They certainly can come up with plenty of reasons its valuable for them. Cigarette smokers can come up with a lot of justification of why cigarettes shouldn't

They certainly can come up with plenty of reasons its valuable for them. Cigarette smokers can come up with a lot of justification of why cigarettes shouldn't be banned. It seems like the GoF research shows a lot of "oh look we made a super virus. It would be very bad if a virus did this in nature." Perhaps we can get some data on specifically _how bad_ that particular function would be. What do we get beyond that? Like you said, are there any other benefits that outweigh the risks? Maybe we're all just really bad at understanding risks. I see a lot of comparisons between nuclear power. We know exactly how much dangerous material is in a nuclear reactor. Those physics don't evolve. Nuclear material doesn't reproduce and reinfect endlessly. A nuclear power plant needs a chain of failure to be harmful. A virus only needs one particle to infect.