Bioweaponry — The Dead System

The main event

Gain of function

Take a virus. Make it spread easier, infect more species, or hit harder — in a lab — so you can “study it.” That is gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens.

1 · Natural virus

Collected from bats, birds or animals.

2 · Enhanced

Passed through cells or animals, or edited, until it gains new abilities.

3 · In the lab

Held behind biosafety levels that depend on people never failing.

4 · The risk

One accident, one infected worker — and it is out in the world.

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Why it is so dangerous

Supporters say it helps us predict and prepare for the next pandemic. Critics answer that you are creating the very thing you fear — a virus that does not exist in nature — and that history shows labs leak. In the author’s view the benefit does not justify the risk of a human-made pandemic.

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Where it meets bioweapons

The same skills that make a virus “more transmissible for research” are the skills needed to build a weapon. The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention bans bioweapons — but it has no inspection system, so nobody can verify what is happening inside a lab.

Where it touches your life

It leads straight to your health

Research on pathogens, the response to pandemics and the rules about your own body are all run by the same small circle of institutions. Follow the thread to the Health pillar.

Go to the Health page →

The animated story

A short history of deadly science

Scroll slowly. Each event builds toward the same question.

1930s–40s

Unit 731

Imperial Japan runs a secret programme testing plague and other agents on prisoners — the dark origin of modern bioweapons research.

1969–1975

The world says “never again”

The US ends its offensive programme and the Biological Weapons Convention is signed. It has no way to check anyone.

1979

Sverdlovsk

Anthrax escapes from a Soviet military facility and kills dozens of people. The Soviet Union blamed bad meat for years; later it was admitted to be a lab accident. The Soviet programme (Biopreparat) kept running.

2001

The anthrax letters

Anthrax sent through the US mail kills five people. The strain came from a US biodefence lab.

2011–2014

The ferret experiments

Scientists make bird flu (H5N1) transmissible between mammals. The world is alarmed; in 2014 the US pauses funding for the most dangerous gain-of-function work.

2017

The pause is lifted

A new review framework lets the research resume under the oversight of the very agencies that fund it.

2019–2020

Wuhan

COVID-19 appears in the city that hosts the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a leading coronavirus lab. Where the virus came from is still disputed — a natural spill-over or a lab accident.

2021

The senator speaks

Senator Rand Paul confronts Dr Anthony Fauci in a Senate hearing over NIH funding that reached the Wuhan lab. The fight begins.

2025

A new order

The administration restricts federally funded “dangerous gain-of-function” research, and Rand Paul’s committee investigation pushes on.

The movement

Rand Paul and the call for answers

A physician and US Senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul has become the most persistent voice demanding that gain-of-function research be exposed and controlled.

Confronting Fauci

In 2021 hearings Paul pressed Dr Fauci on whether NIH funded gain-of-function work in Wuhan. Fauci said the NIH had not funded such research as the NIH defines it; Paul said that definition was a way of dodging the question.

Criminal referrals

Paul sent referrals to the Department of Justice accusing Fauci of misleading Congress. Fauci has denied this. In January 2025 he received a full pre-emptive pardon from President Biden, which Paul called an admission of guilt.

Chairing the investigation

As chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee from 2025, Paul has issued subpoenas and demanded records from federal agencies about the origin of COVID-19 and the funding of risky research.

“Dangerous research shouldn’t be hidden, and the people who fund it shouldn’t grade their own homework.” The argument at the centre of Rand Paul’s campaign — paraphrased, not a direct quotation.

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The Risky Research Review Act

Paul’s bill would create an independent board to approve life-sciences research that could create pandemic risk, instead of leaving the decision to the funding agencies. It is the legislative answer to the 2017 rules.

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Following the money

Part of Paul’s case is about grants: NIH money flowed to EcoHealth Alliance, which passed a subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for bat-coronavirus research. EcoHealth and its president were later barred from federal funding.

What was done with the technology

Dr Fauci, the NIH and the research

Dr Anthony Fauci led the NIH’s infectious-disease institute (NIAID) for 38 years, and NIAID funded much of this research. Here is what the record and the arguments say.

He defended the science

In 2011 Fauci publicly argued that studying dangerous flu viruses was worth the risk to prepare for pandemics. Later he supported the 2017 resumption of the research.

The funding trail

NIAID funded coronavirus studies through EcoHealth Alliance, including work at the Wuhan lab. The NIH has said the work did not meet its own definition of gain of function. Critics say the definition was too narrow to be useful.

The origin fight

Early in 2020 Fauci and other scientists discussed the possibility of a lab origin, then publicly stressed natural origin. Several US agencies have since leaned toward a lab leak, with low to moderate confidence, while others favour a natural origin. No one has produced proof either way.

The pardon

On 20 January 2025 Fauci was pardoned for any offences connected to his government service back to 2014. A pardon does not decide guilt or innocence, and it ends legal accountability, not public questions.

million+ COVID deaths officially reported worldwide

years Fauci led NIAID

routine inspectors under the Biological Weapons Convention

year the treaty was signed — with no way to verify it

An empty witness chair in a Senate hearing room under a spotlight

Opinion and commentary based on public hearings, reporting and government statements. The origin of COVID-19 remains disputed, and Dr Fauci denies wrongdoing.