Gain-of-Function Research

There is no legitimate scientific justification for gain-of-function research. President Obama imposed a moratorium on domestic gain-of-function research in 2014, which Anthony Fauci circumvented by outsourcing research to China and partly by ignoring the ban domestically. Paul Offit, a prominent vaccine advocate, raised alarm about Yoshihiro Kawaoka's gain-of-function research at the University of Wisconsin as dangerously reckless in 2012. The current H5N1 clade was produced through gain-of-function laboratory manipulation designed to increase its transmissibility and virulence across species. The USDA's Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory in Athens, Georgia is identified as the most probable leak point of the current circulating H5N1 strain.