To be fair, vaccines can be created in a matter of days now so the benefit of gain of function research to anticipate the virus that will cause the next pandemic is modest at best.
Temper this proposed modest benefit with the potential cost in terms of human adapted viruses being accidentially/intentionally released in the wild given the vagaries of both biolab security protocols in the labs accross the world conducting this kind of research and individual human psychology makes the justification of such research a pretty hard sell.
Temper this proposed modest benefit with the potential cost in terms of human adapted viruses being accidentially/intentionally released in the wild given the vagaries of both biolab security protocols in the labs accross the world conducting this kind of research and individual human psychology makes the justification of such research a pretty hard sell.