3 ms·

Well one way to put it is: We already know these viruses can gain function. If we can simulate that in the lab and then study the results we can plan how to dea

Well one way to put it is: We already know these viruses can gain function. If we can simulate that in the lab and then study the results we can plan how to deal with the situation if it arises in the wild. It's worth noting that this article isn't being completely transparent about the moratorium, it wasn't just a decision by the US to no longer do that sort of reseach, they were just pausing whilst they reconsidered how they evaluate whether to allow & fund that research. There was no real question of completely banning GOF research. They released that report in 2016[1]. Secondly, they cite a weird website called nationalfile.com for the claim Fauci funded the Chinese lab (in an article written now, not at the time the funding was claimed to be made) - I don't believe that. If you actually look at the NIH website what they're passing off as Fauci fundign the Chinese lab, is a 2018 article about collaboration with the lab in studying an outbreak of a disease in pig farms in Guangdong. Which is not exactly the shooting up bats with SARS is it, and it's certainly not the type of research that was effected by the GOF moratorium. >The Wuhan lab is now at the center of scrutiny for possibly releasing the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and causing the global Covid-19 pandemic. This is entirely speculation. There's no evidence of this being the case. Basically what I'm saying is that this website is a fake news site. It's citing other fake news sites, spreading misinformation and mis-representing government reports. The controversial claims are baseless - and often uncited, and the citations that are there are either to other misinformation sites- literally, waht is the nationalfile.com? [1]:https://osp.od.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/NSABB_Final_Report_Recommendations_Evaluation_Oversight_Proposed_Gain_of_Function_Research.pdf https://osp.od.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/NSABB_Fina...

api 7y ago
I can see that, but it still seems risky and of dubious value. I am not convinced any vaccine research is going to transfer from a synthetic virus to humans, and animal studies also have issues transferring. Good high risk research is high risk high payoff. This seems very high risk low payoff to me. Then there is smallpox. The idea of doing anything with smallpox samples other than placing them in an ultra high temperature autoclave is horrifying. That stuff is extinct in the wild. It should be extinct from the timeline entirely. I am suspicious of Asia Times, but also of the drive to blame this on China. I raised my question in the abstract since so far I see no concrete evidence that COVID-19 originated in anyone's lab whether Chinese or American.
- Traster 7y ago
  Absolutely true, it's risky, and that's why we have strong government regulations about what research to do and how to do it. I think we can reasonably argue about whether those regulations are strong enough, but I actually think the process (in the US atleast) is working. They were allowing this research under strict conditions, they found out that actually mistakes were more likely to happen after some incidents, so they took a full 2 years to completely re-evaulate, produce a full report and a new regime designed by experts.

api 7y ago

I can see that, but it still seems risky and of dubious value. I am not convinced any vaccine research is going to transfer from a synthetic virus to humans, and animal studies also have issues transferring. Good high risk research is high risk high payoff. This seems very high risk low payoff to me. Then there is smallpox. The idea of doing anything with smallpox samples other than placing them in an ultra high temperature autoclave is horrifying. That stuff is extinct in the wild. It should be extinct from the timeline entirely. I am suspicious of Asia Times, but also of the drive to blame this on China. I raised my question in the abstract since so far I see no concrete evidence that COVID-19 originated in anyone's lab whether Chinese or American.

Traster 7y ago
Absolutely true, it's risky, and that's why we have strong government regulations about what research to do and how to do it. I think we can reasonably argue about whether those regulations are strong enough, but I actually think the process (in the US atleast) is working. They were allowing this research under strict conditions, they found out that actually mistakes were more likely to happen after some incidents, so they took a full 2 years to completely re-evaulate, produce a full report and a new regime designed by experts.