Exclusive | Pentagon asked for gain of function research proposals years before COVID-19 pandemic, top virologist tells Congress

WASHINGTON — A War Department program requested proposals for so-called “gain of function” experiments that could make viruses more infectious nearly two full years before the COVID-19 pandemic began, a top US virologist told Congress earlier this year.Dr.Ralph Baric, a prominent coronavirus researcher, told the Senate Homeland Security Committee in a closed-door interview April 10 that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) had solicited proposals in January 2018 to understand “what drives cross-species jumping” in viruses.“Now, if you want to know, down to the nucleotide level, what drives a cross-species jumping event, you are talking gain-of-function experiments,” Baric told committee staffers, according to an interview transcript obtained by The Post.Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul (R-Paul.) is making Baric’s full testimony available at a Reading Room webpage that is dedicated to providing Americans full transparency about the decisions surrounding viral research leading up to the global outbreak.US public health officials like former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) Director Dr.

Anthony Fauci have maintained that the research — which can involve the enhancement of potential pandemic pathogens — is safe and useful for developing vaccines or other drugs to fight emerging viruses.Critics have argued that there are no civilian applications for what they deem risky viral research — and that one of the proposals DARPA received included identical characteristics to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.That proposal, known as Project DEFUSE, has since been cited by scientists as “smoking gun” evidence that COVID-19 was engineered in a Wuhan, China lab because the same furin cleavage site later discovered in the virus itself.It had been submitted by Baric; Shi Zhengli, a top scientist working with bat coronaviruses at the now-infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV); and...