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.
Benefits in terms of surveillance? Start a pandemic to learn about pandemics? You have some bad takes, amigo.
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Agreed. Is there any evidence out there that gain of function research has helped prevent large scale pandemics?
Because there sure is evidence that very research has caused a large scale one.
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It is also unlikely to stop because it has an unlimited fiat money printing machine funneling it. Do American citizens vote on the budget of the NIH? Do they buy bonds to fund these projects? Don't they deserve to know what they're getting their wealth debased for? I respect your view point but it is strange to see so much sympathy for unsupervised projects fueled by money created out of thin air.
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