Testifying on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning, former Centers for Disease Control Director Robert Redfield was asked about the benefits of dangerous gain-of-function research -- the frankensteining of viruses to make them more lethal or infectious to humans.
When asked if he could point to a single pandemic gain-of-function research had prevented, Redfield couldn't give an example and instead pinned the latest pandemic on the practice.
.@RepBradWenstrup: “Has gain-of-function stopped a pandemic in your opinion?”
— Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (@COVIDSelect) March 8, 2023
Dr. Robert Redfield: “No, in the contrary, I think it probably caused the greatest pandemic our world has seen.” pic.twitter.com/EBixJt0qCO
Back in early 2020 in the first stages of the pandemic, Redfield publicly stated he believed the virus escaped from a lab. Despite his assertion being correct and now backed by the FBI and Department of Energy, he received death threats. He was also cut out of meetings with then National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and former Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute Francis Collins.
Dr. Redfield always thought it was a Wuhan lab leak origin. Dr. Fauci "cut him out of meetings when Redfield said the government needed to investigate whether the pandemic started from a lab accident in Wuhan, China." https://t.co/ao2UDy3dFh
— Marty Makary MD, MPH (@MartyMakary) September 16, 2022
Given the Wuhan Institute of Virology had received NIH grants to perform gain-of-function research, Fauci and Collins worked together to quash the lab leak theory and destroy the careers of scientists who dared to publicly entertain it.
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Fauci is known as the "Godfather" of gain-of-function research and had a strong interest in eliminating a lab leak from discussion.
"I often talk to scientists who say the same thing, that say, ‘Listen, we really want to speak out about this, but we can’t do it. Why can’t we do it? Well, we get all of our funding from NIH, or NIAID… which is run by Dr. Fauci,'" he said on Kelly’s podcast. "And so we can’t say anything like ‘Oh, gain-of-function research might be dangerous, or it might have come from a lab, because we’re going to lose our careers, we’re going to lose our funding, we’re not going to be able to do the work.'"
"The head of the funding, the head of the entire field, really, is Anthony Fauci," he said. "He’s the godfather of gain-of-function research as we know it. That, again, just what I said right there, is too hot for TV because people don’t want to think about the fact that our hero of the pandemic… might also have been connected to this research, which might also have been connected to the outbreak."
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