The answer is clearly yes, as money was granted to WIV, which specializes in corona viruses.
The questions are:
- why was EcoHealth Alliance/Daszak used as a cutout between the NIH and Chinese govt? The US govt. sends money directly to the Chinese govt. for many programs.
- why didn't Fauci admit he granted money to WIV in 2020 when he did hundreds of interviews?
- did Fauci pay for GoF research in Wuhan because there was concern about it inside the US? or paid for what exactly?
- why is Fauci combative when the Senate attempts oversight?
Does Colorado state do a lot of this type of (supposedly debatable) gain of function research? It seems like they selected an expert randomly who said basically, “everything is subjective.” Good piece but it would help to explain why they consulted this particular expert for comment.
The new viruses created in the research gained human transmissibility.
Maybe it doesn't fit whatever loose definition of gain of function exists in the field, but, in layman's terms, it gained a function and it definitely sounds like risky research.
To me it sounds like damage control lawyer speak: "Only admit what you can't deny any longer".
None of this is new information, only that you were called a 'conspiracy theorist' for bringing these up until now and at the risk of being ostracized, just like with the 'lab-origin' theory. Doesn't exactly inspire trust in BBC reporting when journalists could have asked these exact same questions 6 months or more ago, unless the reporting was suppressed on purpose.
You have to wonder what else will be admitted as true and if they will throw Dr. Fauci under the bus eventually.
On such a technical question journalists can only report on what they hear from scientific sources, and when those sources are new to them they'll have to decide on the fly how much trust to put in them.
> From the article, it sounds like the response is "it wasn't gain-of-function research, it was just research that involved gains of function."
Not really. The article states quite clearly that the research paid by the NIH was not deemed to be gain-of- function.
From the article:
> One of the US scientists who collaborated on the 2015 research on bat viruses with the Wuhan institute, Dr Ralph Baric from the University of North Carolina, gave a detailed statement to the Washington Post.
> He said the work they did was reviewed by both the NIH and the university's own biosafety committee "for potential of gain-of-function research and were deemed not to be gain-of-function".
At most the article considers the theoretical possibility of non-gain-of-function research to accidentally involve viruses that mutate, which is the case for all researches that involve a living entity that reproduces.
From the article:
> This could imply that research on viruses may not intend to produce "gain-of-function", although that could be the end result of it.
The main sticking point of this controversy is that patently false accusations and innuendo is being abused and repeated ad nauseum to try to attack public servants whose success in stopping a pandemic became politically inconvenient. Therefore, trying to blame said public servant for the pandemic is the only card they can play.
The authors, universities, and funding sources are clearly indicated. IIRC there's even a description of who did what, though you can also work that out by looking at each of the authors' other papers; that'll show you what each specializes in.
16 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 46.9 ms ] threadThe questions are:
- why was EcoHealth Alliance/Daszak used as a cutout between the NIH and Chinese govt? The US govt. sends money directly to the Chinese govt. for many programs.
- why didn't Fauci admit he granted money to WIV in 2020 when he did hundreds of interviews?
- did Fauci pay for GoF research in Wuhan because there was concern about it inside the US? or paid for what exactly?
- why is Fauci combative when the Senate attempts oversight?
What is the reason for the downvotes?
Is it "my Marxist party, right or wrong", or do you have a reason why Fauci can't explain why he was sending money to a BSL-4 corona lab?
The new viruses created in the research gained human transmissibility.
Maybe it doesn't fit whatever loose definition of gain of function exists in the field, but, in layman's terms, it gained a function and it definitely sounds like risky research.
The article mentions nothing of the sort. Can you provide any reference that supports your baseless assertion?
It sounds like the fact the money was going to the lab isn't in question, but the exact nature of the research is still a little handwavy.
The entire lab leak theory gets smuggled in as a background assumption.
None of this is new information, only that you were called a 'conspiracy theorist' for bringing these up until now and at the risk of being ostracized, just like with the 'lab-origin' theory. Doesn't exactly inspire trust in BBC reporting when journalists could have asked these exact same questions 6 months or more ago, unless the reporting was suppressed on purpose.
You have to wonder what else will be admitted as true and if they will throw Dr. Fauci under the bus eventually.
Not really. The article states quite clearly that the research paid by the NIH was not deemed to be gain-of- function.
From the article:
> One of the US scientists who collaborated on the 2015 research on bat viruses with the Wuhan institute, Dr Ralph Baric from the University of North Carolina, gave a detailed statement to the Washington Post.
> He said the work they did was reviewed by both the NIH and the university's own biosafety committee "for potential of gain-of-function research and were deemed not to be gain-of-function".
At most the article considers the theoretical possibility of non-gain-of-function research to accidentally involve viruses that mutate, which is the case for all researches that involve a living entity that reproduces.
From the article:
> This could imply that research on viruses may not intend to produce "gain-of-function", although that could be the end result of it.
The main sticking point of this controversy is that patently false accusations and innuendo is being abused and repeated ad nauseum to try to attack public servants whose success in stopping a pandemic became politically inconvenient. Therefore, trying to blame said public servant for the pandemic is the only card they can play.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985/
The authors, universities, and funding sources are clearly indicated. IIRC there's even a description of who did what, though you can also work that out by looking at each of the authors' other papers; that'll show you what each specializes in.