Actually, it should be about the "China virus", more precisely, about what is happening in the Wuhan Institute for Virology.

But because nothing more can be found out from Chinese authorities and scientists, the ball in the “lab leak” scandal about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is suddenly in one's own field.

The American opposition, like the government, must see the largest national health research institutes, and thus some of the world's leading virology laboratories, fall out of favor with populists and the television and Twitter public.

Joachim Müller-Jung

Editor in the features section, responsible for the “Nature and Science” section.

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    The furor is attached to the term "gain-of-function". It describes an ethically controversial research direction shaped in virology, which is about changing the genetic composition of pathogens in a targeted manner and thus finding out more about their dangerousness in terms of transferability and disease-causing properties as well as how they can be combated. After the bio-terrorist attacks of the noughties and the swine flu pandemic, it was especially popular in the United States.

    What at that time was made socially acceptable as prevention experiments with dangerous pathogens in Washington, suddenly stands there like a scientific secret society that was launched by allegedly ruthless American research groups.

    At their head: Anthony Fauci, the long-time head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), who is largely responsible for pandemic policy first for President Donald Trump and now for his successor Joe Biden.

    Experiments in high security laboratories

    Even before the e-mails from Fauci from the early phase of the pandemic in the spring of last year became known last week, everyone could know: There are many years of connections between American infection research and the Wuhan Institute - through state funding for possible new pathogens specialized American research agency "Eco-Health Alliance".

    There is talk of a total of $ 600,000 by June 2020.

    There are also reports of direct collaborations, for example with the coronavirus specialist and microbiologist Ralph Baric from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

    Baric is an energetic advocate of gain-of-function research - and an excellent expert on Chinese virus laboratories.

    Because there, too, such experiments have been pushed in high-security laboratories, not least thanks to the support of Barics and the member of the American National Academy Peter Daszak, the president of the "Eco-Health Alliance", who wanted to research the pandemic potential, especially of bat viruses, in southern China. As for gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute, Baric and Daszak have not yet made any specific statements.