Fauci In 2012: Gain-Of-Function Research 'Worth Risk Of Lab Accident Sparking Pandemic'
BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, MAY 29, 2021
America's top
virologist, Anthony Fauci, argued in 2012 that
the risks of a lab accident sparking a pandemic are outweighed by the potential
benefits of manipulating viruses via gain-of-function research, according to previously unsurfaced remarks reported by
Sharri Markson via The
Australian.
"In an unlikely but
conceivable turn of events, what if
that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and
ultimately triggers a pandemic?" Fauci wrote in the American
Society for Microbiology in 2012, adding "Many ask reasonable questions:
given the possibility of such a scenario – however remote – should the initial
experiments have been performed and/or published in the first place, and what
were the processes involved in this decision?""Scientists
working in this field might say – as indeed I have said – that the benefits of such experiments and the
resulting knowledge outweigh the risks," Fauci continued.
"It is more likely that a pandemic would occur in nature, and the need to stay ahead of such a threat is a
primary reason for performing an experiment that might appear to be risky."
The experiments are also opposed by prominent scientists,
including the Cambridge Working Group of 200 researchers which issued a public
warning in 2014.
“Accident
risks with newly created “potential pandemic pathogens” raise grave new
concerns,” the group’s letter read. “Laboratory creation of highly transmissible, novel
strains of dangerous viruses, especially but not limited to influenza, poses
substantially increased risks.
“An accidental
infection in such a setting could trigger outbreaks that would be difficult or
impossible to control. Historically,
new strains of influenza, once they establish transmission in the human
population, have infected a quarter or more of the world’s population within
two years.”
And Steven
Salzberg, of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, in 2015 said the benefits of
gain-of-function research were “minimal at best” and they could “far more
safely be obtained through other avenues of research”.
“I am very
concerned that the continuing gain-of-function research on influenza viruses,
and more recently on other viruses, presents extremely serious risks to the
public health,” he wrote.