Former director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Dr. Robert Redfield has put out a rather spooky, grim warning concerning the dangers of gain-of-function research, predicting that scientists who are screwing around with the bird flu virus in order to make it more infectious could potentially cause the next “great pandemic.” Apparently, we’ve learned absolutely nothing from the last time gain-of-research reared its ugly head with the coronavirus.
Why must scientists continue to try and play God with things they are not equipped to understand and control? It’s been proven over and over again that gain-of-function research is incredibly dangerous and is not something human beings should be messing with. People just never seem to get it.
Here are more details via The Epoch Times:
Dr. Redfield, who in the past railed against the use of U.S. tax dollars to fund gain-of-function research at the Chinese virus lab at the heart of the COVID-19 origin controversy, is once again sounding the alarm on the dangers of risky scientific experiments going badly awry.
In a recent interview on NewsNation, Dr. Redfield recalled a recent op-ed he wrote in The Wall Street Journal calling for a moratorium on gain-of-function research, which involves altering the properties of a pathogen, such as its virulence, in order to study its potential impact on human health
Proponents of such research argue it can help scientists better learn how the virus behaves and spreads, and so come up with counter-measures more effectively. Opponents say the potential benefits are outweighed by the risks such research poses as it makes viruses more lethal.
“I don’t think that research should be done,” Dr. Redfield said during his interview with NewsNation. “That’s the real threat. That’s the real biosecurity threat, that these university labs are doing these bio-experiments that are intentionally modifying viruses—and I think bird flu I think is going to be the cause of a great pandemic—where they are teaching these viruses how to be more infectious for humans.”
The comments from Dr. Redfield come about as a multi-state outbreak of bird flu has ravaged dairy cows in the United States. A total of 42 diary cattle herds located across nine states have been effected. So far, there’s only been one case of the infection in humans.
Redfield provided a bit of comfort by revealing that there’s a “pretty heavy” species barrier the virus has to cross in order to ultimately become infectious in people, though he said that barrier could be destroyed by humans meddling with the illness.
“In the laboratory, I could make it highly infectious for humans in months,” he stated, while urging his colleagues in the scientific community not to tempt fate and to reject gain-of-function research on the bird flu virus.
Dr. Redfield’s warning comes just weeks after cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough’s colleagues alleged in a poston the Courageous Discourse blog that the USDA has been collaborating with the Chinese Academy of Sciences since 2021 on research that includes “serial passage” of the bird flu virus through mallard ducks.
“Serial passage is considered gain-of-function research as it mimics a natural zoonotic jump in an accelerated fashion, leading to enhanced transmissibility among different species,” John Leake and Nicolas Hulscher said in conclusion. “This method has a history of artificially introducing novel pathogens into the wild.”
As if we don’t have enough to worry about with a crappy economy, right?
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