‘Gain of function’ – all you ever didn’t want to know?

Friday/weekend blog

Here is a link to a page of articles from the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30151594/

I list below four articles which make it blindingly obvious that ‘gain of function’ (GoF) research creating highly-dangerous influenza strains in research labs to find new ways of developing vaccines has been going on for years.

I include the titles of the four articles and a brief summary from the abstracts of each article’s contents.

The first article (in blue) written in 2018 just before the Covid-19 pandemic clearly warns about the dangers of GoF and contains the wonderfully prophetic lines: “experiments to create potential pandemic pathogens (PPPs) are nearly unique in that they present biosafety risks that extend well beyond the experimenter or laboratory performing them; an accidental release could, as the name suggests, lead to global spread of a virulent virus, a biosafety incident on a scale never before seen”.

The other three articles (in red) are generally supportive of GoF research while being aware of the risks.

So, my conclusion is that this gain of function research has been going on for years in spite of Fauci’s claims to the contrary. From my very limited understanding, ironically catastrophe only happened when Obama banned such research in the U.S. as he was aware of the dangers. That caused (IMHO) Fauci and friends to move the research to filthy, badly-run labs at the supposedly Biosafety Level-4 labs run by corrupt, lazy, unhygienic Chinese researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). But even worse, the lazy, corrupt, dirty, spitting and hawking Chinese actually did some of their GoF work with highly-dangerous lab-created viruses in labs at the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control (CDC) which is just a Biosafety Level-2 lab (a bit like your local dentist).

And even more appalling still is the fact that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is run by the Chinese military as its leading site for developing biological weapons.

And more ghastly than that is the fact that the Chinese military have already made it clear how they intend to defeat the West, and America in particular, without engaging in an all-out war. This is clearly explained in the book UNRESTRICTED WARFARE written by two top members of the Chinese military:

UNRESTRICTED WARFARE is a book on military strategy written in 1999 by two colonels in the People’s Liberation Army, Qiao Liang (乔良) and Wang Xiangsui (王湘穗). Its primary concern is how a nation such as China can defeat a technologically superior opponent (such as the United States) through a variety of means while avoiding direct military conflict.

Am I really the only person who can see the suicidal madness of doing research creating deadly pathogens not found in nature in filthy, badly-run, corrupt Chinese labs and at the same time teaching the Chinese how to develop biological weapons to cripple America and the West?

I noticed that in possibly the best book about a pandemic – THE DARKEST OF NIGHTS – and in possibly the best film – CONTAGION – both started from premise that the virus evolved naturally. I guess if someone had come up with a book or film predicated on top U.S. doctors trying to avoid a U.S. presidential ban on pathogen GoF research by moving it to a filthy, unhygienic lab run by the military of America’s arch enemy China, people would have considered that too implausible. Yet that’s what has actually happened!

In my humble opinion, Fauci and friends should be investigated for Treason and Crimes Against Humanity and spend the rest of their wretched lives behind bars.

Here are the articles just to give readers an idea of what our crazed scientists were actually doing – creating highly-infectious man-made pathogens in labs – while nobody was looking and nobody was regulating them:

Why Do Exceptionally Dangerous Gain-of-Function Experiments in Influenza? (2018)

This chapter makes the case against performing exceptionally dangerous gain-of-function experiments that are designed to create potentially pandemic and novel strains of influenza, for example, by enhancing the airborne transmissibility in mammals of highly virulent avian influenza strains. This is a question of intense debate over the last 5 years, though the history of such experiments goes back at least to the synthesis of viable influenza A H1N1 (1918) based on material preserved from the 1918 pandemic. This chapter makes the case that experiments to create potential pandemic pathogens (PPPs) are nearly unique in that they present biosafety risks that extend well beyond the experimenter or laboratory performing them; an accidental release could, as the name suggests, lead to global spread of a virulent virus, a biosafety incident on a scale never before seen.

The Silver Lining in Gain-of-Function Experiments with Pathogens of Pandemic Potential (2018)

Half a decade after the contentious “gain-of-function” (GOF) debate of 2012 that followed experimentation showing that highly pathogenic avian influenza virus could become mammalian transmissible, it is possible to reflect on the arguments for and against this type of research. In this essay we argue that GOF-type experiments have already produced important information not available from any other source while also providing information on pathogenesis and the requirements for optimizing strains for vaccine production. We analyze the moral arguments against GOF and find them less compelling for a variety of reasons ranging from the uncertainty of risk-benefit analysis to the reduced likelihood of accidents given the enhanced biosafety and biosecurity protocols currently in place. In our view the most important consequence of the GOF debate is that it brought renewed attention to biosafety protocols and ushered innovation in answering the relevant biological questions with greater safety. We conclude that GOF experiments should go forward provided that necessary biosafety and biosecurity conditions are in place

Influenza gain-of-function experiments: their role in vaccine virus recommendation and pandemic preparedness (2014)

In recent years, controversy has arisen regarding the risks and benefits of certain types of gain-of-function (GOF) studies involving avian influenza viruses. In this article, we provide specific examples of how different types of data, including information garnered from GOF studies, have helped to shape the influenza vaccine production process-from selection of candidate vaccine viruses (CVVs) to the manufacture and stockpiling of safe, high-yield prepandemic vaccines for the global community.

Application of a Biologically Contained Reporter System To Study Gain-of-Function H5N1 Influenza A Viruses with Pandemic Potential (2020)

Natural adaptation of an antigenically novel avian influenza A virus (IAV) to be transmitted efficiently in humans has the potential to trigger a devastating pandemic. Understanding viral genetic determinants underlying adaptation is therefore critical for pandemic preparedness, as the knowledge gained enhances surveillance and eradication efforts, prepandemic vaccine design, and efficacy assessment of antivirals. However, this work has risks, as making gain-of-function substitutions in fully infectious IAVs may create a pathogen with pandemic potential. Thus, such experiments must be tightly controlled through physical and biological risk mitigation strategies.