[zmgsabst]

Gain-of-function has no demonstrated health benefit (and if you believe COVID was serial passage of a SARS variant in humanized mice, per the EcoHealth grant proposal, significant negative effect).

Facui is a bureaucrat associated with a number of scandals — and has little demonstrated competence as a medical professional. Being an administrator in a healthcare agency doesn’t make you an expert on medicine.

[0xbadcafebee]

The problem with ragging on a famous dude is all of the documentation that disproves a half-hearted insult (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci#Career) I know you're not gonna read the page. But it says he not only practiced as a healthcare professional for years, he's also widely known in the medical community for making multiple scientific breakthroughs in medicine. He is, in fact, an expert in medicine.

The idea that gain-of-function has no demonstrated benefit is the same as saying there's no demonstrated benefit to going to the moon or mars. Science is not a business. It does not need to show you a YOY return. It's done in order to discover new information, which may have a benefit, or may not.

But in fact, Gain-of-fuction has already given us real scientific discoveries that have improved health outcomes. There are multiple of them documented here (https://web.archive.org/web/20241207202814/https://pmc.ncbi....) and a simple Google search outlines more.

Now, here's the really interesting thing. In 2014, Obama put a moratorium on Gain-of-function (https://www.science.org/content/article/us-halts-funding-new...). Then, in 2017, Trump lifted the moratorium and continued Gain-of-function funding (https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/dual-use-research/feds-lift-gain-...). So Trump's cronies are actually complaining about the program that their predecessors started up.