A lab in Wuhan, China was fiddling with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 when that virus was accidentally or intentionally released into the world.
I would like such a thing not to happen again. I adhere to the radical political doctrine that the world should not be repeatedly ravaged by avoidable pandemics. I especially don’t want to see a pandemic considerably worse than the COVID-19 pandemic.
But politicians and scientists continue to make pandemics more likely by permitting, paying for (with our money), and even defending the gain-of-function research that weaponizes viruses.
Why, oh why? I hear you ask. The reason, they say, is so they can learn how to better combat these more virulent forms.
And if somebody happens to unleash a lab-enhanced virus capable of killing a third of the human race, will words like “sorry” and “oops” and “now we know how to stop it better the next time” undo the damage?
This danger is one theme of a talk given by U.S. Senator Rand Paul last November. As Paul, author of Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up, puts it, “To think that we can prevent future pandemics even as we continue to seek, catalog, and manipulate dangerous viruses is the height of hubris. . . . We must reform government and rein in out-of-control scientists and their enablers.”
Senator Paul echoes MIT biochemist Kevin Esvelt, who says “Please stop.”
Let us have no more experiments “likely to disseminate blueprints for plagues.”
Policymakers and investigators have no inalienable right to threaten the well-being of us all.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly
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