The Intercept has published a whole series of articles on this topic, which include leaked emails from people involved: https://theintercept.com/collections/ori

The Intercept has published a whole series of articles on this topic, which include leaked emails from people involved: https://theintercept.com/collections/origins-of-covid/ https://theintercept.com/collections/origins-of-covid/ This article from the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology is also candid and informative: https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/policy/112121/gain-of-function-research-all-in-the-eye-of-the-be https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/policy/112121/gain-of-func... There are also clips out there of Ralph Baric talking openly about making modified viruses (can't find it now but I believe he mentions it casually in passing in this lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE_H7dTqJXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE_H7dTqJXU ). I guess I get why these researchers are so cagey about sharing in simple terms what they do. The facts have a huge potential to be twisted and weaponized politically in this situation, and I'm sure the rationale for the research is very complicated. That said in my opinion there needs to be transparency around these kinds of incredibly risky ecological engineering projects. Another thing,"self-disseminating vaccines": there are researchers who propose the creation and release of engineered viruses in animal populations adjacent to people (to prevent pandemics with zoonotic origins of course!): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1254-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1254-y https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=self-disseminating+vaccines https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=self-disseminating+vacc... It's hard to ignore the double edged sword of research like this though. Is there any question that this "biosecurity" technology has inherently troublesome uses as bioweaponry? The potential for sabotage by misanthropic / malthusian actors is also really unsettling. The game theory involved is probably really gnarly and I can only wonder what twisted offspring of mutually assured destruction intelligence agencies are using to grapple with this stuff, and to rationalize this kind of research. During the cold war there was a kind of presumption that every life is worth protecting. Unfortunately I have a feeling that with the reality of climate change this belief is not as universal as it once was. I worry that it's quite common for people in positions of power to have Malthusian beliefs about overpopulation and stuff in the face of climate change. (To be clear, I'm not in any way suggesting covid-19 was intentionally released as a tool of depopulation. I'm making a point about the game theory that has so far prevented nuclear catastrophe... I have trouble seeing what holds it together under the normalization of ethical frameworks that see depopulation as necessary, and wondering how that factors into the chess games that governments, defense agencies and their propagandists are playing right now...)