Despite testifying before Congress to the contrary, new evidence appears to prove that National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins approved grants for gain-of-function virus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Gain-of-function research involves extracting natural virus samples from animals and engineering them to infect humans for the development of therapeutics and vaccines. Gain-of-function research was banned in the United States in 2014, but that didn’t stop the NIH from funding such research before the ban was lifted by the Obama administration days before he left office.
Both Fauci and Collins have denied approving grants for the controversial research through EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but a letter from NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak to House Oversight Committee ranking Republican James Comer contradicts their testimony.
“NIH — and specifically, Collins, Fauci, and Tabak — lied to Congress, lied to the press, and lied to the public,” says Dr. Richard H. Ebright, Board of Governors professor at Rutgers University’s Waksman Institute of Microbiology. “Knowingly. Willfully. Brazenly.”
The letter from Tabak describes the results of a limited experiment, where “laboratory mice infected with [a modified bat coronavirus] became sicker than those infected with the [original] bat coronavirus.”
“As sometimes occurs in science, this was an unexpected result of the research, as opposed to something that the researchers set out to do,” Tabak said. “Regardless, the viruses being studied under this grant were genetically very distant from SARS-CoV-2,” the virus that causes COVID-19.
The NIH received the relevant documents in 2018 and reviewed the documents in 2020 and again in 2021.
The NIH–specifically, Collins, Fauci, and Tabak–lied to Congress, lied to the press, and lied to the public. Knowingly. Willfully. Brazenly.
— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) October 20, 2021
Fauci testified before the U.S. Senate back in May, claiming that the NIH “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” Senator Rand Paul later accused Dr. Fauci of lying during an appearance on Fox News.
In 2012, Fauci defended gain-of-function research and even insisted the controversial research was worth the risk of a 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?” Fauci asked. “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.” Evidence that Fauci was aware of NIH funding of gain-of-function research abroad was also found in the Fauci emails released via FOIA earlier this year. Nevertheless, the evidence keeps piling up that Fauci knew about NIH funding of gain-of-function research.
The punishment for lying to Congress is up to five years in prison.
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