Edit: I missed the bit about the funding being specific to COVID 19. The CIA endorsed the lab leak hypothesis with low confidence, but I'm not sure that there's hard evidence that this particular funding corresponds directly with a particular strain that is believed to be what became COVID. If it was, I doubt any evidence that would prove it still exists.
Cheers. I wish I could still quote the comment I was replying to, but IIRC, they stated that the NIH funded gain of function research on the virus that became known as Covid-19 after it escaped from the lab in Wuhan.
Honestly, lab escape has always been plausible to me, but there's sadly so much politics in assessments of lab-escape by governmental non-scientific agencies, whether it be the "oil on troubled water to placate China" potential bias or "blame China for it as part of an economic biffo" potential bias, that I hold out no hope of ever finding the truth.
Because China was never going to allow investigations by anyone, WHO, UN bodies, whoever, into the physical facilities and processes and data thereof, of that lab in Wuhan.
And, gain of function is an ethically dubious line of research, especially debated amongst scientists, and I'm dubious on it also.
But it's not illegal, and it has some scientific value. (Whether the value is worth the potential risk, well, scientists, debating, so yeah)
So then it comes down to...
Did NIH exceed any policy boundaries set when funding GoF? Did they contradict any laws?
Did they ignore a preponderance of evidence when making this decision?
If not, then using this as justification for crippling the NIH is solely based on personal agenda.
I have no particular dog in this fight but "NIH did ~~9/11~~ Covid-19!" is a really long bow to draw. (Which is how I read the original comment, not yours, to be clear)
I think there's a lot of people who still remember Fauci telling Rand Paul "I am the science!" during his congressional testimony where he denied there was any gain of function research being funded by the NIH.
Edit: there was also a legal moratorium on GoF funding from 2014-2017, though I don't know when EcoHealth was funding Wuhan. I'm assuming it was during the moratorium, based on some hazy memories, but I wouldn't put money on it either way.
End Edit:
He served as the head of NIAID (NIH institute of allergies and infectious diseases) from 1984 to 2022.
To play devil's advocate, the culture in place that allowed such poor oversight (per my previous links) and hubris can't be fixed by adding some new policies. It can only be removed by rebuilding the department under people who were not a part of the original culture.
What we're seeing now is part one of that without knowing what part two is. There might not even be a part two, though I personally think it'll be somewhere in-between what it used to be and the doom prophets who say this administration is the end of the US government.
