is to work on vaccines.

Informally: Military biowarfare defense and offense.

Why are scientists doing this? Military and government funding galore. If you have the equipment and laboratory, you can publish papers forever. It is easier to do GoF, than to actually predict spillover events.

The most prominent critic of gain-of-function research, going so far as to call it gravely irresponsible, is the molecular biologist Dr. Richard H. Ebright.

https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/an-inter...

History will remember.

A way to do bio weapons research and call it something else to avoid treaty violations?

The research is more to defend against bio weapons than to actually develop a bio weapon. A coronavirus wouldn't be an effective military weapon for a superpower like China or the USA. They already have weapons of mass destruction which are far more powerful and accurate with less "friendly fire" risk.

Plausible deniability is a top level requirement in any operation, and friendly fire is not always a serious concern.

Either way, these are only getting easier to make, and the response made it worth incalculably more.

As Abraham Lincoln would have said: The best way to predict the future is to create it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's generally the military that's interested in this kind of research, which implies something about the intended use.