Hacker News Reader

Comment by evrydayhustling | Hacker News Reader

Science prestige games suck. But the lynchpin of this thesis is the assertion that gain-of-function research didn't (and won't) improve our ability to respond to epidemics with vaccines and policies. That point isn't substantially argued in the post, author just says that one COVID vaccine was developed in hours.

Anyone near the field able to give a perspective?

View on HN

I think the author just has a complaint about the scientific process (and believe me, all scientists do…) and is trying to fit this topic to that complaint. I doubt that it’s helpful. If we think there aren’t enough safeguards about this kind of research, I think the solution is to restrict funding, not to assume that changing the research incentive structure would stop it.

One might accuse the author of playing a game of his own, where his writing is driven by a desire to get clicks rather than a desire to communicate factually...

The Moderna covid vaccine was developed in a few hours, because extensive work had already been done on the SARS virus. They could very easily tell by homology which part of the RNA sequence coded for the spike protein. I suppose theoretically, generating novel viruses could prepare us for similarly quick vaccine design in the absence of a natural predecessor, but that would be a huge stretch requiring us to invent vast numbers of novel viruses.

IMHO research about human body in general and immune system in specific is more useful to improve our ability to respond to epidemics with vaccines than gain-of-function research.

》vaccine was developed in hours

Difficult part is to isolate an unknown virus and sequebce its RNA and proteins. With covid we got lucky because Chinese scientists published that very fast. But it could easily take several months.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com