Double Dose: Gain Of Dysfunction

How an alliance of crunchies and conservatives could help bring on the next pandemic

- By Kiera Butler

THE CENTER FOR FOOD SAFETY is the kind of organization that most progressive foodies can get behind: Its website features photos of graceful monarch butterflies and dairy cows with big, doleful eyes. Its recent campaigns have implored supporters to “tell EPA to stop this brain-damaging pesticide!” and “protect dolphins and birds from floating factory farms!” It advocates for farmworkers, humane treatment of animals, and protecting pollinators.

Oh, yes, and one more thing: The 24person nonprofit, whose 2019 revenue was about $5 million, wants the US government to stop supporting certain kinds of high-level virology research. In April, the group sued the National Institutes of Health in an attempt to force the agency to reveal information about its funding of so-called gain-of-function research—a category of lab work aimed at understanding how viruses create pandemics. Sometimes, but not always, that means making viruses more virulent and contagious to study how they evolve. Some people have latched onto the idea that scientists engaged in such research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology enhanced a coronavirus that escaped, causing the pandemic. The darkest version of the theory speculates they were making a bioweapon.

In all likelihood, no one will ever know with absolute certainty where the virus came from. Most scientists agree that the United States—which did fund research in Wuhan via NIH grants—and China have failed to complete a sufficient investigation into its origins.