We should warn these agencies that gain of function research is like playing Russian Roulette, but it would go in one ear and out the other.
Edit: Vouching for the reply wasn't enough to resurrect it. It was a claim with no support other than an appeal to authority, but that means you reply to it with a counter not bury it. It sidestepped the question of whether adapting an animal virus to humans has sufficient gain for the risk.
"If all gain-of-function stops, you will have no vaccines for flu. You will have no vaccines for any of the other diseases, because all of that manipulates a virus or a pathogen to gain a certain function to be able to make a vaccine."
Also Fauci played a bit of Motte&Baily the other way, by defending ALL GoF research with that argument.
People opposed to gain of function are specifically opposed to attempts to make viruses more communicable or more dangerous
EDIT: if downvoter(s) could provide specific examples of how GoF experiments have materially contributed to the development of ANY deployed vaccine I would be grateful (and update my position). For "the vaccines stop if GoF stops" to be true, it should be possible to name at least one vaccine which critically relied on GoF research, right?