5

A Times of Israel blog writes:

Back in October 2014, the US government had placed a federal moratorium on gain-of-function (GOF) research—altering natural pathogens to make them more deadly and infectious–as a result of rising fears about a possible pandemic caused by accidental or deliberate release of these genetically engineered monster germs. [...]

As such in October 2014, due to public health concerns the US government banned all federal funding on efforts to weaponize three viruses—influenza, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

In the face of a moratorium in the US, Dr. Anthony Fauci–director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and currently the leading doctor in the US Coronavirus Task Force–outsourced in 2015 the GOF research to China’s Wuhan lab and licensed the lab to continue receiving federal funding.

The Wuhan lab is now at the center of scrutiny for possibly releasing theSARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and causing the global Covid-19 pandemic. [...]

Since the federal ban on GOF research has been lifted, US labs can continue creating these monster germs domestically and would no longer need to outsource to China.

The "weaponize" claim is already hilarious and a big red flag for the credibility of the subsequent claims in that piece (as are the repeated uses of "monster germs"), but did Fauci outsource such GoF research to China during the US moratorium?

Community
  • 1
Fizz
  • 57,051
  • 18
  • 175
  • 291
  • 3
    Worth disclaiming that the virus is thought to be natural and not the result of GOF experiments, so this question likely has no direct relevance to the origin of the virus. – Colin May 06 '20 at 04:33
  • I was tempted to make another q from the "weaponize" claim, but there's already q like that here https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47564/are-there-artificially-created-viruses-that-are-both-deadly-like-ebola-and-trans (weaponization in mentioned in the quote on that other q) – Fizz May 06 '20 at 06:18
  • 1
    [Science Mag reported in late 2014](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/12/moratorium-risky-experiments-lifted-mers-mouse-studies) that "NIH confirmed today that all five projects working on a mouse model for MERS have been exempted from the pause." I haven't documented the Wuhan connection specifically but it does not seem implausible that the statement in bold refers to one of these five. – Brian Z May 06 '20 at 13:08
  • 2
    @BrianZ: yeah, but the statement in that case is somewhat misleading as there was no outsourcing to circumvent the moratorium, but rather the moratorium itself was suspended for some already ongoing research... – Fizz May 06 '20 at 13:33
  • Do you want to know if NIAID outsourced it during the tenure of Fauci or are you skeptical of Fauci's direct involvement? – Jordy May 18 '20 at 12:40
  • @Jordy: I'm skeptical that NIAID did that kind of action ("outsourcing") to circumvent the moratorium. We know that some of these projects got dispensation to continue during the moratorium anyway. – Fizz May 18 '20 at 16:52
  • 1
    [This Politifact check](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/may/01/rudy-giuliani/rudy-giuliani-wrong-about-us-policy-grant-amount-w/) doesn't specifically cover the claims in the ToI article, but it talks about presumably the same funding as that article talks about, and would seem to blow a big hole in these arguments. – Steven Stadnicki May 20 '20 at 19:52

0 Answers0