In the June 2025 issue of the World Spectator, Matt Ridley invites readers to compare and contrast the treatment of He Jiankui in the matter of his editing gene experiments with that of Dr. She Zhengli in the matter of his far more dangerous gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Ridley’s column runs under the headline “Why won’t scientists condemn Wuhan?” In the case of He versus Shi, Ridley concludes:
A better case can be made for using germline gene therapy to prevent babies being born with life-limiting diseases, where the impact on everybody else is limited, than for training souped-up bat viruses to infect human cells, where the risk is global – and deadly on a huge scale.
The simple explanation of the double standard is that Dr. He’s transgression was ethical while Dr. Shi’s was a biosafety issue. Science is packed with committees that decide whether a planned experiment is ethical; there are few such committees that decide on whether it is safe. Bioethics is a career; biosafety is not. Virologists argue repeatedly that it is offensive even to ask them to submit to extra biosafety regulation because “you can trust us.”
Self-interest also played a part. Former US chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci approved the funding of the Wuhan experiments; Columbia University’s Peter Daszak channeled the money to the lab; UNC’s Ralph Baric shared both the humanized mice and his expertise on how to do the work. Western scientists would have egg on their faces, at the very least, if they were forced to admit that an egregious scientific error caused the most lethal preventable accident in the history of humankind.
Whole thing here.
