Madison Area Lyme Support Group

House Republicans announced an investigation on Friday into gain-of-function research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that they said could be “dangerous.”

The letter was sent by Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) to UW Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin requesting information on the university’s gain-of-function research and any information on if the university had worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology or on any coronavirus projects.

The letter pointed to previous problems identified with gain-of-function research at the university, but the university has said that the controversial research is “needed and highly regulated.”

Wenstrup said that he disagreed with the university’s assertion that there was enough regulation on gain-of-function research, saying that previous use of gain-of-function research at the university proved otherwise.

“UW has already shown it has the capabilities to modify pathogens and make them more dangerous. In 2011, Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka revealed to the world that he had modified the deadly avian H5N1 influenza virus so it could spread between ferrets. This experiment enabled the bird virus to spread more easily among mammals, particularly ferrets which most closely mimic human response to the flu. The H5N1 virus is considered a ‘potential pandemic pathogen,’ which through modification or handling could cause another global pandemic,” Wenstrup wrote.

The letter also referenced several instances where gain-of-function research was being conducted at the university and scientists working on the projects ended up in quarantine. In one instance, a researcher pricked their finger with a needle that had engineered high pathogenic avian influenza on it and had to have their family stay at a hotel while quarantining at home.  (See link for article)

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**Comment**

This should be a bipartisan issue.  It’s about health and safety, which concerns everyone regardless of political affiliation.

A few points:

• Lawmakers are working on a bill that would ban “institutions of higher education from conducting gain of function research on potentially pandemic pathogens, requiring reporting of the intention to conduct research on potentially pandemic pathogens, and providing a penalty.
• Predictably, those who get paid to do this type of research, believe studying these pathogens is critically important and promise to have safe labs.
• It’s important to learn from the past; however, and it’s now common knowledge that there have been numerous cover-ups regarding the origin of COVID including a fraudulent paper in Nature magazine that has been cited by over 2,000 news outlets and been accessed nearly six-million times. Nature magazine has censored over 1,000 articles at the request of the Chinese government and runs columns sponsored by outside interests. Fauci has also lied to Congress.  Can we really take researchers, journals, and government at face value any longer?

http://  Approx. 8 Min

COVID, Ebola, Lyme Disease: US Labs Dangerous to Us All

2023

Breaking Points