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Eyal and Lerner published a joint paper in “Journal of Medical Ethics”

CPLB post-doctoral associate Adam Lerner and CPLB Director Nir Eyal recently published “Future pandemics and the urge to ‘do something’” in the Journal of Medical Ethics. The paper intervenes in an ongoing debate about research with enhanced potential pandemic pathogens (ePPP research). This research is controversial because it carries risks—it makes pathogens substantially more lethal, communicable, immunosuppressive or otherwise capable of triggering a human-engineered pandemic—but it also has the potential to help protect against natural pandemics. There remains substantial disagreement about whether the benefits of ePPP research outweigh its risks. Proponents of ePPP research believe they do, while opponents of ePPP research believe they do not. Lerner and Eyal argue that proponents of ePPP research are likely subject to common cognitive biases that lead them to underestimate the risks of ePPP research, and so their judgment that the benefits outweigh the risks should not be trusted unless they can be backed up with rigorous, quantitative risk assessments.