Baric Transcribed Interview (Redacted) — page 91

DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com shocks you, doesn't it? MS. SALAZAR: It does shock me. DR. BARIC: Do you know how many grants I write? MS. SALAZAR: I don't. DR. BARIC: A lot. MS. SALAZAR: Okay. But this grant, I mean, especially with all the conversations of the furin cleavage site, I mean, nothing about that grant. DR. BARIC: Yeah. So from my perspective, let's talk about the grant for a minute. Let's make sure we put it in perspective. So DARPA was interested in addressing a problem about the warfighter. And I think there's, what, about 250,000 troops and their families across the globe. Many of those soldiers go into wild areas of the world where they come in contact with pathogens. So they can then infect members of their group, they can take the virus back to the base, and they can bring it back to the United States. So this is a real threat, potential threat to the public of the United States, because of where they go. So DARPA came up with a proposal that they wanted to know, down to the nucleotide level, what regulates a virus jumping between species and then develop countermeasures for it. Now, if you want to know, down to the nucleotide level, what drives a cross-species jumping event, you are talking gain-of-function experiments.