David Moyer | Other Voices First fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to presidents Trump and now Biden. We inexpert citizens never asked him to fund research to develop more contagious and deadly viruses, otherwise called “gain of function” studies. He played a role in funding these studies in such places as Wuhan and North Carolina. Because of the risks, the Obama administration stopped the funding in 2014. In 2017, the National Institute of Health, through ECO Alliance, a nonprofit company, and the good offices of Dr. Fauci, restored funding for Dr. Zhengli Shi’s Wuhan Institute of Virology so they could continue these studies.