Fauci once argued for risky viral experiments — even if they can lead to pandemic

“In an unlikely but conceivable turn of events, what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic?” he wrote at the time. “Many ask reasonable questions: given the possibility of such a scenario – however remote – should the initial experiments have been performed and/or published in the first place, and what were the processes involved in this decision? Scientists working in this field might say – as indeed I have said – that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks.” He wrote that it was “more likely” that a pandemic would occur naturally and “the need to stay ahead of such a threat is a primary reason for performing an experiment that might appear to be risky.”