zlacker

Although I am there with you in spirit, a global ban is effectively meaningless.

It is unenforceable from the start. All the major world powers would continue their research (perhaps slightly less openly) simply from a MAD angle (it is irresponsible to ignore the value of a pathogen that no one else has seen and you have the antibiotics for).

We are living in dark times in terms of our technological capability and the aggressiveness of state actors.

I would argue that the only chance we have is to reign in the behaviours of our states. Crazy and seemingly impossible, but stopping science/tech is far beyond reach.

>>bhawks+(OP)
Most of the gain of function research is either well meaning to understand disease or part of normal science published in journals. Banning it would reduce the amount done greatly.

>>bhawks+(OP)
There are very strong controls on experiments on humans, for example, and they seem to work, for the most part. Governments may circumvent them in secret, but when it's found out people were experimented on, there's a scandal.

So, while it may not be 100% foolproof, it would be quite meaningful.

>>tim333+lb
Even if these researchers have good intentions, they're human, and humans make mistakes. If someone doing gain-of-function research lets a new deadly virus or bacteria out into the wild by mistake, their mistake can can cause a pandemic like the one we're currently suffering from.

I don't think there's anything that we could learn from gain-of-function research on deadly viruses and bacteria that would be worth risking millions of deaths.

>>tim333+lb
>Most of the gain of function research is either well meaning

It doesn't matter how good your intentions are when your behavior is extremely dangerous and can (and possibly did) result in a global pandemic that kills millions of people. Risk/reward calculations should be performed without regard to intent.

>Banning it would reduce the amount done greatly.

It would also reduce the risk of a man-made virus killing millions of people.

>>mkolod+Fs1
To be clear, I would guess that if SARS-CoV-2 was created in a lab in Wuhan, it was created with good intentions, and escaped from the lab by mistake. And rather than figuring out where to point fingers, we can work together to prevent future pandemics by preventing research that creates deadly diseases.