Former State Department official Thomas DiNanno says he was warned off the lab leak theory by nervous colleaguesCareer staffers at the State Department 'warned' officials not to investigate the possibility that COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab, fearing it would expose U.S. funding for gain-of-function research there, according to a new report. Gain-of-function research is a controversial field that involves collecting dangerous viruses and genetically modifying them to be more deadly, in order to study the risks of future outbreaks. Park, a Trump appointee like DiNanno, had been involved in lifting a U.S. government moratorium on funding for gain-of-function research in 2017. Leaked emails later revealed that he encouraged colleagues who do gain-of-function research on coronaviruses not to sign the letter, in order to obscure the connection. China has dozens of BSL-3 labs, but only one BSL-4, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, though it plans to build half a dozen more.

Source: Daily Mail June 03, 2021 21:22 UTC