Jay Bhattacharya is now the National Institutes of Health (NIH) director, and one of his first priorities is to do something that the last three administrations have been unable to accomplish.
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Bhattacharya must implement ironclad, binding regulations on researchers who want to play “Mad Scientist” and experiment with what’s known as “gain of function” research.
Gain-of-function research is modifying a virus at the molecular level to make it “more capable of doing something, such as replicating more efficiently, infecting a wider range of species, or becoming more transmissible.”
Short version: it makes a bad bug worse.
Gain-of-function research has a place in science as long as strict controls are placed on scientists and the labs where the research is conducted. The benefits of crafting powerful
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