I discuss a peer-reviewed paper published in Nature Medicine (2015) in which the authors describe, defend, and announce "we built a chimeric virus that encodes a novel, zoonotic spike protein." Congratulations, guys: we can't thank you enough. The authors admit that without their construction of this CoV 'monster' the likelihood of one emerging from animals into humans "are both random and rare." But they did it anyway because "the potential to prepare and mitigate future outbreaks must be weighed against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens." Yeah, you weighed it alright and the world is bearing the burden of your mistake now and for the foreseeable future. The investigators used fetal tissue, a key and necessary ingredient, to study the virus that they'd created. And because there was a federal ban on this kind of research (i.e., gain of function) at the time, the authors threw up a heat shield against all criticism by stating, "These studies were initiated prior to [the ban]....Continuation of these studies have been requested and approved by the NIH." Where in the law can we find remedy for this transgression? Does malfeasance apply?

Link to the Nature Medicine paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985