Reporters often overlook key details, missing that the GOF moratorium targeted influenza and coronaviruses specifically, not all GOF research. The White House's 2014 statement announced a pause in funding for certain GOF studies to assess risks, which many misinterpreted. The NSABB, an oversight body, faced manipulation by Fauci, who replaced dissenting members, leading to a controlled deliberative process that ultimately failed to enforce strict regulations on GOF research. Despite public calls for moratoriums, the initiative allowed ongoing research to continue, resulting in minimal change and raising concerns about future pandemics linked to lab research.
The US government's 2014 pause on Gain-of-Function research: a fake process from the get-go Did the USG try to fool us and make us think the moratorium was much broader than it actually was? Did the USG force its advisory panel to reverse its vote on bird flu GOF research? Sun, 04 Aug 2024 20:10:13 GMT https://merylnass.substack.com/p/the-us-governments-2014-pause-on 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.
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.
Because some people knew SARS-2, monkeypox and H5N1 bird flu were coming and the USG/Fauci establishment needed to be able to blame them on lab leaks?