Former CDC Director: Gain-of-Function Research Moratorium ‘Very Important’
The former director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Robert Redfield, said Wednesday that he is in complete support of the decision by President Trump to put a moratorium on funding of gain-of-function research, calling it “very important.”
Trump signed an executive order on Monday in order to stop these experiments by cutting off funding to countries where they occur.
“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 told Newsmax. “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.”
The position that supporters of gain-of-function research take, that scientists need to “create these dangerous viruses to know how to develop countermeasures to them,” is “a mistake,” Redfield added.
“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 continued. “We don’t have to create the pathogen to figure out how to defend against the pathogen.” (Read more from “Former CDC Director: Gain-of-Function Research Moratorium ‘Very Important’” HERE)
