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Comment by jtc331 | Hacker News Reader

There’s a natural fork in the road here which is why this is so contentious. The best argument gain of function proponents have for their research (besides weaponization of course) is to create the next big thing in a lab first so that we can figure out how to neutralize it. The argument the anti-GoF advocates have is that creating the next big thing in a lab leads eventually/inevitably to at least one of them getting out.

The responses are effectively inherently opposite hence strong disagreement.

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> The best argument gain of function proponents have for their research (besides weaponization of course) is to create the next big thing in a lab first so that we can figure out how to neutralize it

Did that actually help in this case? Or are gain-of-function advocates the science equivalent of employees who want to rewrite your webapp in the language du jour? They say it's for the benefit of the company (humanity) but really what they want is to play with cool toys and get promotions.

I don't understand how this argument has any traction at all. My understanding is we had the COVID vaccines formulated within weeks of the initial outbreak. The problem is, it then took many months of large scale testing, and then scaling production to make the vaccine readily available. In the meantime, the virus spread across the globe and mutated into forms that the vaccine isn't very effective against. Treatments seem to be in a similar position as well. How are you going to test a treatment for a virus that only exists in a lab, and is safely contained?

Months, and it didnt happen at WIV who was doing gof research thus should be the first one with best results according to the above theory. Quite opposite happened, China with all the power of WIV behind it was last with the vaccine whose efficiency is highly debated but visibly shaky.

That's a clear condemnation of the defense for GoF practices that basically goes "make in lab first, so we can prepare".

Nuke Game Theory all over again, with AGI to add too!

The fundamental difference with nuclear theory is that nukes don't self-assemble more nukes.

The exponential replication of biological pandemics means there are very different optima.

Whether that's in favor of GoF or anti-GoF, I can't say. It's a tradeoff between {increased risk of pandemic & more prepared for pandemic} vs {decreased risk of pandemic & less prepared for pandemic}.

A sane response probably means we should build two neutral, BSL-4 (+) labs and require by UN treaty that all GoF research take place there, outlawed in the rest of the world, with verification inspection of labs.

Of course, you'd be prying power out of the hands of the US/Russia/China, so there'd have to be a pretty big bone to get them to bite.

Which would probably look like complete autonomy and confidentiality within the lab, in their respective areas. With strict perimeter and time-quarantine -based controls.

> The fundamental difference with nuclear theory is that nukes don't self-assemble more nukes.

It's worse than that: nukes don't learn to become even more powerful nukes while being used.

> BSL-4 (+) labs

One of the issues is that effective safety in labs is virtually impossible in reality (lab leaks that are effectively non-material events are relatively high frequency even from the best labs).

That’s the fundamental difference from the anti-GOF side. The fundamental difference from the pro-GOF side is that understanding exactly how a nuke works gets you no closer to being able to protect a population from nukes because there is no such thing as a nuke vaccine.

Your suggestion seems like a likely workable compromise if one of those labs is primarily in the US/Euro sphere and the other is primarily in the Russia/China sphere, with enforced transparency.

Yeah, I pontificated about physical location for a while and... wow, that'd be a difficult set of negotiations.

Probably Switzerland, because, hey, Swiss and history.

Other than that, it's almost have to be as neutral / third-party of a state as you could find.

Maybe New Zealand or one of the small island nations that's willing to declare neutrality in exchange for hosting?

Islands and caves are hard to argue against.

Is there any concrete evidence that gain-of-function research actually increases preparedness for pandemics? It seems like the benefits are all still very hypothetical? Considering it would need to prevent a massive pandemic just to break even at this point, perhaps it's time to throw in the towel.

IMHO it's not the same, very different nonce and factors of control leading to quite different dynamics

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