gr8eman wrote: “To me, the question is Why? There is only one answer to that, and it’s because it could be used as a weapon.”
No, there are other possible answers.
First, ever since the Spanish Flu virologists have been fascinated by that pandemic. They see themselves as potential hero’s on a mission to prevent the second coming of the Spanish Flu. GOF is one way they see themselves preventing that.
Second, GOF is a way of achieving academic prestige. A virologist who invents another pandemic bug and produces a vaccine would be at that pinnacle of that career field.
Third, it is an excellent avenue to obtaining research funds. There is no end to GOF research, there would always be new paths to explore, and new research proposals.
Your comments are all excellent, but the one listed above is key. It also tells you something very important about how broken biomedical science is.
It's very easy to alter the spike protein in a coronavirus. It wouldn't take more than a few weeks to produce engineered corona with an altered binding repertoire because of changes made to the spike protein. It's not 'science', and the techniques involved are fairly pedestrian.
That 'stature' could be earned doing such pedestrian work is a joke.