Gain-Of-Function

Artist's Conception of a Virion

There are scientists studying the microbes and virions that cause disease. This research is essential if we want to learn more about these disease causing agents, and there is much more to learn because they are very complex and we really don't know very much about them now.

But there are also people / scientists studying these disease causing agents to see if they can find ways to make them more deadly. This is bio-weapons research and is essentially a criminal activity.

However, what can be learned in one area can be applied in the other, mostly because we don't know very much so any knowledge gained is a step towards our ultimate goal of understanding how everything in the universe works.

I say we don't know very much, but that's not really true. We know a great deal, but compared to how much we still need to learn in order to completely understand these things, it is not very much.

A post by David Warren got me started. Pages on the National Institute of Health (NIH) and Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology didn't make me feel any better.

It probably didn't help my state of mind that I have been reading The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston, which is all about recent smallpox and anthrax research / disasters.