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.
If you take a virus that isn't deadly to humans and make it deadly, you are making a weapon. To argue otherwise is to pretend that this process should continue. The very name Gain of Function is used to disguise the true nature. The research is intended to make something dangerous for humans and if successful, create an antidote. The excuse that you are just trying to get ahead of what nature may do some time in the future is like a person who takes a bomb on an airplane thinking that the chances that two bombs on one airplane is very unlikely. In your analogy, you would say that the bomb was not a weapon because the guy didn't intend to kill anyone, at least not today. For that, I will label you a 'mad scientist'.
I don't see how these could not be considered bio-weapons. The funding from a government who sees its primary responsibility to kill people and call it protecting people. To take our tax dollars and call people who disagree with the government 'domestic terrorists'. They are citizens who think their government has lost its way.
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.
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?
We don't have a Department of War anymore. We have a Department of 'Defense'. According to the official narrative, we're not developing weapons because we want to fight wars. We develop weapons and plan for war as a form of Defense. It's a fairly transparent ruse that everyone understands.
When Fauci's NIAID began distributing massive funds for bioterrorism 'defense' research, public health became an arm of the Department of War ... oops, I mean the Defense Department. So, yeah, sure, these aren't bioweapons. They're bio-'defense' weapons. Like nukes, everyone who develops them is doing it in the interests of defense.
Unfortunately, the people who are developing these defense weapons aren't as intelligent as the people who developed nuclear weapons. The COVID disaster proved that they're probably the most hubristic idiots on the planet. They've managed to convince our politicians that they can accomplish magical things - the can predict how a virus will emerge, they can create self-spreading vaccines that will keep everyone healthy. But they can't do any of those things, and they're playing with dangerous, mutagenic materials that can do a lot of harm. The only way to stop them is to be honest about the fact that developing these 'defensive' weapons is mutually assured destruction.
"...scientists outside their dangerous field, and many of us are outside their dangerous field looking on in horror not because we aren’t familiar with the underlying biology or laboratory techniques, but because we are familiar with the biology and have ethical objections to the work they’re conducting."
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.
If you take a virus that isn't deadly to humans and make it deadly, you are making a weapon. To argue otherwise is to pretend that this process should continue. The very name Gain of Function is used to disguise the true nature. The research is intended to make something dangerous for humans and if successful, create an antidote. The excuse that you are just trying to get ahead of what nature may do some time in the future is like a person who takes a bomb on an airplane thinking that the chances that two bombs on one airplane is very unlikely. In your analogy, you would say that the bomb was not a weapon because the guy didn't intend to kill anyone, at least not today. For that, I will label you a 'mad scientist'.
I don't see how these could not be considered bio-weapons. The funding from a government who sees its primary responsibility to kill people and call it protecting people. To take our tax dollars and call people who disagree with the government 'domestic terrorists'. They are citizens who think their government has lost its way.
I don't buy you 'not a bio-weapon' argument.
With every generation an individual's potential power increases, but their wisdom resets.
We're probably doomed unless the individual power leves are reset via catastrophes that aren't enough to wipe out humanity.
Self-replicating problems are the worst kind of problems
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.
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?
Crucial , well communicated article, Al, thank you!
We don't have a Department of War anymore. We have a Department of 'Defense'. According to the official narrative, we're not developing weapons because we want to fight wars. We develop weapons and plan for war as a form of Defense. It's a fairly transparent ruse that everyone understands.
When Fauci's NIAID began distributing massive funds for bioterrorism 'defense' research, public health became an arm of the Department of War ... oops, I mean the Defense Department. So, yeah, sure, these aren't bioweapons. They're bio-'defense' weapons. Like nukes, everyone who develops them is doing it in the interests of defense.
Unfortunately, the people who are developing these defense weapons aren't as intelligent as the people who developed nuclear weapons. The COVID disaster proved that they're probably the most hubristic idiots on the planet. They've managed to convince our politicians that they can accomplish magical things - the can predict how a virus will emerge, they can create self-spreading vaccines that will keep everyone healthy. But they can't do any of those things, and they're playing with dangerous, mutagenic materials that can do a lot of harm. The only way to stop them is to be honest about the fact that developing these 'defensive' weapons is mutually assured destruction.
Wow thank you! But now please write another short version for our friends who do not have the curiosity and patience to read all of this.🙂
"...scientists outside their dangerous field, and many of us are outside their dangerous field looking on in horror not because we aren’t familiar with the underlying biology or laboratory techniques, but because we are familiar with the biology and have ethical objections to the work they’re conducting."
Count me in that box of humans.
12 Monkeys. Good movie that illustrates the risk.