Why are we still funding gain-of-function research?
If someone had asked you in winter 2019 your views on gain-of-function research, you would likely have given them a blank look. But since the Covid pandemic, and with the Wall Street Journal revealing in February that the US Department of Energy now thinks Covid-19 is likely to have come from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, gain-of-function research — often conducted to make viruses more infectious and more deadly — is a matter of enormous significance and should be at the forefront of a national conversation about the very real risks it poses. For more than a century virologists have worked to identify and understand viruses, whether or not they’re pathogens, for reasons ranging from pure science to applications in everything from agriculture to vaccines.
