“He tried to evade Paul’s cross-examination by attempting to re-define “gain of function””
What definition of Gain of Function do you think is correct?
People here use the term like it has an accepted definition, but when you look at NIH studies that were done well before Covid-19 you can see that that isn’t the case at all.
Here’s a PubMed book report on a 2015 symposium:
“Potential Risks and Benefits of Gain-of-Function Research: Summary of a Workshop.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK285579/
“Throughout the symposium, particularly in the final discussion session, there were calls for a clearer definition of precisely what types of experiments are really of concern. Dr. Tom Inglesby of the UPMC Center for Health Security noted that he thought that the origin of the term “gain-of-function” goes back to a 2012 meeting that he convened for the NIH on this topic.
“The term was used to replace more descriptive terms that indicated concerns about research that generates strains of respiratory viruses that are highly transmissible and highly pathogenic. According to Inglesby, this was the provenance of the term, and he suggested that it could be retired with something more descriptive.
“Dr. Gerald Epstein of the Department of Homeland Security also called for clarifying which experiments are of most concern. GoF is clearly not the right descriptor, and he stated that it would be a tremendous service to have terminology that accurately describes those things about which we are most concerned. The same point was made by others at various times during the workshop.
ALTERNATIVES TO GOF RESEARCH
“The essence of the debate around the risks and benefits of GoF research and the concerns it raises have naturally encouraged virologists on both sides of the debate to consider alternative methodological approaches.
“During his talk, Kawaoka discussed alternatives to GoF research mostly applicable to influenza research, such as loss-of-function research, use of low pathogenicity viruses, and phenotypic analyses.
He further cited a review paper in which Lipsitch and Galvani stated that “alternative scientific approaches are not only less risky, but also more likely to generate results that can be readily translated into public health benefits.”
However, Kawaoka argued through specific examples that alternatives do not always provide the full answer to key questions.
For instance, he cited work by Tumpey et al. and Imai et al. on mutations responsible for the loss of transmission capabilities of the 1918 influenza strain between ferrets and noted that this work required GoF research because a loss-of-function approach did not provide the complete picture.
In addition, although working with low pathogenic avian influenza viruses provides a safer approach, Kawaoka explained that “highly pathogenic avian influenza differ from low pathogenic viruses in their kinetics of virus replication and tropism” and therefore the data can be misleading.
What definition of Gain of Function do you think is correct?
That's a fair question, and worth serious discussion.
Let's stick with using NIH's definition here, in the the context of this dispute between Senator Paul and Dr. Fauci.
In 2016, the NIH defines the term as "Gain-of-function (GOF) research involves experimentation that aims or is expected to (and/or, perhaps, actually does) increase the transmissibility and/or virulence of pathogens."
The discussion you link to from the 2014 symposium doesn't contradict that, noting "any selection process involving an alteration of genotypes and their resulting phenotypes is considered a type of Gain-of-Function (GoF) research", but then goes on to clarify that there is a lack of clarity regarding the then-current US policy, which the organizers and participants were keen to note applied only to "dangerous" or problematic research dealing with organisms likely to harm human health "even if the U.S. policy is intended to apply to only a small subset of such work."
Those two sources, the 2015 summary of the 2014 symposium Potential Risks and Benefits of Gain-of-Function Research and the Gain-of-Function Research: Ethical Analysis paper also linked above were, and are, top Nexis and Google search results and provide the best context for the definition of the term as understood by the two men.
The dispute, which Fauci certainly was intimately familiar with was not about the definition of the term "Gain of Function", but about which types of Gain of Function research were either too dangerous to pursue, or which should be prohibited from recieving US funding. That's an important distinction.
The most generous interpretation of Fauci's answers to Senator Paul's questions is that he wasn't denying that the NIH had ever funded anything that met the strict definition of GOF as "any selection process involving alteration of genotypes...", because he knew for a fact that the NIH certainly was funding research that met that definition. He had to be answering a question that Paul didn't ask, something along the lines of "Did you ever fund the types of GOF research that had been prohibited by the United States". But even that more generous reading of Fauci's remarks doesn't save him. There's at least reasonable suspicion that the NIH did, in fact, provide funding, if only indirectly, for GOF research on respiratory viruses; exactly the type of research that was identified even at the 2014 "Potential Risks" symposium.
As an aside, Ralph Baric himself provides a particularly lucid description of exactly which types of GOF research were dangerous, but worth the risk, too dangerous, or not at all dangerous, at least in his mind. It's long, so I won't quote it, but it's easy to find at the link you provided.
It's not necessary to impute evil intent to Fauci, and Baric, Daszak, and all the rest, only arrogance. Fauci has a long history of employing the "Noble Lie", beginning at least with the AIDS epidemic, and his knowingly false claims that the HIV virus was a universal threat, spreadable by casual contact. He's discussed his reasons for that, and it's not particularly germain here except as a marker of the man's general proclivity to lie to the public when it suits what is, in his mind, a sufficiently noble purpose.
Finally, Paul's op-ed in Newsweek of all places does a perfectly good job of laying out the senator's case against Dr. Fauci in this matter. It won't get him convicted in a court of law, but that really isn't Paul's aim. He's wants to show exactly how the public health authorities exceeded their authority, lied to and mislead the public and their elected representaitives, and contributed to the badly bungled the response to what certainly could have been a disasterous pandemic.