The Chinese are at it again. Four years after the coronavirus emanated from Wuhan, China leading to a global pandemic, Chinese scientists are conducting gain-of-function research on that same coronavirus. A new report says scientists affiliated with the Chinese military recently engineered a mutant strain of coronavirus that was lethal in 100% of lab mice. The mice themselves were also genetically mutated, leading to questions about the safety and efficacy of these experiments.
"I think until we really have a better debate about whether there is any value in this gain-of-function research, we ought to have a moratorium on it," says Dr. Robert Redfield, former CDC director in an interview with Fox News. "Clearly, we don't have the biocontainment up to par to do this kind of research. I think it is very dangerous."
The research is especially dangerous, considering the growing evidence that the original COVID-19 pandemic stemmed from a leak during gain-of-function research at the Wuhan laboratory. At the same time, new evidence shows China withheld vital info about COVID-19 from the world in the early days of the pandemic. Both Dr. Anthony Fauci and his former boss at the National Institutes for Health (NIH), Dr. Francis Collins, now admit the lab leak theory is credible, after they discredited it as a "distraction" or "conspiracy theory" throughout the pandemic.
Redfield says U.S. leaders should have been more forthcoming and open-minded about the virus from the start, rather than pushing one narrative. "They did this, I think, largely because they thought they were protecting science, and the science they were protecting is this gain-of-function research that they want to do," Redfield tells Fox. "But in fact, they did the opposite. I think we've lost a lot of credibility in both the NIH and the CDC, unfortunately, because of their lack of transparency."
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