Conspiracy theorists seek to ban crucial life-saving viral research, because reasons
Banning "gain of function" viral research solves a problem that exists only in the minds of science-denying conspiracy theorists.
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Science reports that Wisconsin is among states where anti-science populists in the state legislature are trying to ban a type of virus research, presumably because a successful national defense against another human or agricultural outbreak might show that those elitist ivory tower scientists were right after all.
At issue is “gain of function” research, a term invented by anti-Chinese conspiracy theorists who continue to believe (or who pretend to believe), in opposition to all evidence to the contrary, that SARS-CoV-2 was created in a Chinese lab. (Only a tiny fringe of virologists loudly promote this, for reasons known only to themselves — the scientific consensus remains that SARS-CoV-2 evolved naturally, as was easily determined when its genome was sequenced in early 2020.) “Gain of function” refers to virus research that makes a virus more infectious to a given host, which is a crucial step in developing responses hopefully before the virus does the same thing itself. Part of protecting people from viruses involves creating variants of the virus to develop defenses against them as well. This is done in labs who are hoping to prevent the next pandemic affecting humans, but also more often in labs working to protect the food supply for reasons of national security. Outbreaks such as hoof-and-mouth disease can easily destroy our nation’s food security, so scientists at the US Department of Agriculture (a division of the Department of Homeland Security) spend much of their time doing what’s now suddenly called “gain of function” research to protect national (and world) food security.
This is largely a knee-jerk reaction to the disproven and entirely unscientific “lab leak” conspiracy theory of COVID-19. If the SARS-CoV-2 virus was jacked up using “gain of function” research in a lab (it wasn’t), then we should ban all “gain of function” research.
No knowledge-driven scientists oppose this type of work; most recognize it as a human triumph that we know how to do these things to protect ourselves. It’s only people driven by scoring political points among populists who want to be seen as protecting the Everyman from the evil Scientist. Knowing that John Q. Public who reads the news is not very scientifically literate, these populist pundits and lawmakers use clever language — note how “gain of function” sounds like the scientists are trying to give the virii superpowers, as if they’re working against us; when even the Wikipedia article shows it to be a far deeper and nuanced field.
“Gain of function” research also includes stuff like crops, trying to make them more drought resistant or pest resistant, or more fruitful. Who would oppose that??
Evidently it’s now more important to some lawmakers to cast American virologists, who literally work on their behalf, as evildoers bent on creating another pandemic to kill their fellow Americans. Curiously, the lawmakers urging this are mostly the same ones who claim that COVID-19 is a hoax and does not actually exist. It is cognitive dissonance on a mind-numbing scale.
For more on how these biocontainment research facilities work, see the Skeptoid episode on Plum Island.
This is some seriously crazy-town shit. Scientists and lawmakers do not mix. They never have, and they probably never will. Putting science on trial is unacceptable.
While I agree that banning viral research is bad policy, I would also be in favor of full transparency of all virus research. Howerver, I don't think the issue of COVID origins is as blatent and obvious as your article makes it out to be. I saw this video:
https://youtu.be/t-OqyUtDar4
on substack which while funny seems to indicate backpedaling on origins. Every paper and article I see seems to indicate that the issue is still not resolved and may never be resolved. There doesn't seem to be a scientific consensus on this issue. What seems to be important to me is for scientists to do their job, as your article's premis states, but I think the subtext of the article implies that there is consensus. I think part of that job has to be to continue to work on the origins so we can stop future outbreaks.
"Frankenstein" and the mad scientist has tremendous staying power (probably from the movies, since I doubt many people read the original book.) You'd think the Mad Scientist trope would get boring after a while, but it doesn't seem to. With such constant reinforcement, it may never subside.