Fauci once argued for risky viral experiments — even if they can lead to pandemic

Dr. Anthony Fauci once argued that conducting experiments on contagious viruses to increase their potency was worth the risk, even if the work could accidentally lead to a pandemic, it was revealed Friday.

The nation’s chief medical advisor wrote in the American Society for Microbiology in October 2012 of the public health benefit to gain-of-function viral experiments — which center on manipulating viruses and making them stronger — as long as there is significant oversight.

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“In an unlikely but conceivable turn of events, what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic?” he wrote at the time.

“Many ask reasonable questions: given the possibility of such a scenario – however remote – should the initial experiments have been performed and/or published in the first place, and what were the processes involved in this decision? Scientists working in this field might say – as indeed I have said – that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks.”

He wrote that it was “more likely” that a pandemic would occur naturally and “the need to stay ahead of such a threat is a primary reason for performing an experiment that might appear to be risky.”

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“We cannot expect those who have these concerns to simply take us, the scientific community, at our word that the benefits of this work outweigh the risks, nor can we ignore their calls for greater transparency, their concerns about conflicts of interest, and their efforts to engage in a dialog about whether these experiments should have been performed in the first place,” Fauci wrote.

“Those of us in the scientific community who believe in the merits of this work have the responsibility to address these concerns thoughtfully and respectfully.”