I said "gain of function research of concern", which is vague but seems to have become the standard phrase to convey that narrower sense. There's definitely some grey, but the WIV's work was pretty deep in the black.
I'm reading more about lentiviral vectors now, and not totally comforted to see all the ways the earlier generations could regain replication competence. That still seems much less frightening to me than GOFROC, which is deliberately just one containment failure away from a novel pandemic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw-nR6-4kQQ&t=2466s
I said "gain of function research of concern", which is vague but seems to have become the standard phrase to convey that narrower sense. There's definitely some grey, but the WIV's work was pretty deep in the black.
I'm reading more about lentiviral vectors now, and not totally comforted to see all the ways the earlier generations could regain replication competence. That still seems much less frightening to me than GOFROC, which is deliberately just one containment failure away from a novel pandemic.