HackerTrans
TopNewTrendsCommentsPastAskShowJobs

harishcs

no profile record

comments

harishcs
·4년 전·discuss
Though your link doesn't quite say that, there are strong advocates of GOFROC (Doherty, Subbarao and others) at the Peter Doherty Institute, Melbourne. Moreover, one of the leading Australian virologists, Eddie Holmes, is a long-term collaborator of WIV and other Chinese institutes. But these facts by themselves are not indicative of guilt or complicity. What has been missing is an independent investigation of both possibilities (lab related and zoonotic spillover). The baffling reluctance of the US and China to call for such an investigation is very disturbing. However, to talk about guilt is premature at this stage.
harishcs
·4년 전·discuss
Shocking and depressing. It was a gross abuse of the trust that society places in scientists. What is astonishing is that the conlicts of interest of the authors would have been clear with a simple Google search. Yet, no newspaper thought of doing that! More likely, they took a decision to not pursue that angle.

  I didn't know that Calisher is that old !
harishcs
·4년 전·discuss
I agree. Australia was one of the few countries which called for an investigation of all possibilities and the reaction from China was swift and furious. For most countries, concerns about trade and geopolitics outweigh everything else.

The US (and I would add France, which built the BSL-4 lab in Wuhan) has additional reasons not to investigate, as you said.
harishcs
·4년 전·discuss
The elephant in the room, as far as support for GOFROC (gain of function research of concern) goes, is Fauci. Several leading biologists (Marc Lipsitch, David Relman and others) have argued for years that the risk/reward ratio for GOFROC is too high to justify it. But it had to go all the way to Obama for Fauci to change course. Obama imposed a 3-year moratorium from 2014-17, which was lifted soon after he left office. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-flu-virus-risk-wor...