We don’t (so far as I can tell) know whether the reason why private biological labs haven’t ended up in the article is
because there aren’t very many of them
because they actually have better safety practices and therefore don’t often have bad accidents
because they tend not to work on dangerous things and therefore don’t often have bad accidents
because, although they have lots of accidents, they don’t have to report them in the same ways as government ones do
something else I haven’t thought of
but in any case it remains true, so far as I can see, that (1) the article presents (I’m guessing because it has) absolutely no evidence of any biosafety failures at private labs, but (2) it tries to insinuate some sort of connection between biological lab accidents and “tech billionaires”, and I think that’s a slimy thing to do.
(I think private biological labs ought to be subject to some regulation, including having to report major safety incidents. I do not know exactly what they are currently required to do and mistrust the spin put on it by the article, and therefore have no opinion on whether in fact they should be regulated more stringently than they currently are. My finger-in-the-wind guess is that they probably should be. I mention all this merely to clarify that it’s not the conclusion I’m objecting to here.)
Do Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg run their own private biological research labs? (Asking the question is not a lightly-obfuscated way of saying I think they don’t; I don’t know what they do.)
So far as I can tell, Jim Walton doesn’t fund anything much (though maybe I just didn’t look hard enough). My point wasn’t about the activities of the specific billionaires I mentioned; maybe Bill Gates is more than averagely interested in biological research. It’s that it’s not any more true that “your favourite tech billionaire could …” than that “your favourite person from a super-rich family could …” or “your favourite hedge-fund billionaire could …” or “your favourite oil baron could …” or whatever.
Zuckerberg funds the CZ Biohub which on the website describes itself as:
The Chan Zuckerberg Biohub is a nonprofit research center that brings together physicians, scientists, and engineers from Stanford University; the University of California, Berkeley; and the University of California, San Francisco. Working at CZ Biohub are some of the brightest, boldest engineers, data scientists, and biomedical researchers who together with our partner universities seek to understand the fundamental mechanisms underlying disease and develop new technologies that will lead to actionable diagnostics and effective therapies.
One of their projects is:
Viral Replication and Transcription
Amy Kistler’s group combines synthetic biology, genetic, biochemical, and computational approaches to dissect and compare the minimal components, host factor requirements, and function of diverse viral replication and transcription complexes.
To me, that sounds like the kind of thing for which you would want mandatory safety reporting.
The Gates Foundation spends a lot of research dollars on infectious disease research as well.
Jim Walton has the Walton Family Foundation which has as its focus areas:
Environment Protecting Rivers, Oceans and the Communities They Support,
K-12 EducationCommunity-Designed, Community-Driven Educational Change and
Home Region Supporting Communities in Northwest Arkansas and the Arkansas-Mississippi Delta
People with different interests tend to fund different projects. Tech billionaires are more likely to fund something with biosafety relevance than someone like Jim Walton. Jim Walton could theoretically fund the same things as Zuckerberg and Gates but he doesn’t.
I do think that’s relevant to whether it makes sense to make the point.
I agree that the CZ Biohub’s description of its work sounds as if some of it is the sort of thing that ought to be formally regulated.
I am not convinced that “tech billionaires are more likely to be interested in biology than non-tech billionaires” is sufficient justification for the bogus-looking attempt to link “tech billionaires” with biological lab accidents.
We don’t (so far as I can tell) know whether the reason why private biological labs haven’t ended up in the article is
because there aren’t very many of them
because they actually have better safety practices and therefore don’t often have bad accidents
because they tend not to work on dangerous things and therefore don’t often have bad accidents
because, although they have lots of accidents, they don’t have to report them in the same ways as government ones do
something else I haven’t thought of
but in any case it remains true, so far as I can see, that (1) the article presents (I’m guessing because it has) absolutely no evidence of any biosafety failures at private labs, but (2) it tries to insinuate some sort of connection between biological lab accidents and “tech billionaires”, and I think that’s a slimy thing to do.
(I think private biological labs ought to be subject to some regulation, including having to report major safety incidents. I do not know exactly what they are currently required to do and mistrust the spin put on it by the article, and therefore have no opinion on whether in fact they should be regulated more stringently than they currently are. My finger-in-the-wind guess is that they probably should be. I mention all this merely to clarify that it’s not the conclusion I’m objecting to here.)
Do Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg run their own private biological research labs? (Asking the question is not a lightly-obfuscated way of saying I think they don’t; I don’t know what they do.)
So far as I can tell, Jim Walton doesn’t fund anything much (though maybe I just didn’t look hard enough). My point wasn’t about the activities of the specific billionaires I mentioned; maybe Bill Gates is more than averagely interested in biological research. It’s that it’s not any more true that “your favourite tech billionaire could …” than that “your favourite person from a super-rich family could …” or “your favourite hedge-fund billionaire could …” or “your favourite oil baron could …” or whatever.
Zuckerberg funds the CZ Biohub which on the website describes itself as:
One of their projects is:
To me, that sounds like the kind of thing for which you would want mandatory safety reporting.
The Gates Foundation spends a lot of research dollars on infectious disease research as well.
Jim Walton has the Walton Family Foundation which has as its focus areas:
People with different interests tend to fund different projects. Tech billionaires are more likely to fund something with biosafety relevance than someone like Jim Walton. Jim Walton could theoretically fund the same things as Zuckerberg and Gates but he doesn’t.
I do think that’s relevant to whether it makes sense to make the point.
I agree that the CZ Biohub’s description of its work sounds as if some of it is the sort of thing that ought to be formally regulated.
I am not convinced that “tech billionaires are more likely to be interested in biology than non-tech billionaires” is sufficient justification for the bogus-looking attempt to link “tech billionaires” with biological lab accidents.