America’s top virologist, Anthony Fauci, argued in 2012 that the risks of a lab accident sparking a pandemic are outweighed by the potential benefits of manipulating viruses via gain-of-function research, according to previously unsurfaced remarks reported by Sharri Markson via The Australian.
“In an unlikely but conceivable turn of events, what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic?” Fauci wrote in the American Society for Microbiology in 2012, adding “Many ask reasonable questions: given the possibility of such a scenario – however remote – should the initial experiments have been performed and/or published in the first place, and what were the processes involved in this decision?”
“Scientists working in this field might say – as indeed I have said – that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks,” Fauci continued. “It is more likely that a pandemic would occur in nature, and the need to stay ahead of such a threat is a primary reason for performing an experiment that might appear to be risky.”
In the paper, Dr Fauci also writes: “Within the research community, many have expressed concern that important research progress could come to a halt just because of the fear that someone, somewhere, might attempt to replicate these experiments sloppily. This is a valid concern.”
Dr Fauci has led the US response to the outbreak but is now facing serious questions about his role in funding the radical experiments being conducted inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology. (…)
Dr Fauci on May 11 reversed his position on whether Covid-19 had leaked from the WIV, and said he was now “not convinced” the virus had developed naturally and authorities needed to find out “exactly what happened”.
Gain-of-function experiments – often with bat-derived coronaviruses – centre on manipulating, splicing and recombining viruses potentially into strands of highly infectious and little understood diseases. – The Australian
Fauci also acknowledges there are "bioterrorism" concerns in this paper he wrote but he puts them aside to advocate for gain-of-function research.
— Sharri Markson (@SharriMarkson) May 28, 2021
And what’s this?
https://twitter.com/scuba2024/status/1398322585750933507?s=20
Earlier this month, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) went to town on Dr. Anthony Fauci Tuesday during a hearing in front of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee.
Paul alleged that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had used a middle-man to funnel money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology via EcoHealth Alliance – which worked with the lab on bat coronavirus projects.
Paul specifically referenced “gain-of-function” research which in this case has been focused on how to make animal viruses more transmissible to humans – specifically bat coronaviruses.
“Government scientists like yourself who favor gain of function research,” Paul began… only to have Fauci interject “I don’t favor gain of function research in China,” adding “You are saying things that are not correct.”
Paul pushed back – continuing:
” say that COVID-19 mutations were random and not designed by man.”
“I do not have any accounting of what the Chinese may have done,” Fauci shot back, adding that he’s in favor of further investigation, but that the NIH had nothing to do with the origins of COVID-19.
“We have not funded gain of function research on this virus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he added.
“No matter how many times you say it, it didn’t happen.”
As we noted in March, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) – headed by Fauci, “had funded a number of projects that involved WIV scientists, including much of the Wuhan lab’s work with bat coronaviruses.”
Zhengli Shi got shipped out to Wuhan lab after her paper (2015) regarding attaching a sequence coding for a spike protein that attaches to human ACE2 receptors.
Why?
That's gain of function research, illegal in the USA in 2014.
Fauci and Peter Daszak funded her in Wuhan. Link
— Noelle Jacqueline (@425Noelle) May 28, 2021
Source: ZeroHedge.com
