At The New Atlantis, M. Anthony Mills offers an in-depth look at the dangerous games virologists have been playing with deadly viruses:

On the one hand are virologists, specialists in the subfield of microbiology who study viruses. Many of them have long argued that experiments in which pathogens are genetically manipulated in ways that can render them more pathogenic, virulent, or transmissible — so-called “gain-of-function” experiments — provide invaluable sources of knowledge to help us prepare for future pandemics. On the other hand are critics, including microbiologists as well as experts in biosecurity, biosafety, and public health, who have long questioned whether these experiments are worth the risk. One of their primary concerns has been that rather than helping us prepare for future pandemics, gain-of-function experiments conducted on potentially dangerous pathogens could accidentally trigger a pandemic — precisely the kind of scenario some believe transpired in Wuhan in late 2019.

“How Virologists Lost the Gain-of-Function Debate,” Spring 2025

During the COVID pandemic, the public was given to understand that the very idea that COVID may have been a gain-of-function accident was a racist conspiracy theory. What a gift that was to the largely inhouse debate over the manufacturing of deadly viruses. A debate that should, of course, be public — preferably before another pandemic breaks out.

Mills offers a balanced assessment:

The history of this debate, and my conversations with experts on both sides of it, point to a conclusion that many in the scientific community may find hard to swallow: that the governance of gain-of-function research was never a technical problem to be solved internally by specialists themselves, however pure their motives and however valuable their expertise. Rather, it was always a political issue of public concern, requiring accountability by the scientists and moral deliberation by the country. By failing to fully grapple with this reality, the experts brought upon themselves the crisis of public doubt that was looming over them. “Virologists Lost”

and

“The inevitable rejoinder to the claim that the wider public should have had a greater say in formulating policy about science is that lay citizens lack the requisite expertise. This point is true as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far. The modern scientific enterprise can only operate with public dispensation — all the more so when it comes to science that has the power to put the public at risk, as the Covid pandemic made all too plain. Failure to heed this lesson goes a long way toward explaining why the virologists lost the gain-of-function debate — and why so many Americans have lost their faith in scientists in general. “Virologists Lost”

It’s no use demanding that the public trust scientists if they do nothing to deserve trust.