Obama / Biden Lifted Moratorium on GOF Experiments

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Obama / Biden Lifted Moratorium on GOF Experiments

February 1, 2015

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/make-the-pause-on-risky-pathogen-research-permanent/

Last October the White House announced a pause in federal funding for so-called #gainoffunction experiments that increase the contagiousness or virulence of influenza viruses or of the coronaviruses that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) or Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).

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January 9, 2017

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2017/01/09/recommended-policy-guidance-potential-pandemic-pathogen-care-and-oversight

Adoption of these recommendations will satisfy the requirements for lifting the current moratorium on certain life sciences research that could enhance a pathogen’s virulence and/or transmissibility to produce a potential pandemic pathogen (an enhanced PPP).

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Gain Of Function

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State Department staffers were warned against probing COVID origin: report

https://nypost.com/2021/06/03/state-dept-staffers-were-warned-against-probing-covid-origin-report/

“Gain-of-function research can increase the infectiousness and virulence of viruses, and the US government under President Barack Obama in October 2014 ordered a “pause” on new funding for those sorts of experiments on influenza, MERS and SARS viruses, but a footnote exempted projects that were “urgently necessary to protect the public health or national security,” Vanity Fair said.

In 2017, under President Donald Trump, the moratorium was lifted and replaced with a review system called P3CO — for Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight — that left the review process shrouded in secrecy, according to the article.

A longtime official at the National Institutes of Health, which funds the research, reportedly described P3CO as little more than window dressing.

“If you ban gain-of-function research, you ban all of virology,” the official told Vanity Fair.

“Ever since the moratorium, everyone’s gone wink-wink and just done gain-of-function research anyway.”

Gain-of-function research is tied to the controversy over nearly $600,000 in taxpayer money that was given to the Wuhan Institute by the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance from a five-year, $3.4 million NIH grant.

During testimony before a House Appropriations subcommittee last week, NIH Director Francis Collins testified that researchers at the Wuhan lab “were not approved by NIH for doing gain-of-function research.”

But Collins added: “We are, of course, not aware of other sources of funds or other activities they might have undertaken outside of what our approved grant allowed.”

Meanwhile, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield also told Vanity Fair that he got death threats for publicly supporting the notion that the coronavirus escaped from a Chinese lab.

Redfield said leading scientists — including some former friends — were among those who barraged him with angry emails following a March 26 appearance on CNN during which he endorsed the “lab-leak” theory.”

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