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If you leak pathogen - sure. But there’s no proof of any kind that it happened, and people fear mongering greatly overestimate abilities of gain of function. It
by justapassenger 5y ago
If you leak pathogen - sure. But there’s no proof of any kind that it happened, and people fear mongering greatly overestimate abilities of gain of function. It’s like Skynet vs current state of an AI.
We don’t ban pen tests, just because people who have 0 understanding of it are sacred of it.
- CryptoPunk 5y agoThere is obviously a risk of pathogen leak.. https://armscontrolcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Escaped-Viruses-final-2-17-14-copy.pdf https://armscontrolcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Esc... And there are highly qualified experts in the field who view GoF research as the most likely source of COVID-19, so on what basis are you so confident that it doesn't pose a major risk?
- jtc331 5y agoLab leaks (even without GoF involved) are remarkably common events. So shouldn’t be base our regulation on that reality?
- Symmetry 5y agoThere have been many documented instances of lab leaks. It's even happened with Covid-19 research[1] at least once that was reported, and with the virus being pandemic around most of the world I'd assume there were many other leaks that weren't reported because nobody could prove it came from a lab. And even if the evidence that the original Covid-19 resulted from a lab leak is weak the evidence that the Omicron variant came from a lab is much stronger. Scientists are only human and bio research labs don't have the same culture of continuous improvement and lack of blame that have let the airline industry, say, get to its current level of safety. EDIT: Oops, forgot to add the citation [1] https://fortune.com/2021/12/10/taiwan-investigates-covid-lab-leak-scientist-tests-positive-bite-infected-mouse/ https://fortune.com/2021/12/10/taiwan-investigates-covid-lab...