In late 2017, the NIH lifted the domestic ban on gain-of-function experiments on pathogens in the United States. Gain of function experiments allow a pathogen to be more easily spread, spread to different species, use different pathways for infection and so forth. While such experiments were banned in the U.S., the U.S. funded those same types of experiments … experiments that were banned here … over at a lab in Wuhan China.
People confuse gain of function experiments with genetic engineering. Although genetic engineering can be used to accomplish gain of function, such can also be done through manipulation of an organism’s environment. As an example, with the anthrax attacks that followed the 9/11 attacks, an antibiotic called Cipro was used to treat it. If a scientist wanted to make a variant of anthrax that was resistant to Cipro, all he’d need to do is keep culturing anthrax in media that contained increasing amounts of Cipro until a variant that could resist it was isolated. He might accelerate the process by introducing a small amount of mutagen at certain stages. But eventually, he’d get what he wanted … naturally, and with no genetic engineering required.
I used anthrax as an example because it was in the news enough to be familiar, and the mechanism of antibiotic resistance is likewise well publicized. But the same thing can be done with viruses, though the process is more technically complex and expensive due to the fact their reproduction requires living media. The live polio vaccine is an example of how function is altered. Normal, full potency polio viruses are put into human cells at normal human body temperature. Isolated human cells (though not an entire human) can survive at temperatures below that, so the temperature of subsequent infection is progressively lowered until the polio viruses are multiplying in cells well below normal body temperature. The result is a polio virus that cannot multiply itself at normal body temperature, so it generates a full immune response while being unable to cause a systemic infection.
The live polio vaccine is an example of deliberately induced loss of function, but similar experiments can be done with infection of tissues from other species, the ability to spread using different cell receptors, the expression of different virulence factors and so forth. These can result in a gain of function.
Gain of function, to be fair, has entirely legitimate uses. For example, some viruses will affect humans, but not other species. Experiments on humans are considered unethical for hopefully obvious reasons, and so creating a variety of the virus that will infect mice for experimentation can be a crucial aspect of learning how a virus functions so that treatment methods can be devised. However, doing this can be quite dangerous because our knowledge is still very limited, and it is entirely possible to create something really nasty without the intention of doing so. As a result, it is important to have extremely comprehensive safety controls on such work. A rational person will thus understand the utility of such work, but also its potential for both accidental and intentional harm.
Anyone with the knowledge can do this kind of work, so it isn’t like it can be effectively banned. It’s sort of like explicit bioweapon development: it has been banned, but pretty much anyone who has accidentally left a container of cooked rice out of the fridge overnight or improperly canned green beans has potentially created one. So banning the work internationally is at best a “gentleman’s agreement” that cannot be effectively verified. But because such work — especially with viruses — is incredibly expensive both in terms of capital and consumables, it can be limited by refusal of funding.
Such projects are expensive because they require specially designed facilities with special environmental controls, airlocks, special showers, and the requirement of safely incinerating expensive protective equipment after a single use and other types of decontamination. Just the air filters for a single room can cost thousands, and they require frequent replacement. Skimping on these expenses equates to killing all of your scientists. Because scientists are rare, you’d run out of them quickly. So the high expense puts these experiments outside the reach of anything without very generous funding from billionaires, governments and corporations or institutions with very deep pockets. Nearly all such research is thus done at taxpayer expense, because only a government can afford it. And this is why refusal of funding can be an effective limitation.
In 2014, the funding of such experiments was banned in the United States. This ban occurred as a result of the development of an airborne virus with pandemic potential in 2011 that accidentally found its way into vials of ordinary influenza viruses later, the discovery of vials of smallpox virus just laying around in a storeroom, dozens of CDC workers with potential anthrax exposure, etc. The ban was in place until proper safety protocols could be developed and guidelines put in place. The ban was lifted, subject to these newly developed guidelines, at the end of 2017.
But meanwhile, between 2014 and 2017, Fauci oversaw the provision of funding for such experiments in a lab in Wuhan, China.
This experience shows us how people such as Fauci view law: as a jigsaw puzzle to be solved in order to do whatever they wish without penalty. This is similar to all the tax avoidance that the wealthy accomplished through off-shore asset management, putting personal property under trusts and foundations and so forth. The intent of a law banning gain of function experimentation is clear: such experiments are dangerous and have the potential to create devastating bioweapons even accidentally. They were temporarily banned so that proper safety protocols could be developed, because in 2014 we came within a gnats ass of accidentally releasing a devastating pandemic flu for which nobody has immunity. But Fauci didn’t care, and oversaw the provision of funding for these experiments, experiments with very dangerous SARS viruses, in China.
The fact that the Congress didn’t think to ban funding these experiments overseas doesn’t change the intention and purpose of the law, about which Fauci and Company clearly didn’t care.
But consider the layers of this. This is NOT the only area where our government does things directly or indirectly outside of its own jurisdiction in order to skirt laws, the Constitution, etc. Whether it is allowing Palantir to have all of our communications (the Constitution only limits government, right?) or the cases of Extraordinary Rendition where people are tortured for information in a jurisdiction where it is legal, you can essentially say there are no real limits at all on the fed gov.
But funding such research in Wuhan takes things to a whole new level, because China is a country with whom we have serious disputes in its desire to annex Taiwan, the risk it poses to Japan (under our nuclear umbrella), its annexation of territory of the Philippines and most importantly the dozens upon dozens of Chinese spies we have found everywhere from Los Alamos to fucking Congress critters.
If a country regards us as a place it needs to infiltrate and spy, and our Congress critters as people who need to be sexually compromised, then we should not, legal or not, be funding experiments there that are ideal for making bioweapons. It is clearly treasonous to do so.
Now, the Congress is considering banning the funding of such experiments overseas. A classic case of closing the barn door after the horse has escaped.
People like Fauci have no care for the US. They care rather for the NWO, WEF and similar globalist initiatives who consider all countries to be their clients. Thus the laws of those countries mean nothing to them. All of these initiatives are treason on a grand scale.
Now, the Congress is considering banning the funding of such experiments overseas. This is a classic case of closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. But most importantly, it won’t stop people like Fauci from skirting the law in other ways, for example, by funding other things so as to free up the money that can be used for those experiments.
This shows that we are dealing with a human problem, a problem of human ethics, moreso than a legal problem. A person with normal ethics would understand the purpose of the law and not skirt it because he’d consider human safety to be more important than his own ego. People who can’t grasp such things should not be in positions of authority. Period.