Dr. Roger Ebright, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University and biosafety expert, is contesting NIH director Dr. Anthony Fauci’s testimony before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on Tuesday.
Dr. Fauci’s claim — made during an exchange with Senator Rand Paul — that “the NIH [National Institutes of Health] has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology [WIV]” is “demonstrably false,” according to Ebright.
At least some of the NIH-funded research conducted at the WIV “unequivocally” qualifies as gain-of-function, Ebright told National Review.
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The second — drafted in 2017 as Fauci was pushing to renew government funding for gain-of-function research — provides a definition of what are called “enhanced potential pandemic pathogen (PPP)” or those pathogens “resulting from the enhancement of the transmissibility and/or virulence of a pathogen.”
Ebright claims that the work being conducted at the WIV, using NIH funds originally granted to Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, “epitomizes” gain-of-function research under the definition HHS provided in its guidance, and is the exact kind of research that led the Obama administration to conclude that gain-of-function was too dangerous to continue domestically.
‘The Wuhan lab used NIH funding to construct novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses able to infect human cells and laboratory animals,” he said. “This is high-risk research that creates new potential pandemic pathogens (i.e., potential pandemic pathogens that exist only in a lab, not in nature). This research matches — indeed epitomizes — the definition of ‘gain of function research of concern’ for which federal funding was ‘paused’ in 2014-2017.”
Biosafety Expert Explains Why Fauci’s NIH ‘Gain-of-Function’ Testimony Was ‘Demonstrably False’ (yahoo.com)
Dr. Fauci’s claim — made during an exchange with Senator Rand Paul — that “the NIH [National Institutes of Health] has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology [WIV]” is “demonstrably false,” according to Ebright.
At least some of the NIH-funded research conducted at the WIV “unequivocally” qualifies as gain-of-function, Ebright told National Review.
...
The second — drafted in 2017 as Fauci was pushing to renew government funding for gain-of-function research — provides a definition of what are called “enhanced potential pandemic pathogen (PPP)” or those pathogens “resulting from the enhancement of the transmissibility and/or virulence of a pathogen.”
Ebright claims that the work being conducted at the WIV, using NIH funds originally granted to Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, “epitomizes” gain-of-function research under the definition HHS provided in its guidance, and is the exact kind of research that led the Obama administration to conclude that gain-of-function was too dangerous to continue domestically.
‘The Wuhan lab used NIH funding to construct novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses able to infect human cells and laboratory animals,” he said. “This is high-risk research that creates new potential pandemic pathogens (i.e., potential pandemic pathogens that exist only in a lab, not in nature). This research matches — indeed epitomizes — the definition of ‘gain of function research of concern’ for which federal funding was ‘paused’ in 2014-2017.”
Biosafety Expert Explains Why Fauci’s NIH ‘Gain-of-Function’ Testimony Was ‘Demonstrably False’ (yahoo.com)
