Ask HN: Why is gain of function research allowed given possibility of lab leak?
Given that a lab leak may have led to the pandemic, shouldn't gain of function research be banned for now?
"It has been said critically that there is a tendency in many armies to spend the peace time studying how to fight the last war."
- J.L. Schley
We need to fight the next war, not the last war.
So, if we have gof research going on and it's being covered up we most definitely should be worrying about where it came from because it's likely to happen in that same area again if nothing is put in place to prevent in the future. In this case, every bit of political maneuvering we have in place to punish China and whoever else was involved in ruining the lives of millions for almost 3 years SHOULD happen.
No, we shouldn't just move on. The only people saying stuff like this are the ones that were wrong and/or malicious in their actions regarding COVID. They don't get off that easy.
Of course not.
It's bad, whether it caused COVID-19 or not.
From discussion before the Wuhan lab was built: "worries surround the Chinese lab, too. The SARS virus has escaped from high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times, notes Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. Tim Trevan, founder of CHROME Biosafety and Biosecurity Consulting in Damascus, Maryland, says that an open culture is important to keeping BSL-4 labs safe, and he questions how easy this will be in China, where society emphasizes hierarchy. “Diversity of viewpoint, flat structures where everyone feels free to speak up and openness of information are important,” he says." - https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.21487
The link above is a fairly readable summary of a conference in which academics debated the need for gain of function research. As you can see, this was not a settled topic, and even some of the supporters of GoF research admit doubts about its utility.
To summarize the paper I posted:
1. Gain of function research, broadly construed, also includes adapting viruses to live "in culture", i.e. in a dish of cells. That's a fundamentally useful and necessary part of research, so a blanket ban could unnecessarily complicate basic research.
2. GoF is useful for evaluating the potential impacts of mutations observed in the wild. Like, we see a particular mutation circulating, but its significance is unknown, so we introduce it into a model virus in a lab to test what impact it has. This helps us decide which strains we should choose to develop vaccinations for. This can also be done prospectively, GoF can identify particularly nasty variants, which we can then prioritize for more intense intervention if they're observed in the wild.
3. There's a basic research interest in understanding the molecular details of how viruses infect humans. GoF allows researchers to probe this much more easily than the random sampling we get from wild viruses. This research has led (in part) to basic insights in virology, like the role of the furin polybasic cleavage site in coronaviruseses in increasing virulence.
Personally, I think that's a bunch of bs. The stuff they're doing to these diseases isn't likely to occur naturally. I suppose you could make the argument they're preparing to stop some possible bio-weapon that might be created.
I also think a lot of it has to do with money. In Pfizer's case they're wanting to get the jump on vaccine sales down the road. If they're putting that much money into creating a vaccine for a variant created through gof... well that opens a lot of doors for nefarious activity and the possibility of someone intentionally releasing it goes up.
;)
But seriously, this is what I’d ask a human, and ChatGPT can’t provide.