The Existential Consequences of Lab Errors

in the lab, many of the things we did might have been considered "gain of function" research because we were artificially creating viral particles which had properties which we either assumed were already in the wild (but we had no sample of) or directly scientifically fruitful to explain some facet of the disease. the chances are good that the viruses we made would be somewhat more dangerous to a person than a wild type virus, but really we did not care about that beyond the confines of the cell culture dish.

to be honest, the added threat of the viruses we made was never something on our mind because with a virus like HIV, the risk of a containment breach and exposure that goes beyond one person is very very low. after all, HIV isn't airborne, and if you notice you've been exposed, you can get treated quickly and not contract the disease. for the sake of reference, to work with HIV, you need biosafety level 2+ facilities.

for something like influenza, however, i cannot possibly imagine working in conditions more permissive than biosafety level 3, even before performing gain of function research. maybe a construct which could lend some additional peace of mind would be to force gain of function research with highly infectious and easily aerosolizable diseases to use a higher biosafety level than default. it'd make the research go much slower and be far more expensive, but it's an additional barrier to the public being exposed -- which is already very unlikely.