Dr. Robert Redfield, the former director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Newsmax on Wednesday that he fully supports President Donald Trump’s moratorium on gain-of-function research, calling the funding freeze for such experiments “very important.”
On Monday, Trump signed an executive order aimed at curbing gain-of-function research — which he blames for creating the COVID-19 pandemic — by halting funding to countries where such research takes place. The president’s order named China as an example of a “country of concern.”
“I did an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal back in 2021, really calling on our government to put a moratorium on it,” Redfield said on “Wake Up America.” “There’s really no scientific advantage for doing this type of research and there’s a real downside in terms of creating pathogens that may cause problems that we don’t have countermeasures [for], like the COVID-19 virus, which I do believe was a direct consequence of gain-of-function research.”
Proponents of gain-of-function research say scientists “have to create these dangerous viruses to know how to develop countermeasures to them,” Redfield explained, but he called that position “a mistake.”
“I argue that we have enough scientific capacity that if and when we’re challenged with a new pathogen, that we can apply the tools of science to address that pathogen and develop countermeasures,” he said. “We don’t have to create the pathogen to figure out how to defend against the pathogen.”
A large share of the scientific community wants to engage in gain-of-function research “because scientists like to ask questions,” Redfield said, adding that those scientists sometimes forget to ask whether they should ask the questions in the first place.
“They like to ask questions, and this was a big part of spending significant resources on scientific research,” Redfield said. “But I think it’s ill-advised and I really support Trump’s decision to put a moratorium on gain-of-function research.”
The former CDC director also disputed Dr. Anthony Fauci’s repeated claim that the National Institutes of Health had never funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China. Fauci, the infectious disease expert who advised both Trump and former President Joe Biden on COVID-19, testified before Congress in 2021 that he “never lied” about funding gain-of-function experiments.
“I think there’s no doubt that the funding was responsible for creating the COVID virus that then caused the COVID pandemic,” Redfield said. “And really, it’s a hypothetical argument that Tony keeps using.
“He says if you take a pathogen that’s nonpathogenic for humans and you make it pathogenic for humans, that’s not gain-of-function research. You have to start with the pathogen that’s already pathogenic for humans. So, he’s just playing games with the wording.”
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