Moratorium on Research Intended To Create Novel Potential Pandemic Pathogens

Weighing risks and benefits. The benefits (squares) of spending a fixed quantity of resources on a portfolio of activities, including PPP research (red), other approaches to influenza virus virology (green), and other public health activities to defeat influenza (yellow), should be weighed against the benefits of a portfolio in which the other activities are expanded to use the resources freed by not supporting PPP activities, reflecting the opportunity cost of the PPP research. If there are net benefits to including PPP activities in the portfolio, then they should be weighed against the net risks created by PPP experiments, which in the case of influenza transmissibility enhancement, we have argued (see the main text, Risk Analysis) are exceptionally high. The balance may differ for other activities, but this comparison of benefits of portfolios with and without gain-of-function experiments is the appropriate comparison, with any net benefits weighed against net risks. univ, universal.