Discussion on Gain of Function Research

Paul afterwards and interviewed him, he said,

look, there was still something gained in all of this.

And that is, we've now seen from his diaries and everything else on record,

his gain of function research and the dangers that that caused leading up to the pandemic.

And you at HHS have ended that gain of function research,

and you're vowing now to restore transparency.

Talk to me about the gain of function research, things you've done,

and also how do we get trust back in the nation's public health officials?

God forbid we should have another pandemic.

Well, gain of function research is a kind of research

where you take a pathogenic organism like a coronavirus and you try to make it more virulent.

You try to get it so that it can spread faster and that it's more deadly.

And why would you do such a thing?

Well, either because you want to weaponize it or because they say that we want to develop a vaccine against future mutations, which is nonsense.

No good thing has ever come from gain of function research.

So, we've now adopted a system that is going to end it in our country,

and we believe will end it around the world, because any scientist—we will no longer support science in other countries that support it.

Any scientist that does these experiments will be punished, and they can be permanently banned from any kind of grant.

And the universities also will, that support this research, will also suffer liability.

We've had too many bad things happen, you know, with Lyme disease that almost certainly came from these experiments that is now devastating our country,

RSV that came from a laboratory,

which is now the biggest killer of children in our country,

and of course the COVID-19 pandemic, which was a trauma for the whole globe.

And all of those have been linked credibly to gain-of-function research.

So, it's something that with enormous cost and no proven benefits.