This is a notion that seems to have floated around from the beginning, but I just don't get it.
Somehow, making stronger viruses helps us make better vaccines? What?
And we need to build vaccines against -- what? Viruses that do not exist? Excuse me?
They seem to be either 1) making problems so that they can then make solutions or 2) making solutions for problems that they intend to make later or 3) both.
I think the whole thing is a crime against humanity and should be treated like nuclear proliferation.
Then let’s suppress use of cheap therapeutics against the viruses because that won’t make big bucks for our Big Pharma buddies.
#CrimesAgainstHumanity
Nuremberg 2.0
It’s interesting that you brought up nuclear proliferation.
This very subject - reverse engineering of pathogens - was discussed at scientific meetings I attended beginning sometine in the 1990s, when they were working on digging up corpses that died from 1918 influenza and were buried in the high Arctic (and therefore frozen at low enough temperature to preserve the virus).
This really took off after 9/11, when the bioterrorism defense people and money started to flow.
The arguments about creating animal-human hybrid mice (or worse) to have human-like lungs that the created pathogens could attack were particularly passionate, and nuclear proliferation was always used as an example of how “no research can be protected against misuse”.
This more or less stopped after the US ban on NIH direct funding for this activity, but as we now know, the NIH-EcoHealth-Wuhan pathway was created (and maybe others as well) to evade the ban.
Whether the incredible cross-species affinity of SARS-CoV 2 is caused by its experimental origin or not remains to be seen.
They seem to be either 1) making problems so that they can then make solutions or 2) making solutions for problems that they intend to make later or 3) both.
When Fauci got wind of it, it became an opportunity that was just too good to pass up.
The date on this artical from MIT is what's interesting...
https://news.mit.edu/2011/antiviral-0810
Labs across the world delving into genetics and how virii invade and alter genetic codes in critters needs to be investigated. And, any lab in country A ought to share with any other country — that is how science works outside CNN. Saying (like the CCP is claiming) that since the US worked on bits here and there they/we are to blame is BS. The Wuhan Lab screwed up and like all commie trash regimes, the CCP covered it up.
Gain of function, tho, is a puzzle. Virii arise spontaneously all over the place. Knowing which one is next on the “attack humans or their food chain” pathway would be immensely valuable. The problem is speed — the speed of a virii making the jump and the glacial speed of making a real vax. GofFunction is a way of speeding up virii evolution in a lab so you get a head start. Wuhan screwed up by not keeping it in the lab. See “Andromeda Strain” movie.
My suggestion is put all GofF on a lab in Pacific. With a nuke . If a release alarm goes off, bang. Build another lab. At very least, it will perfect research-at-a-distance and alarm technology.
Yeah, yeah, I know the “AS” movie had the nuke as a bad thing. That was a fluke for dramatic purposes and as a hit on nuclear tech.