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mk · 1688 days ago · link · · parent · post: State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses
I'm with b_b. There are plenty of bad places that nature could go eventually that we can quickly. I've been reading a number of these articles, and in the simplest terms, researchers have been asking questions like: "Can I make a bat virus infect human cells if I do this?", then trying it, and publishing their results. Sometimes the changes are specific and intentional, but in many cases, the scientists are driving the viruses to evolve in animals or in culture in artificial conditions. One can appreciate how this research can be elucidating, but one can also appreciate how this research could create conditions that needn't elucidation prior to them being artificially constructed.