Former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that gain-of-function research into the bird flu virus may cause a “great pandemic.”
Speaking to NewsNation, Redfield explained that despite a significant species barrier, he could “make [the virus] highly infectious for humans in months.”
He emphasized that gain-of-function research “should not be done.”
“That’s the real threat, that’s the real biosecurity threat, that these university labs are doing these bio-experiments that are intentionally modifying viruses,” he explained. “Bird flu, I think, is going to be the cause of the next great pandemic.”
In February, the White Coast Waste Project (WCW) revealed how the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has collaborated with China in conducting “bird flu gain-of-function experiments.”
At least $1 million dollars is funding a five-year project between the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, an organization affiliated with the Wuhan lab. The collaboration runs from 2021-2026, according to the report.
“The aim of this work is to create a predictive phylodynamic model to identify which strains of avian influenza virus (AIV) pose the greatest risk to avian or human populations in the partner countries (USA, UK, and China), to test the predictions experimentally, and to enable communication of risk to stakeholders,” a record of the project reads.
The research involves infecting ducks, geese, and quail with bird viruses that can mutate into lab-created strains. Scientists will then measure the “potential to jump into mammalian hosts.”
Last month, Representative Nick Langworthy (R-NY) sent a letter to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack, condemning taxpayer-funded research that could “potentially generate dangerous new lab-created virus strains that threaten our national security and public health.”
Langworthy and 17 other members of Congress wrote that they are “disturbed” by the USDA’s collaboration with the “Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-linked Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on bird flu research.”
In a resurfaced March 22 interview, Redfield said, “I think the sad thing is that the United States is funding gain-of-function research on a global scale, including here in the United States.”
“And I don’t believe it’s something that should be decided by a group of scientists. I think its ramifications are such that society needs [to] debate whether we should be doing gain-of-function research. And if so, how can we do it in a safe and responsible way?”
He went on to describe how former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci allowed gain-of-function research to be performed on bird flu viruses.
“This is a major disagreement I’ve had with my colleague Dr. Fauci—when they decided to publish the amino sequence changes that were required to make bird flu a pathogen for humans,” Redfield said. “I felt we shouldn’t publish that. We shouldn’t be doing this research. It’s potentially too dangerous [and] could cause a pandemic.”