If what they are describing (marking strains using kanamycin) and creating deletion mutants really is what the NIH now considers gain-of-function research (nevermind dangerous) then all microbiology research has to stop immediately.
I think it's unfair to call the theory that a coronavirus popping up next to the world's most active lab experimenting them may have come from the lab a conspiracy theory. I mean did we call people saying radiation from the Chernobyl reactor might have come from an accident conspiracy theorists?
The "conspiracy theorists" include the director of the CDC at the time who was actually in contact with the Chinese CDC and also a virologist, and also the chair of the one official investigation which visited Wuhan in the early days.
Reminder that the Obama administration banned gain of function research due to its dangers. Only for Fauci to perform it through EcoHealth and WIV while claiming he’s not funding it.
They paused funding actual dangerous gain-of-function (as the article makes the distinction), while developing new guidelines for how it should be managed.
They then released the new framework of multi-layered review to clearly define the tradeoffs and how they were managed, and resumed funding for those that could meet the improved criteria.
ie it was standard research advancing regulatory risk management.
To me, a total outsider, developing antibiotic resistant strains of TB sounds at least "gain of function"-adjacent. Are there any experts here who would like to hazard a judgement?
There's some debate in these comments about the origins of Covid, so I figured it'd be worth dropping the following testimony on the topic which I found eye opening:
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 42.8 ms ] threadhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S07554...
https://www.newsweek.com/controversial-wuhan-lab-experiments...
https://www.newsweek.com/covid-lab-leak-china-virus-nuclear-...
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/10/covid-origins-invest...
https://www.propublica.org/article/senate-report-covid-19-or...
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bies.202000...
The evidence for zoonotic origin of SARS-COV2 is very strong[0] and the conspiracy theorists as usual have little more than speculation.
[0] https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annur...
The "conspiracy theorists" include the director of the CDC at the time who was actually in contact with the Chinese CDC and also a virologist, and also the chair of the one official investigation which visited Wuhan in the early days.
They then released the new framework of multi-layered review to clearly define the tradeoffs and how they were managed, and resumed funding for those that could meet the improved criteria.
ie it was standard research advancing regulatory risk management.
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Testimony-Qu...
It references a great deal of information from https://project-evidence.github.io/
And I've found Jamie Metzl's collection of resources interesting as well: https://jamiemetzl.com/origins-of-sars-cov-2/