Dr. Quay: Failing to Understand and Oversee Gain of Function Research Is ‘Existential Threat to Life as We Know It’

On Thursday’s broadcast of “Fox Business Tonight,” Atossa Therapeutics founder Dr. Steven Quay stated that failing to properly understand the risks of gain of function research and properly oversee scientists is “an existential threat to life as we know it on this planet.”

Host Brian Brenberg asked, [relevant remarks begin around 2:45] “How much risk are we putting ourselves at by not landing on this lab leak origin and doing something about it? It sounds to me like we’re setting ourselves up for more of this because we can’t — we won’t let ourselves get to the bottom of the origin of this virus.”

Quay responded, “That’s absolutely true. If we do not, as a public, ask the scientists to tell us the gain — the risk and benefit of doing this called gain of function research, if we let them do it and we keep it under their control, the next pandemic could be 20, 30, 40% lethality. So, just think about what we just went through with a 1% lethal virus, multiply that by 20, 30, 40. This is the most dangerous — I hate to use the word existential, it gets overused, but this is an existential threat to life as we know it on this planet.”

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