Comment by chaostheory | Hacker News Reader

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Comment by chaostheory | Hacker News Reader

Because gain of function research is dangerous. It’s also what likely turned Covid into a pandemic.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S07554...

https://www.newsweek.com/controversial-wuhan-lab-experiments...

https://www.newsweek.com/covid-lab-leak-china-virus-nuclear-...

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/10/covid-origins-invest...

https://www.propublica.org/article/senate-report-covid-19-or...

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bies.202000...

The article explains pretty well why this particular research isn't dangerous. It's technically gain of function, but if you prohibit any research that adds antibiotic resistance to bacteria you eliminated essentially all of microbiology research.

Both of the article's technique can much better be described as "removal-of-function" research IMHO.

Perhaps it would be better to address the issues that can lead to an incident rather than stopping all research. Even counting the COVID-19 pandemic, the overall impact of gain-of-function research on health is still positive.

Knives are dangerous if used dangerously. Let's ban knives.

Welcome to the UK.

Someone compiled a virus, compilation is dangerous, let's ban compilers.

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