The article explains pretty well why this particular research isn't dangerous. It's technically gain of function, but if you prohibit any research that adds antibiotic resistance to bacteria you eliminated essentially all of microbiology research.

Perhaps it would be better to address the issues that can lead to an incident rather than stopping all research. Even counting the COVID-19 pandemic, the overall impact of gain-of-function research on health is still positive.

Knives are dangerous if used dangerously. Let's ban knives.

Has that ever been proved? All sources I can find are riddled in ambiguity. It's "one of two scenarios". I suppose we'll never really know for certain.

Even if it was true:

1) It would be lacking bio safety, not GoF research. There are plenty of dangerous viruses stored away for research, which could escape too. Would you like to ban storage aswell?

2) Viruses mutate even if we stop GoF research. So why not try to stay ahead of the curve.

3) Many people died because conspiracy fueled rejection from vaccines even up to masks. Or would you like to elaborate how many millions died because of the new mRNA vaccine?

Quite strong:

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-r... https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comment...