[rook166]

> If you ask a gain-of-function proponent, they will say that by creating viruses that might emerge in nature, you get to understand zoonotic jumps from animals to humans better and possibly prevent them. Specifically, you get a head-start on developing vaccines for them. This possibility of curing future diseases might be true in some cases. But Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine was developed in a few hours back in January 2020.

I've been wondering about this for the last few months, I feel like this "better prepare for future viruses" argument is substantially weaker now — coronaviruses were a well-known group of viruses, there was already research directed at gain-of-function work for this family of viruses, and yet as far as I'm aware the mRNA vaccines that were developed derived no benefit from any of that research. So whether or not the virus came from a lab, why should we fund this kind of work since it seems not to be very useful?

[greazy]

There's more to GoF research than developing vaccines. Sometimes its trying to understand host virus interaction, virus evolution, zoonotic events. The list goes on. The majority of primary research is not at all interested in vaccine development.

For coronaviruses they're a huge family of viruses. Sometimes it's not transferable between species

[TazeTSchnitzel]

The argument the post is presenting seems like it could be a straw man. Gain-of-function research would surely be useful to things other than vaccines, which might even be more important than vaccines? For example, figuring out in what conditions viruses jump hosts and therefore how to reduce the likelihood of new epidemics.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Why wouldn't Gain-of-Function be helpful for research on oncolytic viruses (viruses that target cancer cells)?