What they were researching was the mechanisms that cause the viruses to first leap from animals to humans, something very important to understand in preventing future outbreaks of such dangerous viruses. SARS, Swine Flu, Avian Flu, Ebola, HIV, etc.
Sometimes things in science can be dangerous, or can be later misused, but that doesn't mean the research to understand how animal to human transmission happens in the first place is necessarily nefarious or done with the intent to weaponize, etc.
I know "gain of function" is easy to misrepresent to be some evil weaponization thing, but that's not actually what was being studied or why.
It's much easier to make a bio weapon by taking an already existing animal virus and coaxing it into becoming human transmissible. There are TONS of animal viruses that you would absolutely never want to cross into humans, stuff of nightmares. For a less advanced country with less capability, like China, these are shortcuts that could be very effectively used to create a plethora of deadly bio weapons on the cheap. It would make no sense that China wouldn't be exploiting that potential. We must by default operate under the assumption that any event like this is deliberate. Otherwise we risk treating every attack as an accident or happenstance.
Not actually true.
What they were researching was the mechanisms that cause the viruses to first leap from animals to humans, something very important to understand in preventing future outbreaks of such dangerous viruses. SARS, Swine Flu, Avian Flu, Ebola, HIV, etc.
Sometimes things in science can be dangerous, or can be later misused, but that doesn't mean the research to understand how animal to human transmission happens in the first place is necessarily nefarious or done with the intent to weaponize, etc.
I know "gain of function" is easy to misrepresent to be some evil weaponization thing, but that's not actually what was being studied or why.
It's much easier to make a bio weapon by taking an already existing animal virus and coaxing it into becoming human transmissible. There are TONS of animal viruses that you would absolutely never want to cross into humans, stuff of nightmares. For a less advanced country with less capability, like China, these are shortcuts that could be very effectively used to create a plethora of deadly bio weapons on the cheap. It would make no sense that China wouldn't be exploiting that potential. We must by default operate under the assumption that any event like this is deliberate. Otherwise we risk treating every attack as an accident or happenstance.
So all the other viruses that have made the leap to humans were all intentional, man made bioweapons?