You've jumped from "do research" to "making frankenviruses" - which beyond being a sensationalist term with no formal definition, isn't necessarily the sum totality of viral research. Just the bit that the popular press likes writing lurid articles about.

Fair enough, but I'd file gain of function research in that category, it's common, and seeing a possible outcome of it, it's something we need to rethink very carefully.

In that regards, I actually agree with you. It's been the better part of a decade since I saw a talk by a colleague I immensely respect arguing against it, and I think it's value (whether it caused this outbreak or not) is speculative at best.

But I should not that not all viral engineering is gain of function, and while it gets a lot of attention, even in laboratory virology is relatively rare.