I expect that this entire situation will in no way discourage the reckless practice of
GoF research.
The journal SCIENCE reported that multiple laboratory accidents at CDC?s highest security laboratories released smallpox vials, anthrax samples, H5N1 influenza samples, and H9N2 avian influenza pathogen. The lapses, Science reported, ?at the world-renowned infectious disease research agency, are sure to raise questions about safety at other labs studying highly pathogenic agents, including university labs that are modifying influenza strains to make them more virulent."
These accidents led the government to temporarily suspend funding for gain-of-function research from 2014 to 2017 for SARS, MERS and avian flu viruses.
...exceptions from suspended funding included laboratories at Harvard University, the University of North Carolina, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) laboratory, whose high risk (sic) coronavirus research was backed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who awarded the Wuhan laboratory with a $3.7 million contract AFTER the government had suspended funding for avian flu viruses research.
When the ?Ban on Making Lethal Viruses [was] Lifted,? the review process became even more secretive and opaque. Dr Francis Collins, head of the NIH, announced that there would be no public disclosure about the projects funded by the government. Critics, including microbiologist Richard Ebright of Rutgers University stated the lack of openness is ?disturbing and indefensible.? He stated that clearer minimum safety standards and a mandate that the benefits ?outweigh? the risks were needed, rather than merely ?justifying? them.?
The Washington Post reported that in January 2018, urgent cables from the US Embassy warned that the Wuhan laboratory?s operations had serious safety problems. One of the cables specifically warned that the lab?s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.
[8]
Dr. Fauci appears to have ignored those cables and the Wuhan Institute?s requests for assistance. Despite alarms raised about lax safety at the Wuhan laboratory, Dr. Fauci provided an additional $3.7 million grant in 2019 for ?gain-of-function research for the purpose of understanding how bat coronaviruses could mutate to attack humans.?
I have not read this yet, but I plan to.
Link