"God Complex" Gene Splicers Say, "Full Speed Ahead!" (Like the Titanic Captain)

The Wiktionary defines a "God complex" as "an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility." It seems that virologists favoring "gain-of-function" pathogen research may suffer from such a "God complex" (like some other types of biologists).  

An article in USA Today is entitled "As COVID turns 3, experts worry where the next pandemic will come from – and if we'll be ready." We read some very scary stuff:

"Now, in addition to worrying about a virus that might jump from animals to humans, experts are concerned about research accidents and – what should be unthinkable – the possibility of someone intentionally unleashing a highly contagious and lethal pathogen. 

A pandemic has long been known to be far riskier for global security than conventional, nuclear or chemical warfare, said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of public health law at Georgetown University and a leading expert in global health."

What? The risk of a man-made pandemic is "far riskier" than the risk of nuclear warfare?  How could so terrifying a thing be "long known" without such a risk being known to the average man?

Next in the USA Today article we read these very troubling claims:

"The idea of engineering a deadly pathogen that sickens the world sounds like the stuff of science fiction or superhero movies. But it's no longer a fantasy.

Kevin Esvelt, an MIT biologist, said people in his own lab could theoretically assemble a dangerous virus from DNA ordered on the internet for under $1,000.

Once pandemic-capable viruses are identified, thousands of people worldwide have the scientific training to make them from mail-ordered synthetic DNA.

'Imagine a world where you can order weapons-grade plutonium in the mail,' he said, 'and there are thousands of engineers who have the skills to put together something that might be a bomb.' "

Then we read about virologists defending reckless "gain of function" research in which gene-splicing is done so that pathogens become more deadly:

"In 2012, the scientific community and others debated research in the U.S. and the Netherlands that explored five mutations making avian influenza more contagious to humans. Some in the virology community defended that research as essential for understanding naturally emerging risks. Yassif and others worry it made creating a global hazard one step easier."

Seeming to have quite a "God complex," many virologists are turning a blind eye to such risks. Two virologists have authored a "let's keep going full blast" editorial in which they claim,  "Science is society’s best defense against the existential threats we face."  No, the actual truth is that science gave us the hydrogen bomb, which has presented the most existential threat humans have ever faced. 

The editorial refers us to a paper in which 100+ virologists recklessly argue for a "full speed ahead" approach in regard gain-of-function research. We might call it a "full Frankenstein" approach, referencing the fictional scientist Frankenstein who tried "gain of function" research by electrifying a body built from a patchwork of corpses.  The virologists are urging us not to worry about all the Pandora's boxes they are opening. 

Concerning the origin of COVID-19, the virologist authors tell us that there are "two major camps arguing that the virus either originated from animal-to-human transmission (zoonosis) or by a laboratory leak "  The virologists say, "each of these possibilities is plausible." That doesn't make any sense, since "plausible" is a word meaning "likely."  You can't have two mutually exclusive explanations both be "plausible." The authors totally fail to see the implications of it being "plausible" that a global pandemic was caused by blundering gene-splicing scientists. The implications are that gene-splicing should be much more carefully regulated, and that laboratory safeguards should be greatly increased. Very lamely, the authors resort to a "we already have some regulations and safeguards" reasoning. 

The author's "full speed ahead" reasoning reminds you of the "full speed ahead" policy of the captain of the Titanic. But it's even worse. In the days before the Titanic sunk, there was no recent reason for suspecting that very many people had died because ocean liner captains were traveling too fast. 

A three-part series at TheIntercept.com highlights the grave risks of pathogen tinkering. In Part 3, we read about scientists seeming to sweep under the rug accounts of lab accidents, as efficiently as scientists sweep under the rug evidence for the paranormal that scientists should be diligently studying.  The links to the series have these headlines:

• Student Infected With Debilitating Virus in Undisclosed Biolab Accident

• Accident With 1918 Pandemic Virus Raises Questions About Pathogen Research

• Lab That Created Risky Avian Flu Had “Unacceptable” Biosafety Protocols

Some government board recently released a report entitled "PROPOSED BIOSECURITY OVERSIGHT FRAMEWORK FOR THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE." It's pretty much a joke. We have some "weak tea" recommendations that fail to include the type of physical safeguards needed to make a major improvement in security.  There's lots of bureaucratic shuffling and semantic fiddling that doesn't add up to  recommendations for major biosafety improvements. There's no mention of quarantines of researchers who fiddled with deadly pathogens, one of the needed improvements in biosafety. 

One day most of us may end up dead because our "God complex" gene splicers want to keep up their perilous fiddling without being inconvenienced by burdensome safety protocols. In a similar vein of "going full Frankenstein," a recent Daily Mail article is entitled, "Human CLONES purposely grown to give people 'spare parts' like hearts, lungs and livers could be the key to living forever, expert claims." We read of a nutty scheme proposing that people arrange for the appearance of full-grown but unconscious clones of themselves, to be used only for organ transplanting. Under this evil scheme, a "clone parent" person might keep down in his basement (or in some "warehouse of the damned") an unconscious clone of himself, fed through tubes for maybe 30 years, until one of the organs of the "clone parent" failed, at which point the clone would be robbed of an organ so that the "clone parent" could have his old failing organ replaced.  And when this cloned  human being was robbed of its brain early in its life, and later robbed of an organ without permission of the donor, would that be legally classified as murder? I guess those running this sinister scheme would have to arrange for the murder laws to be rewritten to tidy up this little difficulty.