Posted on 01/29/2023 7:01:27 PM PST by LadyDoc
Policymakers have long grappled with how to handle experiments that might generate potentially dangerous viruses. Now, officials are considering whether oversight needs to be expanded.
Over 150 virologists have signed on to a commentary that says all the evidence to date indicates that the coronavirus pandemic started naturally, and it wasn't the result of some kind of lab accident or malicious attack.
They worry that continued speculation about a lab in China is fueling calls for more regulation of experiments with pathogens, and that this will stifle the basic research needed to prepare for future pandemics.
The virologists issued their statement a day before advisors to the federal government completed a review of the existing oversight system for experiments that might make existing pathogens even worse.At a meeting Friday, those advisors voted to endorse, with minor modifications, a set of recommendations that call for expanding a special decision-making process. This process currently weighs the risks and benefits of experiments that might change "potential pandemic pathogens" in ways that could make them more dangerous.
Their advice will now get considered by officials at multiple agencies and groups across the government who will want to weigh in, including the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Security Council.
(Excerpt) Read more at houstonpublicmedia.org ...
the article ends up with this quote: "But he says there's a very small part of that research "where there is the potential for very high risk if things go wrong, either by accident or on purpose. And so we have to get the balance right, between the risks that could unfold and the potential benefits."
by the way: this is about bird flu, not covid. A recent outbreak of bird flu in minks in Spain suggest that this virus can now infect mammals, and this could be a lot worse than covid.
Soros types will answer the question just as many criminals answer:
“If I don’t do it, somebody else will. So might as well be me.”
That’s how they think.
These morons will continue to believe that. Until it happens again. And again.
That novel was not about gain-of-function pathogens.
Gain-of-function experiments need to be stopped.
Oh it’s a very good thing to do.
Also keeping top secret documents in your garage and giving them to your son to help him make deals with foreign governments... it’s totally cool, everyone does it.
And opening our borders to anyone who wants to come across and sign up for food stamps, welfare, free school... nothing to worry about.
Yeah. And also, super-high inflation is because the economy is doing so well. Everyone knows that.
Let’s see. I feel like I’m forgetting two or three things.
never
My favorite author. Read every book.
Trivia- only man to have the number one movie, tv show, and book at the same time.
At the time of publication, “gain of function” would have been almost unthinkable because the horrors of Dr. Mengele and the Third Reich were still in much of the adult public consciousness.
While time “may” “erase all wounds” it also vanquishes too many memories of great evils.
In two decades few will remember the lockdowns, maskings, and “vaxx” mandates of the 2020s.
When is it OK to make germs worse in a lab?
when was it EVER OK to make germs worse when not for war?
Judy Mikovitz Plauge. It’s so true I received notice from CMS about continuing Ed for mecfs.
Unthinkable by the public?
The governments have been doing this stuff for decades. Some researchers believe that at least one of the epidemics in earlier decades was the result of a lab leak as well. Weaponizing diseases has been the focus of a lot of research in this country since 1945, they imported all those “not an ardent nazi” scientists under operation paperclip. Edgewood Arsenal got the chemical types, maybe Ft. Detrick? This stuff is just the tip of the iceberg.
It’s probably a safe bet whatever research was done since then in the West has been stolen or sold by the usual suspects. In fact the early reports seem to indicate that’s exactly what happened. Something something about research being done in Chapel Hill NC, some spies in Canada as well. When the Feds outlawed GOF it wasn’t because they suddenly gained a conscience or anything like that.
Agreed.
Sadly.
I don’t know whether eagles can cry but these past three year should have unleashed a torrent.
When biolabs were admitted to in Ukraine, at least of a couple of the pro Zelensky handles tried to explain things away using the same.
For a long span post WWI, chem and biowarfare were considered big no-nos. Bio especially because it could not be controlled.
Now we have a good number of Henry Wu types (the InGen scientist in Jurassic Park) full of hubris thinking 'its different'. Some, even when confronted with what they have wrought, will deny it.
Biography of a liar:
Nell Greenfieldboyce (née Nell Louise Boyce) is an American radio journalist. She is a science and technology reporter for National Public Radio (NPR) and lives in Washington, DC.
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