Yes, more regulation and transparency but also: Place huge financial costs upon the current funders of gain of function research and the individual scientists working on those benches should they violate those regulations. Further, impose criminal consequences upon them should anything go wrong. Write those looming penalties into law. Change the incentive structure to benefit humanity not an elite group of scientists and their funding institutions. And no, as we have so clearly seen with Covid-19, a "vaccine" developed to defend us against the contents of the GOF vial will actually not protect us from the contents of that vial, in fact, it may make things worse. Much worse. Because: The map is not the territory.
It's important to have good enforcement. There were prohibitions against what happened in the development and escape of Covid-19, but Fauci over-rode them.
Yes, and I do think that this is where a culture of transparency - no censorship - no avoiding FOIA - can help. This is also where a revision of incentives is material. Fauci defied the law to keep GOF research going in China because of the huge financial incentives on offer. Remember GOF research is only still allowed at all because of the fallacy that doing it is necessary to enable the development of new vaccines to use against prospective bioweapon pathogens. Those vaccines produce billionaires as we just saw with Covid-19 - even when they prove to be ineffective at stopping infection with or spread of the targeted pathogen. Follow the money. Our pharmaceutical companies have become so wealthy that they control every single aspect of medicine and the science which informs it. They also control the Congress. Step one: Make it illegal for them to advertise directly to consumers. Step two: remove their liability shield re vaccines.
It's good to see Alex Washburne writing again, saying something important. It seems like a couple of decades ago there were stories about the extreme measures to keep the last remaining small pox vials under lock and key in maybe two places in the world. The samples were more secure than the gold in Fort Knox. Is there any way to deactivate and safely dispose of these GOFOC vials?
Even more than the Fail Safe systems put into place for nuclear weapons in decades past, the level of oversight and control over these technologies used in GOFROC must be Fail Safe guarded by immediate policy and action. The Mad Scientists are out there now.
Yes, more regulation and transparency but also: Place huge financial costs upon the current funders of gain of function research and the individual scientists working on those benches should they violate those regulations. Further, impose criminal consequences upon them should anything go wrong. Write those looming penalties into law. Change the incentive structure to benefit humanity not an elite group of scientists and their funding institutions. And no, as we have so clearly seen with Covid-19, a "vaccine" developed to defend us against the contents of the GOF vial will actually not protect us from the contents of that vial, in fact, it may make things worse. Much worse. Because: The map is not the territory.
It's important to have good enforcement. There were prohibitions against what happened in the development and escape of Covid-19, but Fauci over-rode them.
Yes, and I do think that this is where a culture of transparency - no censorship - no avoiding FOIA - can help. This is also where a revision of incentives is material. Fauci defied the law to keep GOF research going in China because of the huge financial incentives on offer. Remember GOF research is only still allowed at all because of the fallacy that doing it is necessary to enable the development of new vaccines to use against prospective bioweapon pathogens. Those vaccines produce billionaires as we just saw with Covid-19 - even when they prove to be ineffective at stopping infection with or spread of the targeted pathogen. Follow the money. Our pharmaceutical companies have become so wealthy that they control every single aspect of medicine and the science which informs it. They also control the Congress. Step one: Make it illegal for them to advertise directly to consumers. Step two: remove their liability shield re vaccines.
It's good to see Alex Washburne writing again, saying something important. It seems like a couple of decades ago there were stories about the extreme measures to keep the last remaining small pox vials under lock and key in maybe two places in the world. The samples were more secure than the gold in Fort Knox. Is there any way to deactivate and safely dispose of these GOFOC vials?
Even more than the Fail Safe systems put into place for nuclear weapons in decades past, the level of oversight and control over these technologies used in GOFROC must be Fail Safe guarded by immediate policy and action. The Mad Scientists are out there now.
http://www.scientistsforscience.org/
And they have powerful domestic and transnational allies whose self declared intentions are equally mad.
Crucial , well communicated article, Al, thank you!