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Comment by grzm | Hacker News Reader

Also, it's regulated and overseen by a review board:

> "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.”

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The problem with the US keeping their eyes on it is that you can't trust them. All you need is a few lobbyists and rules and regulations seem to be just words. Hell, Net Neutrality had plenty of people "keeping their eyes on it" too.

You're right that that can be an issue, and one raised in the article. I intended that particular phrase (which admittedly could have been written better) to mean that others outside of the government are watching the process, such as those commenting in the article. Definitely room for improvement, but I don't think this is something that's being done lightly. This whole thing concerns me, but like with many such topics, it's often more complicated than what is summed up in the headline.

I'm not sure why this is being downvoted, other than that it isn't precise. I'm general you can't trust regulators or legislators at the federal level.

If you take this argument to its logical conclusion there is no point arguing about the law in the first place.

Their criticism wasn't of the law but of the undue influence of lobbyists in the American political system.

If you "cannot trust regulators or legislators at the federal level" how can you trust the laws? Who writes them, and who enforces them, if not legislators and regulators, respectively?

Right but they're not saying they don't trust regulators and legislators as a concept, they're saying they don't trust them when they're basically writing what lobbyists tell them to. It's right they don't trust the law, but their criticism isn't of law and regulation. It's of lobbyists.

But I mean if they're really completely compromised then it doesn't much matter. I share the OP's concerns but I think he goes too far in his claims.

We better pay attention to his "too far in claims" before it becomes too far in damage and deaths.

Legislators tend to not write the laws anymore. They just take the copy the lobby groups have prepared in advance and submit it as a bill. Congressmen don't even bother to read the laws they vote for.

They do not literally write the laws in most cases but I don't see how that affects the argument.

Maybe you can’t trust them with novel pathogens designed to kill people.

The regulatory agencies responsible for ensuring compliance with safety and health standards in the USA have a rich history of being cozy with industry (see the fallout after the gulf oil spill, for example). These agencies are overseen by political appointees who are not reliable, and may even oppose the mission of the agency (see the current EPA). Creating an approval channel creates a path to false- positive legality that I don't think should exist. There's a substantive distinction between keeping the whole enterprise strictly verboten and creating an exploitable legal grey area.

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.

If non-reputable agencies wanted to do illegal research, there is literally nothing that would stop them. Look at NSA spying, MKUltra, and the failed nerve gas test that killed hundreds of sheep.

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.

I haven't heard anything about continued leaking. Any sources on that? Googling turns up nothing besides the sheep incident.

Not sure I want to Google "where is US military nerve gas stockpiled?"

that's the chilling effect

Here, Wiki got you covered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_chemical_weapon...

I did google it, there was nothing of import, and that's why I asked the question.

There was a good NBC dateline documentary about it years ago. The biggest stockpiles were being dismantled slowly, but they were indeed leaking, and it was a gargantuan project to neutralize the weapons and containers full of VX. I'm not sure where we're at now. I'll look it up later when I'm home.

Here is the original documentary I watched. There is more information on the individual sites on more recent news and magazine sites, often referenced on wikipedia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjA0EQPeUGM

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