There is a bipartisan bill afoot that would cut all taxpayer-based funding for any gain-of-function research into any virus or bacterium for at least next five years.
I disagree.
As the Wuhan Virus, which the People’s Republic of China government released onto the world (whether by design or by incompetent lab carelessness) demonstrates, we need, desperately, to understand such plussed up biologics, whether they’ve been…enhanced…for politico-military use, as our enemies are surely researching, or they’ve naturally jumped from their animal origins to human infectiousness.
That requires gain-of-function research because that’s the only way we’ll be able quickly to understand and then to respond to a new disease. We just need to do the research entirely domestically rather than relying on, or paying, our enemies to do the research for us.
“Monocytes from COVID-19 patients share hyperinflammatory signatures with HIV infection and immunosuppressive signatures with sepsis.”
https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(21)01253-5
Which suggest the careless amplification idea – “a little more of this, and now add some of that … let’s see what we get”
It is hubris in action to think folks know what they’re doing – the sequelae somehow always surprise them.
This argues at least as much for massively improving baseline health in the population, to give a better chance of responding well when “stuff” happens.