Isn't the above-the-board justification for gain-of-function the promise of built-for-purpose microbes? The dream of "we spilled a million litres of toxic soup, here's a jar full of bacteria that eat that stuff and poop out useful compounds" or "let's make a virus that selectively over-infects tumours to weaken them?"

We might have the usual problem with every high-powered technology, from the fission reaction to the silicon fab: the underlying science is viewpoint-neutral, but people will be overwhelmed by doom scenarios associated with it.

Gain-of-function in the virology context doesn’t mean creating helpful microbes/viruses. It means purposely engineering pandemic-caliber viruses so that (the theory goes) we find them before evolution produces them naturally and so have time to study them and create vaccines before they are widespread.

This seems to be one of the most dangerous propositions that I have ever heard of. Given human history, human psychology, human error, politics etc.

What am I missing here? That biolabs are the only human made thing that can be made absolutely 100% secure?

As far as I know you're not missing anything and this is why gain-of-function research was banned in the US for a while. EcoHealth Alliance outsourced it to China in the mid-2010s because of the ban, so technically none of it was happening in the US.

> It means purposely engineering pandemic-caliber viruses

This is not true.

GoF includes any research that amplifies specific characteristics. Transmissibility or severity of infection are just two of those possible dimensions.

For example, the research that enables us to produce insulin (and tons of other biologic medicines) with E. coli is GoF.

I lean on the side of banning GoF that's designed to increase transmissibility of a contagion, but that is indeed just a subset of GoF generally.

Fair enough that it has that meaning more generally in biology. My point is 100% of the policy discussions about it are referring to that particular subset—no one means producing insulin when they talk about the risks of GoF.

Yes but this is what causes confusion when scientists push back against proposed bans which seems like a legitimately insane and evil position to take.

We can sharpen the language and say "ban GoF research that increases transmissibility of infectious disease", for example.

I think the best term of art is ePPP (enhanced potential pandemic pathogens), which clearly limits that scope. Academics use that reasonably often, though politicians and the general public unfortunately don't yet.

There's also GOFROC (gain of function research of concern). That's better than just GOF, but rather vague.

This is useful! Thank you for chiming in :)