these attempts to play god always fall prey to the most basic sins. just because someone says they “want to do good” doesnt mean they effecticely can. humans cannot handle the power.
i dont believe in trading lives just so we can fund research grants.
A good reference article.
For more than a decade, a substantial chorus of the world's foremost experts in the relevant disciplines have been calling for an end to gain-of-function research. This isn't some sudden trend, or a misinformed knee-jerk reaction.
This is the result of patient deliberation and research building an irrefutable case, which has made convincing empirical inroads unto near academic consensus.
To refer to organizations like Cambridge WG as "chuckleheads" is really beneath what I hope is our standard on HN.
If you haven't already, I suggest thumbing through this abbreviated list of publications and reports, and look at the pre-COVID19 warnings issued by researchers at every elite institution of medical research in the world:
coronavirus responsible came from GOF work at a lab in Wuhan, China,
that had received NIH funding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_SARS-CoV-2 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8373617/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11406950/
burden is on you to demonstrate that we somehow have anywhere close to a good theory of how genetics work. we dont, it doesnt exist, because we dont know. your friends paychecks dont care much for science.
we actually dont need the vast majority of for profit pharmaceuticals. billions invested in all political parties to make sure you think theyre the savior. thats why theyve banned antibiotics from anyone but an expensive prescription, create vaccines that get banned, and sell a lot of “mental health” drugs that tranquilize society.
E.g. if you add a gene coding for an enzyme that turns molecule A into molecule B, most of the time there simply isn't a way for it to do anything, and the organism will usually adjust production of molecule A to compensate, so that there's barely even the tiniest difference other than it now producing molecule B.