The real reason the USG needs GOF research in the US and overseas, and the phony moratorium

Did the USG try to fool us and make us think the 2014 moratorium was actually serious, and much broader than it actually was?

It is often said that reporters only read the title, first and last paragraph of a press release, if that. If that is what they did, they would have missed what the GOF moratorium was actually about, which was only mentioned briefly in paragraphs 3 and 4. And this is probably why so many people thought it was a moratorium on all GOF research, not just GOF research on avian influenza (bird flu) and SARS/MERS beta coronaviruses.

I decided to go back and find the White House statement on what was being paused. Here it is.

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/10/17/doing-diligence-assess-risks-and-benefits-life-sciences-gain-function-research

Following recent biosafety incidents at Federal research facilities, the U.S. Government has taken a number of steps to promote and enhance the Nation’s biosafety and biosecurity, including immediate and longer term measures to review activities specifically related to the storage and handling of infectious agents. 

As part of this review, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Department of Health and Human Services today announced that the U.S. Government is launching a deliberative process to assess the potential risks and benefits associated with a subset of life sciences research known as “gain-of-function” studies. 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.

Because the deliberative process launching today will aim to address key questions about the risks and benefits of gain-of-function studies, during the period of deliberation, the U.S. Government will institute a pause on funding for any new studies that include certain gain-of-function experiments involving influenza, SARS, and MERS viruses. [In other words, only avian influenza and beta coronaviruses, but no other microorganisms. How prescient to have picked only those two. Hmm.—Nass] Specifically, the funding pause will apply to gain-of-function research projects 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.

During this pause, the U.S. Government will not fund any new projects involving these experiments and encourages those currently conducting this type of work – whether federally funded or not – to voluntarily pause their research while risks and benefits are being reassessed. [So Ralph Baric was not required to pause ongoing GOF research, only encouraged.—Nass] The funding pause will not apply to the characterization or testing of naturally occurring influenza, MERS, and SARS viruses unless there is a reasonable expectation that these tests would increase transmissibility or pathogenicity. [And Daszak simply claimed that the GOF experiments EcoHealth funded were not expected to do so, even though most would disagree. The term “these tests” seems to provide an open-ended loophole that would allow research and testing of novel organisms as long as you start with a known virus.—Nass]

The deliberative process will involve two distinct but complementary entities: the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) and the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies.

The NSABB will serve as the official Federal advisory body for providing advice on oversight of this area of dual-use research, in keeping with Federal rules and regulations. The NSABB will meet on October 22, 2014, to debate the issues and begin the process of developing recommendations.

Hmmm. The NSABB. I remembered them. I and Vera Sharav had provided this group some comments on anthrax vaccine about 12 years ago, pointing out that the members could be potentially liable for the advice they provided the USG about giving this vaccine to children. Perhaps partly as a result, the NSABB decided to punt and asked for an ethics review by a different federal advisory committee.

I also remembered that Bobby Kennedy had covered the NSABB’s deliberations on the GOF bird flu virus research done by Kawaoka and Fouchier that made the virus transmissible between ferrets—killing all of them. Ferrets are the animal model for influenza viruses in humans, and presumably predict danger to humans.

The NSABB was not happy that the USG had funded this research, nor that it was to be published with the recipe for the virus becoming widely available.

Here is what Kennedy wrote on pages 124-5 of this book:

So, initially the NSABB voted unanimously to stop publication of the GOF bird flu research. Then Fauci and Collins began controlling things behind the scenes and got the NSABB members to sign non-disclosure agreements and attend a closed meeting, at which the NSABB’s initial votes against publication were reversed.

But it gets better.

After news (Alison Young did a series of reports in USA Today over 2 years) of many accidents at USG high containment labs (including at CDC, FDA and NIH) got out in 2012-2014, Congressional hearings were held, and the NSABB, which had not met in over a year, demanded to be reconvened to discuss the matter of GOF research.

According to Kennedy, Fauci then fired all the NSABB members who disagreed with him, creating a fully malleable panel. So he got the panel he wanted, but the fired members went rogue and became the kernel of scientists who formed the Cambridge Working Group, publicly calling for a moratorium on GOF research. Below is page 127 of the Wuhan Coverup:

What resulted in October 2014 was the process described in this White House press release, an attempt to bamboozle the public into thinking the USG was going to take regulation of GOF research seriously going forward.

I now return to the rest of the White House/Fauci plan, which was based on the fact that the NSABB was now fully controlled, and so was the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, run by Ralph Cicerone, a preeminent meteorology expert whose specialty was climate change. The rest of the White House press release follows:

Early-on in the deliberative process, the NRC will be asked to convene a scientific symposium focused on the issues associated with gain-of-function research. The NRC will also hold a second symposium later in the deliberative process, which will include a discussion of the NSABB’s draft recommendations regarding gain-of-function research. 

The NSABB, informed by discussion at the NRC public consultations, will provide recommendations to the heads of all federal entities that conduct, support, or have an interest in life sciences research.  The final NSABB recommendations as well as the outcomes of the NRC conferences will inform the development and adoption of a new U.S. Government policy regarding gain-of-function research. 

The broader life-sciences community will be encouraged to provide input through both the NRC and NSABB deliberative processes. The funding pause will end when the U.S. government has adopted a Federal policy regarding gain-of-function studies on the basis of the deliberative process described above, which is expected to occur 2015. 

• Read a statement by Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) here.

• For additional information on the funding pause and the deliberative process, please see the U.S. Government is launching a deliberative process;

• For additional information on dual use research and gain of function studies, please visit: http://www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse.

So there you have it. No ongoing research was forced to stop by the US government. Baric and Daszak didn’t break any rules, because the recommendations were designed to give everyone a pass.

The ”deliberative process” to make GOF safer, called for by Congress and hundreds of scientists, which took 3 years and which was cleverly ended during the Trump administration, was simply a sop, intended to keep Congress and the public quiet while accomplishing nothing.

After 200 reported accidents a year: with deadly bird flu shipped to 100 labs by the Army’s Dugway lab by mistake; with smallpox found in an FDA freezer more than 3 decades after it was required to be destroyed; with anthrax spilled all over a CDC lab—with most people thinking the work was prohibited by the Biological Weapons Convention treaty—why was it so critical for the US government to keep the GOF experiments going?

Could it have been because some insiders knew SARS-CoV-2, Monkeypox and H5N1 bird flu outbreaks would be coming down the pike, and the US Government/ Fauci establishment needed to be able to blame those outbreaks on lab leaks?

In other words, while epidemics with known, designated biowarfare agents like these three are always claimed to be natural events, there is always the chance they could be proven to come from a lab in future. therefore, there needs to be a lab doing the type of GOF research with these viruses that would allow it to be blamed for an inadvertent leak, as your fallback position. If there is no such lab, there will be no plausible cover story.

And then it would be obvious to all that the epidemic was due to a deliberate biowarfare release. It would clearly be a crime, and someone would have to go looking for the mass murderers.

And so the GOF continues. As do the outbreaks.