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The US moratorium on gain-of-function experiments has been rescinded, but scientists are split over the benefits—and risks—of such studies. Talha Burki reports. On Dec 19, 2017, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that they would resume funding gain-of-function experiments involving influenza, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. A moratorium had been in place since October, 2014. At the time, the NIH had stated that the moratorium “will be effective until a robust and broad deliberative process is completed that results in the adoption of a new US Government gain-of-function research policy”. This process...

A National Pulse review of White House Visitor Logs from November 2014 reveals a meeting in the White House Situation Room, chaired by then-Ebola Czar Ron Klain. The meeting appears to have been coordinated by Dr. Anthony Fauci, and included several high-level U.S. government agency heads. (snip) These details may go some way to helping uncover the truth behind the National Institute for Health (NIH) and its alleged funding of gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The information puts Klain and Obama at the head of the table for the decision to green-light what Fauci has been ferociously...

Earlier in Joe Biden’s presidency, we wondered if his wife Jill was running the White House, and in effect the country. It’s still not out of the question, but it’s beginning to look more like Chief of Staff Ron Klain, unelected and not confirmed by the Senate, is the real president. This should make all Americans uncomfortable. Klain, who was the vice president’s chief of staff when Biden held that office, has been called “the man executing Biden’s mission” (which seems to be carrying out the Cloward-Piven model that advocates manufacturing a political and economic crisis so that politicians can...

Levin contrasted the coronavirus pandemic with the Obama-Biden response to the 2009 swine flu epidemic, especially their decision to stop testing, on his national radio show “The Mark Levin Show” Thursday. Levin replayed a C-Span clip from May 2019 in which Ron Klain, a former chief of staff for Biden, says that the Obama-Biden response team “did every possible thing wrong.” We had a bunch of really talented, really good people working on it and we did every possible thing wrong and 60 million Americans got H1N1 in that period of time.” "Well, why didn’t they prevent it?" Levin asked....

President-elect Joe Biden named Ron Klain, a lawyer and former President Barack Obama’s “Ebola czar,” to serve as his White House chief of staff. “Ron has been invaluable to me over the many years that we have worked together, including as we rescued the American economy from one of the worst downturns in our history in 2009 and later overcame a daunting public health emergency in 2014,” Biden said in a Wednesday statement distributed by his transition team. ... Klain has additionally been extremely critical of President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. In March, he gave the federal...

(IsraelNN.com) Vice President-elect Joe Biden has appointed former Clinton administration aide Ran Klain as his chief of staff, one week after President-elect Barack Obama tapped Clinton aide Rahm Emanuel to head the White House as chief of staff. Both appointees are Jewish, but while Emanuel is an observant Jew, Klain intermarried more than 20 years ago and his family observes Christmas. Klain, like Emanuel, promoted the Oslo Peace Accords, which eventually exploded into the Oslo War that has been raging since September, 2000. Emanuel choreographed the handshake between Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin and Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn...

Most of the so called “conservative media” and many Republican politicians have been trashing the Obama regime for the appointment of new “Ebola Czar” Ron Klain. Most of the trashing has been based on the fact that Klain is not a medical doctor by trade, and that all he has ever done was be in charge of Al Gore’s staff. The fact that the Ebola Czar won’t report directly to our Glorious President Obama, but instead to Susan Rice – well how can you argue with that logic (please note the sarcasm). Republicans and the conservative media are missing the...

Sunday on Fox News Channel’s “Media Buzz,” investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson said the CDC is not putting out the current information on how many potential cases of Ebola they are currently tracking in the Untied States. Attkisson said, “I called CDC not long ago and I said how many cases are being monitored in the United States and they said 1,400. I said, ‘Where are these updates on your website? ‘ They said they’re not putting it on the web.

The height of the Ebola outbreak in Africa, Europe, and the United States also coincided with a period in which the Obama administration came under the heaviest scrutiny over its response to that health crisis. Amid criticism, President Barack Obama rejected calls from lawmakers to impose some travel restrictions on the areas affected by Ebola, but he did say his administration was open to appointing one figure to oversee his government’s response to the crisis. Days later, Obama appointed Ron Klain, a long-time Democratic political operative and veteran of both Bill Clinton and Al Gore’s presidential campaigns, to serve as...

What, exactly, does an Ebola czar do? Well, one thing he doesn’t do is testify in Congress, our colleague Joel Achenbach said. Ron Klain, appointed Ebola czar last month by President Obama during a particularly rocky period when Ebola seemed to be spreading in the United States, was conspicuously missing from the lineup of administration officials in the Senate Appropriations committee hearing on Ebola on Wednesday.

White House Ebola response coordinator Ron Klain may have become an accidental folk hero to fans of crushing bureaucracy everywhere on Wednesday, when a U.S. senator asked high-ranking Obama administration officials to describe his work. The vague answers sounded like something plucked out of a Dilbert cartoon. 'Even though the President has named a so-called Ebola “czar” to coordinate our response,' Senate Appropriations Committee ranking Republican Richard Shelby complained, 'all reports indicate that he has no actual authority to direct government agencies here.' He asked two cabinet secretaries and two other experts what Klain has 'brought to the table' in...

HHS Issues Special HIPAA Bulletin on EbolaPrivacyLaw360, New York (November 10, 2014, 6:24 PM ET) -- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Monday issued a bulletin reminding health care centers and others about what information can and cannot be disclosed about Ebola patients...

Ebola be Gone! At the urging of the Obama Administration, the Associated Press and other news outlets have agreed not to report on suspected cases of Ebola in the United States until a positive viral RNA test is completed. The administration and liberal activists were upset with coverage in the run-up to the midterm elections. [whining tweet from The New Yorker] Who said political hack Ron Klain was not a good pick for Ebola czar? In case you haven’t noticed… Media outlets are no longer reporting on suspected Ebola cases at the urging of the Obama administration. Downtrend reported: There...

The gutless and ever political Barack Obama and his Party are handling the Ebola crisis the way Lindsay Lohan’s lawyers and PR people would. They are playing the same games with who gets quarantined and for how long that Lohan’s “people” play every time she is arrested on drug charges. In the PC “pop culture” world Democrats operate in, no one except conservatives are guilty of anything. So when a Hollywood star or sports figure is caught snorting coke the first thing liberals want to do is develop a rationale for not putting them through the system. Liberals rush to...

ZeroHedge: Here's why Ebola is no longer in the news Forbes’ David Kroll – an adjunct professor at Duke University Medical Center - notes: The Associated Press and other press outlets have agreed not to report on suspected cases of Ebola in the United States until a positive viral RNA test is completed. In other words, the mainstream media has agreed not to report on any suspected Ebola cases. I guess the Ebola czar has been a busy boy, after all ... you know, preventing panic and all that.

Now, Ebola. And the President of the United States is not being challenged, he is being over-ruled with respect to quarantines. Over-ruled? State after state is placing its own quarantine restrictions on individuals coming from or returning from West Africa. The President has publically requested and privately demanded that all quarantines be voluntary. He has become no more than a voice in the wind. The armed forces of the United States are placing members of the armed forces returning from Ebola related duty on 21 day quarantine. This needs emphasis. The Commander in Chief, that is the role assigned to...

President Barack Obama's commander in the fight against Ebola was expected to operate below the public radar. But did that mean invisible? Ron Klain has barely been seen, and a week before midterm elections, Obama is pressing to dispel criticism that the government can't manage the Ebola crisis. The White House's behind-the-scenes coordination of the Ebola response is being severely tested, while the Pentagon and states like New York and New Jersey take public steps that are far firmer than federal guidelines. That's creating the appearance of a crazy quilt of Ebola measures. "The CDC is behind on this," New...

Suffering a crisis of confidence over his leadership on Ebola a week before the midterm elections, President Barack Obama assembled a massive staff meeting on the issue at the White House Sunday.Including the president, there were 24 people in physical attendance at the meeting CBS News said was convened “to discuss a nationwide policy for health care workers returning from West Africa.” Vice President Joe Biden joined via telephone, and Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Thomas Frieden and US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power joining via video teleconference.Sunday, the New York Times reported President...

The White House scrambled Wednesday to ease concerns over the spread of Ebola after a second Texas hospital worker tested positive for the virus, as lawmakers showed patience wearing thin with the current response and demanded immediate changes. One lawmaker, Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pa., went so far as to call for the resignation of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Tom Frieden. "This Ebola situation is beginning to spiral beyond control," Marino said in a statement, accusing the government of giving a "false sense of security to many of our citizens." He and others urged the Obama administration...

Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market.com, One of the most dangerous philosophical contentions even amongst liberty movement activists is the conundrum of government force and prevention during times of imminent pandemic. All of us at one time or another have had this debate. If a legitimate viral threat existed and threatened to infect and kill millions of Americans, is it then acceptable for the government to step in, remove civil liberties, enforce quarantines, and stop people from spreading the disease? After all, during a viral event, the decisions of each individual can truly have a positive or negative effect on...