...are still being done.

https://youtu.be/6RYOkp0xAyg?si=
ZxCgb5qdQZZ2s2TI

The putative advantages of getting one animal virus to affect different animals - particularly human ones - have never been convincing to me.

I would agree that GoF for anything which can infect humans, or important livestock (ex. cows), or important biosphere organisms (ex bees) should be done in extremely tightly controlled conditions. With weeks or months -long work shifts and strict quarantine for those coming off shift.

IF YOU ARE GOING TO DO IT - I can certainly see the advantages (Hell, the NECESSITY) of such precautions. I still haven't understood the putative advantages of doing it at all though, unless you are searching for a biowarfare capability. Which I sort of thought we renounced with the Biological Weapons Convention.

https://www.state.gov/biological-weapons-convention/

In theory, the *potential* benefit is to make it easy to observe the behavior of the pathogen, and develop medical interventions. Amplification of signal basically.

I don't have any sense of how much benefit vs. the risk, ie does it just make the research easier (cheaper & faster), or are there some things which simply cannot be observed at normal levels of function?

Faster research results *might* be a good excuse for GoF, if you're in a situation where you're trying to get ahead of something which just reared it's ugly head in the wet markets.