“The blame is on the Chinese regime no matter how COVID-19 arose, Sen. Mitt Romney (R‑Utah) said on June 18.” This is the lede from “‘China’s to Blame’ Regardless of How COVID-19 Came About, Senator Says,” by Eva Fu, June 19th in The Epoch Times.
At StoptheChinazis.org, the problem of actually determining the cause was identified: “it’s hard to come up with a ‘definitive’ conclusion regarding these matters when key players are heavily invested in the institutions that funded the Wuhan labs. A general consensus on the lab origin theory would imply guilt on many, many participants, including multi-millionaire government functionaries such as Antony Fauci.”
Nevertheless, taking a step back and coming to a conclusion on what needs to be done isn’t difficult.
Sen. Mitt Romney called for an end to funding gain of function research during a contentious Senate hearing Tuesday on the origins of COVID-19, saying no one will every know with certainty whether the virus responsible for millions of deaths was created in a Chinese lab or emerged from a market selling live animals.
“We know what action we ought to take to protect from either. So why there’s so much passion around it makes me think it’s more political than scientific but maybe I’m wrong,” the Utah Republican said during his questioning of the expert witnesses appearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Lisa Riley Roche, “What Utah Sen. Mitt Romney says about the origins of COVID-19‚” Deseret News, June 19, 2024.
Romney’s liberal and forgiving “no matter how” statement is not universally shared. Professor Richard Enbright, of Rutgers University (also a laboratory director) insisted that “[o]nly after there is an acknowledgement that there is a very real possibility — not a remote possibility, but a very real possibility — of a lab origin will there be the political will to impose regulation on this scientific community that has successfully resisted and obstructed regulation for two decades.”
At the conference, Enright had earlier stated that there is “zero evidence” for a zoonotic origin of COVID-19.
1 reply on “Gain of Function Research Must Stop”
Dr Fauci is not merely a functionary but, in his pursuit of ill-gotten gain, a gain-of-functionary.
Preventing gain-of-function research seems a hopeless objective. At best, we can insist that the state not participate. We have for some time lived in an era in which clever researchers can, in theory, create terrible pathogens in what amount to basement laboratories. Fortunately, the intersection of the competent with those who would exterminate humankind seems to have only a few members who have for some reason been unsuccessful.