In a free society, preventing and undoing a bioweapon attack or a pandemic is much harder than committing it.
> And considering that our default fate is extinction (by Sun's death if no other means) - we need all the good we can get to avoid that.
“In the long run we are all dead" -- Keynes. But an AGI will likely emerge in the next 5 to 20 years (Geoffrey Hinton said the same) and we'd rather not be dead too soon.
But in reality you can’t protect from all the possible dangers and, worse, fear-mongering usually ends up doing more bad than good, like when it stopped our switch to nuclear power and kept us burning hydrocarbons thus bringing about Climate Change, another civilization-ending danger.
Living your life cowering in fear is something an individual may elect to do, but a society cannot - our survival as a species is at stake and our chances are slim with the defaults not in our favor. The risk that we’ll miss a game-changing discovery because we’re too afraid of the potential side effects is unacceptable. We owe it to the future and our future generations.
Is it? The hypothetical technology that allows someone to create an execute a bio weapon must have an understanding of molecular machinery that can also be uses to create a treatment.
Yes, there is probably some overlap in our understanding of biology for disease and cure, but it is a mistake to assume that they will balance each other out.