Is/Was funding or conducting gain of function research illegal? I have seen a lot of claims made about &quot;gain of function&quot; research in regards to corona viruses, one of them being that it is or was &quot;illegal&quot;. I wondered whether or not this claim was true at the time that some entities (NIH, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, other government organizations, etc.) were funding and/or conducting gain of function research themselves. It seems the NIH did place a moratorium on funding gain of function research starting in October 2014 and rescinded it in December of 2017. (Source) I found Senate Bill S.3012 that was introduced by Sen. Marshall in October 2021, but a) it is not law, just a bill, and b) cannot be used to ex post facto criminalize behavior that had already been committed (US Constitution, Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3). Questions Was funding &quot;gain of function&quot; research by government institutions ever illegal? If so, starting when? Was conducting &quot;gain of function&quot; research by government institutions ever illegal? If so, starting when? I have not seen this question asked here before, a quick search I was able to find the following question but it doesn't delve into whether either conducting this research or funding it was or is now illegal. What is the status of Rand Paul's criminal referral to the DOJ relating to allegations levied against Dr. Anthony Fauci?
Senate Amendment 2003 was an amendment to an amendment to a bill which did not pass: it would have permanently ban all funding of gain-of-function research in China. Senate Bill S.3012 likewise did not become law. Furthermore, economically bans gain-of-function, and does not criminalize anything. It says &quot;Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no research grants supported by Federal funds may be awarded to institutions of higher education, or other research institutes, that are conducting gain-of-function research&quot;, meaning a total shut-off of federal research money to an institute that engages in such research. But it didn't happen, so it is still legal.
In general this is protected by the first amendment. It is not in general a problem describing how one can one can do something illegal. But there are special cases to be careful with. You might want to do some research into the limits on free speech. It would be hard to provide an answer that fully covers all your different cases and you would need to be more specific about what illegal activity you want to describe. In describing how to do something illegal, you might accidentally share information that you are not allowed to share. When you post things online, this can be considered as publishing or exporting. Therefore certain export restrictions might apply. Also, It is illegal to publish bomb making manuals, with the knowledge or intent that this information be used to commit a federal crime of violence. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/842. There are restrictions on publishing material relating to cryptography without having an export license. Granted, this isn't necessarily related to publishing things that are illegal, but just to give an idea about how publishing/exporting knowledge can causes problems. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) sets restrictions on what you can publish about arms. What you publish can't be “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action.” See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio. One might imagine that you could get into trouble if someone interprets what you do as inciting or producing a lawless action. It might sound obvious, but you want to make sure that you have the right to share the information that you have. The information that you are providing might be copyrighted in some way.
Unless there is a law or regulation against it, it is legal. However in a big government it can be practically impossible to determine whether something is legal. For example, nobody even knows how many criminal statutes have been promulgated by the U.S. federal government. And that's nothing compared to the volume of executive regulation and judicial case-law that determines whether something is illegal. I.e., in practice determining that something is legal is a bit like proving a negative. Furthermore, if you look long enough some argue that you can probably find some law under which almost any action could be considered illegal. Note also that even if it is not against the law, it could be proscribed by contract (read your Terms and Conditions!), and breach of contract is in general &ndash; but with an astonishing number of exceptions! &ndash; illegal.
From a legal perspective, I think the ruling is reductio ad absurdum correct. California voters passed Proposition 65. Consequently, CA Health and Safety Code 25249.6 says "No person in the course of doing business shall knowingly and intentionally expose any individual to a chemical known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity without first giving clear and reasonable warning to such individual, except as provided in Section 25249.10". Section 25249.8 mandates a list, and defines "known to the state" A chemical is known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity within the meaning of this chapter if in the opinion of the state’s qualified experts it has been clearly shown through scientifically valid testing according to generally accepted principles to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity, or if a body considered to be authoritative by such experts has formally identified it as causing cancer or reproductive toxicity, or if an agency of the state or federal government has formally required it to be labeled or identified as causing cancer or reproductive toxicity. Acrylamide is so listed, and has been for 18 years, reason code listed as "AB-IARC, AB-US EPA". The law does not say that "the benefits may outweigh the risks", nor does the law say anything about usual doses. There is an "escape clause", if one (the defendant) can prove that there is no effect (25249.8(b)): An exposure for which the person responsible can show that the exposure poses no significant risk assuming lifetime exposure at the level in question for substances known to the state to cause cancer, and that the exposure will have no observable effect assuming exposure at one thousand (1000) times the level in question for substances known to the state to cause reproductive toxicity, based on evidence and standards of comparable scientific validity to the evidence and standards which form the scientific basis for the listing of such chemical pursuant to subdivision (a) of Section 25249.8. In any action brought to enforce Section 25249.6, the burden of showing that an exposure meets the criteria of this subdivision shall be on the defendant. The answer on Skeptics does not address the EPA finding (and the science underlying it). At this point we can only conjecture about the defense's scientific argument (the ruling is still in the works, pending feedback from parties), but the judge said "While plaintiff offered evidence that consumption of coffee increases the risk of harm to the fetus, to infants, to children and to adults, defendants' medical and epidemiology experts testified that they had no opinion on causation" and that the coffee makers hadn't presented the proper grounds at trial to prevail. Insofar as human subjects testing of suspected carcinogens is illegal, any argument that "but this only shows that it causes cancer in rats" is legally empty: rats are a suitable proxy for humans. This is a state report addressing a potential carcinogen, 4-Methylimidazole. The report notes that to have a No Significant Risk Level finding, the substance must have less than a "daily intake level posing a 10^-5 lifetime risk of cancer". A further requirement is that "risk analysis shall be based on the most sensitive study deemed to be of sufficient quality" (whatever that is). This study mentions a previous study which was rejected because "these studies do not meet the criteria specified in Section 25703(a) because the experiments were not designed to adequately control for and examine the potential carcinogenicity of 4-MEI". Basically, Spiegelhalter's argument is too meta, and doesn't constitute a proof that acrylamide poses no risk of cancer. If the defendants commissioned an independent scientific study to overcome earlier carcinogen findings, perhaps the study failed on technical grounds. The bar that has to be cleared is very high. The EPA regulation says that the maximum contaminant level goal for acrylamide is zero. That is the carcinogen-science basis for specific allowable levels in water supplies.
Illegal to write? No. Notwithstanding the First Amendment which would almost certainly make a law prohibiting it illegal, writing such things is an essential part of an IT security professional’s toolkit. You can’t protect against worms if you don’t know how they work. Illegal to distribute on an unauthorised computer? Absolutely. This would be a clear breach of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Background of the question You are talking of David Hahn, aka the &quot;Radioactive Scout&quot;. In 1995 he was 17 when he impersonated a licensed person to acquire radioactive material. But he never got enough material to build a reactor: he built a neutron source from a block of lead, into which he had stuffed lots of somewhat purified radioactive material. He also conducted radioactive experiments without a licensed lab - which is decidedly illegal. Now, he realized that his neutron source was starting to generate dangerous radiation and dismantled his setup - which was what got FBI and consorts to the table. They cleaned up what they found - while his mother already had disposed of most of the experiments via the normal garbage - also decidedly illegal. Since he was 17 and his mother did commit suicide during the year after the events and before her disposing of waste was discovered, neither was prosecuted at that point. Someone alleged in 2007, he was again amessing radioactive material, the FBI investigated but found the tip not enough to warrant more investigation after standing in front of the door with a radioactivity detector and talking to him on the phone, as a report shows: &quot;No immediate threat existed with regards to allegations that Hahn possessed a nuclear reactor within his residence.&quot; Later in 2007 he was found guilty of stealing smoke detectors, which some people alleged he planned to extract Americium from. This claim was never at trial, so is to be taken with a grain of salt. The charge was Larceny. Not attempt of obtaining NCBR-Material illegally. Answer To work with materials of radioactive means, you need to be compliant with NCR rules and acquire the needed license. There are companies that have the license to dismantle and extract the radioactive material from smoke detectors - and USPS provides a list of companies that take them and are allowed to - because they make them in the first place and may handle it because of that license. There is no exception for ownership/handling of small amounts of Americium in 10 CFR 30.70 Schedule A, but the smoke detector itself, as a fully contained unit is under 10 CFR 30.15 (a)(7): (a) Except for persons who apply byproduct material to, or persons who incorporate byproduct material into, the following products, or persons who initially transfer for sale or distribution the following products containing byproduct material, any person is exempt from the requirements for a license set forth in section 81 of the Act and from the regulations in parts 20 and 30 through 36 and 39 of this chapter to the extent that such person receives, possesses, uses, transfers, owns, or acquires the following products: (7) Ionization chamber smoke detectors containing not more than 1 microcurie (μCi) of americium-241 per detector in the form of a foil and designed to protect life and property from fires. (b) Any person who desires to apply byproduct material to, or to incorporate byproduct material into, the products exempted in paragraph (a) of this section, or who desires to initially transfer for sale or distribution such products containing byproduct material, should apply for a specific license pursuant to § 32.14 of this chapter, which license states that the product may be distributed by the licensee to persons exempt from the regulations pursuant to paragraph (a) of this section. However, NCR also found that it would need 10-million used smoke detectors in normal trash to become a problem - but that assumes them to be full units, not someone ripping them apart.
In the United States, no. For something to be illegal in any meaningful way, you have to be able to point to a law that makes it illegal. If there's no law to break, it's not illegal. I would wonder if your colleague was thinking about question of whether cryptocurrencies are legal tender. For something to be "legal tender," there would need to be some kind of law or regulation requiring people to accept them as payment. There is no such requirement in the United States, so Bitcoin, for instance, is not legal tender. But that doesn't make it illegal tender; it just means that people can decide whether to accept it or not.
There is a subtle difference between NSF policy and enforceable obligation. The primary stick that goes with the carrot is being excluded from future funding. Current policy does not generally force material in the public domain, but it is a possibility in "exceptional circumstances". There no doubt is a paper record somewhere in D.C. indicating whether such a codicil was added to any of these grants. NSF generally does not have contracts with individuals, they have contracts with institutions who have relations (typically employer-employee) with individuals, so even if there were a policy requiring works to be put in the public domain, NSF would have to go after the institution, who would have to go after the author. Since that would conflict with longstanding NSF policy on copyright, it is unlikely that they would want to pursue such an approach. The statement that McGraw-Hill Book Company announces that the material, which is copyrighted, will be available for use by authors and publishers on a royalty-free basis on or after April 30, 1970 is not itself a license, it is a suggestion that a license will com into existence. A present-tense declaration "this work is dedicated to the public domain effective April 30, 1970" can be interpreted as a license effective of a date certain. Similarly, "will be available to all publishers for use in English after December 31, 1970, and in translations after December 31, 1975" does not say that it is in the public domain effective of some date. One might say that the copyright statement is simply not well written and the author really intended the books to be in the public domain as of those dates. But without compelling evidence that the book was actually released into the public domain, a court is very unlikely to abrogate a person's property rights.