zlacker

From what I read, it’s only about researchers looking to publish something interesting rather than some complicated planned CCP plans.

It’s rather simple to do the so called ’gain of function’, you let the virus have it’s run with bat cells and add lots of human cells in petri with them. Because there is no immune system, the virus have not much to stop it. Slowly it adapt to human cells, you can change the type of cells so it can adapt to other receptors and so on. Those articles where published before the whole crisis erupted.

>>alfor+(OP)
Thanks, that makes a lot of sense.

>>alfor+(OP)
While there's some use to gain of function studies (they give us what genetic markers to look for for particularly human-adapted pathogens), researchers have been concerned about laboratory accidents for a long time. Like, it was a keynote talk at a conference I was at in 2008, which estimated a GoF study had an expected number of deaths of, IIRC, 1500. Every one - obviously in the form of a long-tailed but highly consequential outcome.

One of the keys there is that's not uniquely Chinese as a problem. Those researchers were talking about American labs.