Debating creation of more dangerous viruses

Imagine that scientists wanted to take Ebola virus and see if it could ever become airborne by deliberately causing mutations in the lab and then searching through those new viruses to see if any spread easily through the air.

Would that be OK?

The question was posed by David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University, at a two-day meeting being held at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., to discuss whether some experiments with germs are so risky that the dangers aren’t worth the potential benefits.

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