I’d suggest work that would allow vaccines to be developed much more quickly falls into this category—it was mentioned in the 80,000 Hours podcast with Tom Kalil.
“I was able to get some additional funding for this new approach [to develop vaccines more quickly] and my primary motivation for it was, maybe it’ll help in Ebola, but almost certainly if it works it will improve our ability to respond to future emerging infectious diseases, or maybe even a world of engineered pathogens.”
Again, I disagree this is obvious. Just some ways in which this could be negative:
It could turn out that some of the research required for rapid vaccine development can be misused or exacerbate other risk.
The availability of rapid vaccine manufacturing methods could lead to a false sense of confidence among decisionmakers, leading to them effectively neglecting other important prevention and mitigation measures against biorisk.
I’d suggest work that would allow vaccines to be developed much more quickly falls into this category—it was mentioned in the 80,000 Hours podcast with Tom Kalil.
“I was able to get some additional funding for this new approach [to develop vaccines more quickly] and my primary motivation for it was, maybe it’ll help in Ebola, but almost certainly if it works it will improve our ability to respond to future emerging infectious diseases, or maybe even a world of engineered pathogens.”
https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tom-kalil-government-careers/
Again, I disagree this is obvious. Just some ways in which this could be negative:
It could turn out that some of the research required for rapid vaccine development can be misused or exacerbate other risk.
The availability of rapid vaccine manufacturing methods could lead to a false sense of confidence among decisionmakers, leading to them effectively neglecting other important prevention and mitigation measures against biorisk.