The pathogen to be modified must pose a serious health threat, and the work must produce knowledge — such as a vaccine — that would benefit humans. Finally, there must be no safer way to do the research.
> "Now, a government panel will require that researchers show that their studies in this area are scientifically sound and that they will be done in a high-security lab."
It does sound like there are concerns. I'm glad that people are keeping their eyes on it. I found this quote interesting as well, regarding publishing the results of such research:
> “Physicists long ago learned to distinguish between what can be publicly available and what’s classified,” he added, referring to nuclear weapons research. “We want to keep some of this stuff on a need-to-know basis.”
I'd prefer if drilling for oil in the gulf were illegal, not legal with regulatory oversite, for example. I don't think a pessimistic outlook on the reliability of federal oversight is unwarranted, given my (admittedly dim) view of how the process has worked in the past.
To be more constructive: I'm up for substantive suggestions for ensuring more transparent and reliable oversite than exists today.
The US still has the largest arsenal of nerve gas in the world, much of it which is still in the queue to be destroyed, much of it still leaking.
What I fear, however, is that this action undermines the Biological Weapons Convention[0].
The convention explicitly allows for research such as this, yes. Nonetheless, it effectively worked as a moratorium on such research, with the US leading by example.
This program creates a situation much like nuclear research, where civil and military use cases exist on a continuum, with the first often being used to cover the second. Note how biological agents, where the US had the moral high ground, have entirely disappeared. Meanwhile, nuclear and chemical agents, which can be produced under the cover of closely related civil industries, are still very much threatening (and killing) people today.
[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_Weapons_Convention
I've always interpreted it as being a corollary to "actions speak louder than words". Simply saying something, or having the intention to do something does not mean it will actually get done.
And how do you know the work will 'produce knowledge?'
A vaccine is impossible to guarantee.
So a bioweapon might not satisfy this criteria. Besides it probably violates other laws, and is thus still illegal.