Reminder that the Obama administration banned gain of function research due to its dangers. Only for Fauci to perform it through EcoHealth and WIV while claiming he’s not funding it.
They paused funding actual dangerous gain-of-function (as the article makes the distinction), while developing new guidelines for how it should be managed.
They then released the new framework of multi-layered review to clearly define the tradeoffs and how they were managed, and resumed funding for those that could meet the improved criteria.
ie it was standard research advancing regulatory risk management.
