They're trying to take these natural viruses and give them new capability. I do believe that they're doing that motivated by trying to be ahead of the game so that we can figure out what kind of countermeasures we need for if and when these pathogens ever became problematic. So I don't necessarily think you have to view this as something that is negative, i am concerned that the gain of function research, if it's done, needs to be in containment labs that are highly contained and have multiple backup capacity.

Shi Zhengli

Shi Zhengli (simplified Chinese: ???; traditional Chinese: ???; born 26 May 1964) is a Chinese virologist who researches SARS-like coronaviruses of bat origin. Shi directs the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), a biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory located in Jiangxia District, Wuhan. In 2017, Shi and her colleague Cui Jie discovered that the SARS coronavirus likely originated in a population of bats in a remote region of the Yunnan. Shi came to prominence in the popular press as "bat woman" during the COVID-19 pandemic for her work with bat coronaviruses. Shi is a member of the Virology Committee of the Chinese Society for Microbiology. She is an editor of the Board of Virologica Sinica, the Chinese Journal of Virology, and the Journal of Fishery Sciences of China.

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