Hi, thanks for the comments! Some broad thoughts in response:
Re
My impression is that one of the key defenses that the Fauci/NIH/EcoHealth/etc. offered for their research in Wuhan was that it was technically not Gain of Function, even if some parts of it might sound like Gain of Function to the layperson, which seems in tension with this claim. Do you think they were wrong about this?
It’s hard for me to go into detail on a public platform on this (just to be cautious to my job) but I can broadly say that there’s a difference between research that is a) gaining a function, b) gain-of-function as defined by informal norms in the biomedical community, and c) what is formally DURC / GoF research as defined by U.S. government policy. The EcoHealth grants fall confusingly as or as not GoF depending on how GoF is defined.
Re
Speaking as an outsider, the amount of regulation on what you refer to as ePPP (adding functionality to make diseases more dangerous) seems shockingly low. The article you link to tries to make it sound like there are a lot of safeguards, but it seems to me like virtually all the steps only apply if you are seeking federal funding. This is not a standard we accept in other areas! If you are making a car, or building a nuclear power plant, or running a bank or airline, you have to accept extremely intrusive regulation regardless of your funding, and for many things—like nuclear weapons or money laundering—US regulation has world-wide reach.
I fully agree! I think there are many concrete needs in this space including legal regulation over DURC /ePPP/GoF research in the U.S. particularly but also every country that practices such research. To achieve such regulation requires a ton of work, consensus building, and thought into what constructive regulation that captures risk while not alienating / shutting down an entire research field is tough and part of the nuances that I think we as a community need to work towards
Hi, thanks for the comments! Some broad thoughts in response:
Re
It’s hard for me to go into detail on a public platform on this (just to be cautious to my job) but I can broadly say that there’s a difference between research that is a) gaining a function, b) gain-of-function as defined by informal norms in the biomedical community, and c) what is formally DURC / GoF research as defined by U.S. government policy. The EcoHealth grants fall confusingly as or as not GoF depending on how GoF is defined.
Re
I fully agree! I think there are many concrete needs in this space including legal regulation over DURC /ePPP/GoF research in the U.S. particularly but also every country that practices such research. To achieve such regulation requires a ton of work, consensus building, and thought into what constructive regulation that captures risk while not alienating / shutting down an entire research field is tough and part of the nuances that I think we as a community need to work towards