Quoted in an article entitled Engineered Bat Virus Stirs Debate Over Risky Research, Daszak defended the publication of the study in question: A SARS-like Cluster Of Circulating Bat Coronaviruses Shows Potential For Human Emergence.
“Lab-made coronavirus related to SARS can infect human cells,” Nature summarized, which counted funding from Mr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and included collaboration with two researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The article recounts how the experiment “triggered renewed debate over whether engineering lab variants of viruses with possible pandemic potential is worth the risks.”
Gain of Function.
While noting how a virus from horseshoe bats in China was manipulated to “infect human airway cells” and “mimic human disease,” Nature posits that the study qualified as gain-of-function research.
“The argument is essentially a rerun of the debate over whether to allow lab research that increases the virulence, ease of spread or host range of dangerous pathogens — what is known as ‘gain-of-function’ research,” the article explains.
“The latest study was already under way before the US moratorium [on gain-of-function] began, and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) allowed it to proceed while it was under review by the agency, says Ralph Baric, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a co-author of the study.”
Nature’s admission that the Fauci-funded study qualified as gain-of-function research is at odds with the NIAID Director’s comments from a recent exchange with Senator Rand Paul.
“For years, Dr. Ralph Baric, a virologist in the U.S., has been collaborating with Dr. Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Virology Institute, sharing his discoveries about how to create super viruses. This gain-of-function research has been funded by the NIH,” Senator Paul outlined before Fauci claimed the theory was “entirely and completely incorrect.”
Authored by Fauci-funded researcher Dr. Ralph Baric, the gain-of-function study lists two additional Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers, including...