previously posted...not sure you read this before, but the key statement is at the end..."But Esvelt said “the work reported in this specific paper definitely did NOT lead to the creation of SARS-CoV-2,” because of differences between the virus studied and SARS-CoV-2."...another statement is also worth noting..."“This was not intentional gain of function,”
Here's the rest of the excerpt...
"Alina Chan, a molecular biologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, said in a lengthy Twitter thread that the Wuhan subgrant wouldn’t fall under the gain-of-function moratorium because the definition didn’t include testing on naturally occurring viruses “unless the tests are reasonably anticipated to increase transmissibility and/or pathogenicity.” She said the moratorium had “no teeth.” But the EcoHealth/Wuhan grant “was testing naturally occurring SARS viruses, without a reasonable expectation that the tests would increase transmissibility or pathogenicity. Therefore, it is reasonable that they would have been excluded from the moratorium.”
Chan, who has published research about the possibility of an accidental lab leak of the virus, also said: “But we need to separate this fight about whether a particular project is GOF vs whether it has risk of lab accident + causing an outbreak.”
The University of Iowa’s Perlman told us the EcoHealth research is trying to see if these viruses can infect human cells and what about the spike protein on the virus determines that. (The spike protein is what the coronavirus uses to enter cells.) The NIH, he said, wouldn’t give money to anybody to do gain-of-function research “per se … especially in China,” and he didn’t think there was anything in the EcoHealth grant description that would be gain of function. But he said there’s a lot of nuance to this discussion.
“This was not intentional gain of function,” Perlman said, adding that in this type of research “these viruses are almost always attenuated,” meaning weakened. The gain of function would be what comes out of the research “unintentionally,” but the initial goal of the project is what you would want to look at: can these viruses infect people, how likely would they be to mutate in order to do that, and “let’s get a catalog of these viruses out there.”
Perlman also said that making a virus that could infect human cells in a lab doesn’t mean the virus is more infectious for humans. Viruses adapt to the cell culture, he said, and may grow well in a cell culture but then, for instance, not actually infect mice very well.
Back in February, MIT biologist Kevin Esvelt told PolitiFact.com that a 2017 paper published with the help of the EcoHealth grant involved, as PolitiFact described it, “certain techniques that … seemed to meet the definition of gain-of-function research.” But Esvelt said “the work reported in this specific paper definitely did NOT lead to the creation of SARS-CoV-2,” because of differences between the virus studied and SARS-CoV-2."
This is an esoteric arena, but Dr. Fauci has already been scrutinized by several other scientists...including his most ardent GOF opponents...not one has stepped up and called him a liar....they just continually voice their concern regarding this admittedly risky line of work...that 'could' lead to accidents and releases of potent viral strains.
FOX is dealing in innuendo only.