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Given what he's done I certainly hope he's not crazy. A better question is whether creating deadly viruses is ethical.

EDIT: I should also note that I'm not judging whether what he's done is ethical (it's discussed at great length in the article) but if I had to take sides, I'm leaning towards being in favor of his work ... most research will have some degree of risk and in this case, I'm certain we'd rather not see another flu pandemic in the wild.

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As a member of an academic institution, it is very likely his research had to go before the institutional review board that governs how to conduct research in an ethical manner. IRB's are far from perfect, but they are charged with weighing risk vs benefit to society.

That's a very hard to answer question.

The risk is obvious, and e.g. a pandemic strain which followed the Ford swine flu mess is thought to have originated from a Soviet bioweapons lab.

But there's great risk in our not understanding just what the bleep made the 1918 flu pandemic so lethal for such unusual age groups.

Either could result in 10s of millions needlessly dying.

And another pandemic will happen sooner or later, regardless. It would be nice if we had the foresight to plan ahead and maybe figure out a way to minimize loss of life before it's too late.

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