Republican Senator Rand Paul alleges that US money was used to fund research there that made some viruses (not the coronavirus) more infectious and more deadly, known as “gain-of-function”.
But his assertion has been firmly rejected by Dr Anthony Fauci, the US infectious diseases chief.
… US researcher and biologist Alina Chan at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has highlighted issues with the wording of the government’s pause to funding in 2014.
It says that it would stop funding research that “may be reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route.”
This could imply that research on viruses may not intend to produce “gain-of-function”, although that could be the end result of it.
Related … House Democrats Block Bipartisan Bill Declassifying COVID-19 Origins
House Democrats blocked consideration of legislation that would require the U.S. Director of National Intelligence to declassify information and data related to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and that namely targeted what role the Wuhan Institute of Virology played in the outbreak.
In May, the Senate Republican-backed COVID-19 Origin Act was passed unanimously in the Senate. Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) brought the Senate bill to the House floor on Tuesday night before Democrats voted it down.
What if they knew all along that the virus originated in the Wuhan lab but kept that information secret?
