fyi Northern Ireland (including County Armagh) is a separate country from 'Northeast Ireland', though the same island.
As someone with 'considerable experience in the field' you should also know that such 'sick experiments' are a tool to probe the effect of genetic changes and understand which natural mutations might lead to future pandemics.
While there are always risks (which are valid to be concerned about), the intent is to remain a step ahead of natural evolutionary processes, which already do a fine job of 'gain-of-function' without us.
Call it playing god or apologism if you like, but the fact is this sort of work can bring benefits in terms of surveillance and developing therapeutics ahead of time, so it's unlikely to stop.
In 2009 as Paypal were blocking donations to torrent sites. Didn't really take it seriously until later though.
GENESIS