But I think that's basically the problem here. We've decided, as non-experts, to meddle in a field that we don't understand. And so obviously we're making a mess of it.

I'm not suggesting we should butt out entirely as non-experts. I'm saying we should defer to people who really understand the field. In this case, we have plenty of experts who actually know what they're talking about, some on the pro-GoF side and some on the anti-GoF side. The commonality is that I've never once heard any expert from either side express concern about techniques that induce resistance to non-human-use antibiotics. And I suspect the reason I've never heard anyone complain about this is that there isn't really much risk here at all.

So instead of getting upset about how it's scary, and then demanding researchers stop doing research to make us non-experts feel better, we should turn to a stable of people who understand what's happening to help us make these decisions, and stop demanding researchers make us feel better.