Top infectious diseases expert and adviser to the White House, Dr. Anthony Fauci is seen as an authority in coronavirus research, having worked with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for years.
Many reports have linked Dr. Fauci to the gain of function research that looks at viruses and determines how to weaponize them, a field of research that was banned under the Obama administration. But a report has now surfaced saying that Dr. Fauci did not inform the Trump administration about lifting the ban on such research in 2017.
"With an ultimate goal of better understanding disease pathways, gain-of-function studies aim to increase the ability of infectious agents to cause disease by enhancing its pathogenicity or by increasing its transmissibility," a statement from the Obama administration read in 2014. It also declared a "pause on funding for any new studies that include certain gain-of-function experiments involving influenza, SARS, and MERS viruses [that] have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route."
However, in December 2017 Nature reported that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) lifted the ban on federal funding for gain of function research. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch criticized gain of function research in 2017, saying it has "done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemics-yet they risked creating an accidental pandemic."
Dr. Fauci thinks otherwise. Not only does Dr. Fauci support the dangerous gain of function research that poses a huge risk in the event that there is a lab leak, he also failed to inform the Trump administration that the ban on gain of function research was lifted. Investigative reporters at The Australian reported how Dr. Fauci was supportive of the gain of function research, which involves "manipulating and heightening [the] infectious potency [contagious viruses]." In fact, he was so supportive that he believed that the benefits from the research far outweigh the "risk of a laboratory accident sparking a pandemic."
The report revealed how in 2012, Dr. Fauci wrote in the American Society for Microbiology that "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?"
"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," Dr. Fauci argued almost 10 years ago. "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."
According to WND, the report also revealed how Dr. Fauci failed to discuss the lifting of the ban with several Trump administration White House officials. An official under the Trump administration was quoted saying, "There's truth in the narrative that the (National Security Council) staff, the president, the White House chief-of-staff, those people were in the dark that [Dr. Fauci] was switching back on the research."
