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What if Terrorists Could Weaponize Covid?
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
The Importance of Gain of Function Research
Gain of function and dual use are two ways of describing enhancing biological microbes to do something other than what they do in nature. Almost everything we do with biology, whether it's make an artificial sweetener or make penicillin or make some sort of cancer drug or anything else, a synthetic dye for clothing enhances the original microbes. The question is, is it a gain of function that could cause harm? So if we are going to rethink the norms of science, formulate new rules about when to be transparent and when not to be, who does that? Is there a model for doing that successfully in the past? That's a really painful question.
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