Critics say these researchers risk creating a monster germ that could escape the lab and seed a pandemic...
Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist who directs the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard School of Public Health, called review panels “a small step forward.”
Recent disease-enhancing experiments, he said, “have given us some modest scientific knowledge and done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemics, and yet risked creating an accidental pandemic.”
Therefore, he said, he hoped the panels would turn down such work.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih...
And yes we do have reason to believe this type of research caused the pandemic.