Scientists wary of gain of function research mute themselves lest they be accused of siding with Rand Paul.
In the wake of Paul’s attack on Fauci, several prominent scientists who question the wisdom and safety of gain-of-function experiments — in which biologists deliberately create pandemic-causing pathogens in the lab in order to better prepare to combat them should they evolve in nature — refused to speak to me on the record. One after another, they said Paul’s patently false claim that Fauci was to blame for the pandemic, and his selective outrage at gain-of-function research only when conducted in China, made it all but impossible for them to say anything about the pre-pandemic experiments in Wuhan without being vilified by partisans.
One biologist who supports such research told me that he would have liked the opportunity to correct what he called misinformation about the experiments, but had been worn down by death threats….
But in a statement provided to The Intercept on Monday, NIAID explained the reasoning behind its review of the experiments conducted at the Wuhan Institute on behalf of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit in New York that works with researchers in China to study viruses that have the potential to jump from bats to humans. The agency wrote that its scientists had concluded the pre-2017 experiments in Wuhan were not barred by the temporary pause on gain-of-function research, “because they were not reasonably expected to increase transmissibility or virulence of these viruses in humans.”