Conversation with Meryl Nass on Gain of Function Research

Meryl Nass published an article this week in which she emphasized a critical need to ban Gain of Function research and called doing so “the most important thing President Trump is doing right now”

On Gain of Function research and why Exiting the WHO and ending this research is critical

Nass said Gain of Function research is really another name for Biowarfare research and “simply cannot be conducted safely” because it poses grave risks to lab workers, as well as to the broader community through human transmission of dangerous pathogens and countries sharing viruses and reagents that have “pandemic potential” properties.¹

We have been “propagandized,” Nass says, to believe pandemics can come from “viral spillover” from animals to humans (aka, zoonosis) but this “almost never causes a pandemic” apart from seasonal flu. Pandemics are common, in her view, but can be handled without severe measures. One presentation slide shared says SARS-CoV-2 was “made in a lab, and the only questions today is whether it escaped accidentally or was deliberately spread.”

In stating her view on Gain of Function, the origin of SARS-CoV-2, and pandemics, Dr. Nass provided a good opportunity for debate/dialogue among those of us who (like her) consider themselves as “dissidents” to the government’s COVID story.

I initially replied with this comment:

1) DJT [Donald Trump] participated in the staging of a pandemic; he’s no hero on this.

2) Pandemics of viral spreading agents are not possible.

3) No, GoF is not another name for bioweapon development. Such a characterization empowers the perpetrators of the 2020 Human Rights Heist.

4) Lab leaks/accidents are low risk on a population level. The proposed transmission dynamics of a leak resulting in a series of events at the speed and with the pathogenicity purported are pure Hollywood.

5) The WHO must be exposed and dissolved. Same for every govt official and private/public partnership that aided & abetted global fraud.

There was no pandemic; there was Democide, fraud, and propaganda.

Martin Neil

’s response invoked his and

Jonathan Engler

’s review of Gain of Function research. He said:

A thorough review of the available evidence suggests that the emergence of a novel engineered virus is the least likely explanation for the event known as the ‘covid pandemic’.

Notably:

The discovery of ‘novel’ viruses is a function of how determined we are to find them - the more we look the more we find, suggesting that the attribution of novelty to a virus is as much the result of a politicised process rather than something based on an objective analysis of its properties.

The features of SARS-CoV-2 do not appear to be as ‘special’ or ‘unique’ as claimed.

There is no good evidence that the many and complex hurdles in front of deliberately engineering viruses to become more pathogenic or transmissible in humans have been overcome.

The theory that there was a long-standing but hitherto undetected virus endemic in animal (and possibly human) reservoirs is difficult if not impossible to falsify.

There are other explanations which could explain the sudden and rapid global appearance and spread of a specific sequence than the spread of a novel virus. The available virological and epidemiological evidence does not adequately support either the lab leak or the wet market theories for the origins of the virus.

It would be more apt to refer to ‘Claim-of-Function’ than ‘Gain-of-Function’ research.

Virological research with the intention of enhancing pathogenicity is, nevertheless, unethical and unnecessary and as such should cease; this is true even though we believe the evidence strongly supports the hypothesis that the ‘covid pandemic’ was an iatrogenic phenomenon and was not caused by a novel and deadly virus. In this regard if there actually was a function gained by the virus it was the power to help trick humanity into a dramatic act of self-harm.

From:

Virus Origins and Gain (Claim) of Function research

Responding to a comment from Jonathan Engler, Dr. Nass said:

Look, genetic engineering is over 50 years old. you can move virulence factors between viruses or even create viruses de novo. The "usefulness" of certain genes or small segments in pathogenicity is widely known by virologists

So to me it seems grossly ignorant to make the claim "There is no good evidence that the many and complex hurdles in front of deliberately engineering viruses to become more pathogenic or transmissible in humans have been overcome."

Here's the thing. You can't necessarily tell which bugs you created will reproduce and take off in the world--most don't. So you do trial and error, design them, AND THEN YOU TEST THEM. Some will work. It isn't that hard to understand.

Martin Neil replied and asked Dr. Nass to consider and react to the views of Sunetra Gupta and Denis Noble, which we highlighted in a more recent article on gain of function and the false dichotomy of wet market/lab leak:

It is your claim in the last paragraph we dispute and do so with careful and nuanced analysis. Contrary to what you say it is indeed easy to understand because the claim 'deadly viruses made by mad scientists that sweep the globe' is just not credible. And it perpetuates a great evil.

Given you think I should stay in my lane how about taking on the arguments made by these two qualified Oxford dons instead:

Claim of Function - it wasn't a lab-leak and neither was it from the wet-market

Are they as 'grossly ignorant' as me or more so?

To better understand the “mechanics” of what Dr. Nass is proposing and assuming, I also replied — and invoked the contrast between the views of Jay Bhattacharya and Sunetra Gupta regarding SARS-CoV-2’s origin and trajectory:

"And then you test them" how? Are you saying the testing is done by leaking or releasing them into the real world - and that SARS-CoV-2 was leaked/released and just happened to 'work'?

We do not deny that lab workers can get sick or be affected by the materials they are working with.

But the idea that a lab worker becomes affected/infected and a viral agent transmits from that person to other people (at all or in exponential fashion) is unsubstantiated.

If, as you note, lab accidents occur all the time, then the very fact that they do not result in even localized events involving an appreciable number of people is itself a 'non-existence proof.'

How do we know the viral agents can't 'leak' and get far, let alone created successive mass casualty events around the globe in a short timeframe? Because they don't; it's never happened - and there is no evidence it happened with SARS-CoV-2.

To wit, it's fairly clear that "first" person-to-person transmission in the U.S. was no such thing. https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/questioning-the-first-known-person.

As Martin said in his comments, Profs Sunetra Gupta and Denis Noble disagree with your position. That's fine if you think they're wrong, but we would love for you (and others) to say why.

I will note that, based on his public statements, NIH Director nominee Jay Bhattacharya seems to believes SARS-CoV-2 is a virus that was created or adulterated in a lab and made it into the wider world by hitching a ride on a lab worker and transmitting from that lab worker to other humans. He thinks the experiments being conducted were risky, shouldn’t have been funded, and were carried out in less-than-safe conditions. The research wasn’t accidental but the “leak” was.

Sunetra Gupta rejects the lab leak hypothesis and wet market scenarios and believes SARS-CoV-2 is a zoonotic emergence event that occurred in China. It’s not an “accident” per se; it’s within the bounds of what nature can and does do periodically. GoF isn’t inherently dangerous, she asserts; we need it so that we can develop countermeasures against the pandemic pathogens nature produces.²

It sounds like you agree with both of them in the sense that you think nature has given us viral influenza pandemics, but GoF resulted in a the SARS-Cov-2 coronavirus pandemic.

I/We disagree with that and would appreciate substantive debate on the issue.

Dr. Nass has not engaged further. Readers can engage as/if they see fit.

Awaiting Debate…

I highlight Dr. Nass’s views and our exchanges with her because there are very important, basic questions that remain not only unresolved but largely untouched.

Brownstone Institute and The Daily Sceptic rejected our proposition to challenge the lab leak hypothesis late last year, and it seems the governments of the world are not backing down on their support of the WHO’s core claims about a newly-found virus causing a new disease that adds risk severe illness or death for some people and spreads from person to person.

The U.S. appears to be fully advancing the “virus leaked from Chinese lab as a result of GoF research that Tony Fauci lied about funding” narrative, with the full support of most Medical/Health Freedom proponents, despite the leak scenario having very little support scientifically or statistically.

I remain hopeful that events in the coming months will make the need for confronting and debating what did and didn’t happen in late 2019 and early 2020 more apparent to more people who agree the governments of the world are still not telling the truth.

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Previous interaction with Dr. Nass regarding the New York City Mass Casualty event of spring 2020:

Responding to Meryl Nass's Claims About the New York City Event and "COVID"

1. I, too, oppose Gain of Function research but for different reasons that Dr. Nass. See https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/sunetra-guptas-view-on-the-origins | Added post-publication: I am loathe to call GoF research ‘biowarfare’ research and have concerns about the term ‘bioweapon’ being uses to characterize both SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID shot: https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/opinions-on-the-use-of-bioweapon

2. Summaries of Jay Bhattacharya’s and Sunetra Gupta’s views taken from https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/do-the-origins-of-sars-cov-2-matter