The upside of lifting the ban is research can proceed on helping the medical community better prepare for pandemics. The dark side of the equation, however, is this research can be repurposed to create biological weapons for which there will be no antidote or cure.
Epidemiologist, Marc Lipsitch, at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, in Boston, argues that these types of experiments shouldn’t be happening at all and that they risk “creating an accidental pandemic.”
Those who praise the lifting of the ban describe nature as a much worse bioterrorist than any biomedical researcher working with a pathogen in a lab.
The issue of research into enhanced pathogens remains controversial.
States Richard Ebright of Rutgers University, “I am not persuaded that the work is of greater potential benefit than potential harm.”
There are application funding requirements that researchers need to demonstrate. These include:
The reasons for the 2014 pause included a series of biocontainment accidents with anthrax and avian flu at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Even with the new requirements, critics argue that accidents will happen again because of human error.
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