I read a lot of Derek Lowe early in the pandemic and regard him highly, but in this case I think he’s wrong. Going through the comments of Lowe’s post, I came across a link to this essay by a distinguished biologist, Stephen Salzberg, at Johns Hopkins agreeing with Zvi’s perspective.
Salzberg is a computational biologist, not a virologist, but he’s a distinguished professor at a prestigious school and does not seem to be on the fringe politically as far as I can tell If anybody knows more about him, please let me know.
Overall, experts seem to be split on this matter. Which is strong enough evidence for me that the research should have been disallowed or at least regulated to the highest security level. The risks are just too great relative to what was learned from the research.
I have written a letter to my representative in the House encouraging her to legislate more restrictions on gain of function research and referencing the article linked above.
I read a lot of Derek Lowe early in the pandemic and regard him highly, but in this case I think he’s wrong. Going through the comments of Lowe’s post, I came across a link to this essay by a distinguished biologist, Stephen Salzberg, at Johns Hopkins agreeing with Zvi’s perspective.
http://genome.fieldofscience.com/2022/10/gain-of-function-experiments-at-boston.html
Salzberg is a computational biologist, not a virologist, but he’s a distinguished professor at a prestigious school and does not seem to be on the fringe politically as far as I can tell If anybody knows more about him, please let me know.
Overall, experts seem to be split on this matter. Which is strong enough evidence for me that the research should have been disallowed or at least regulated to the highest security level. The risks are just too great relative to what was learned from the research.
I have written a letter to my representative in the House encouraging her to legislate more restrictions on gain of function research and referencing the article linked above.