Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been questioned for quite some time now over emails pointing to the funding of gain-of-function research. While Fauci swore under oath that he has never funded that type of research, Republicans say it fits the definition. And now, another email will be released in its full contents between Fauci and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The email had been previously redacted for interfering with “law enforcement proceedings.”
The email being released is from 2020 between Dr. Anthony Fauci and EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak. Daszak wanted to “personally thank” Fauci for his brave comments during a White House briefing about COVID-19 being potentially manipulated by a lab. The National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, along with EcoHealth Alliance, provided the Wuhan Institute of Virology a research grant of $600,000 to study bat-based coronaviruses. The research had been described as “risky gain-of-function experiments” and speculation that the Wuhan Lab initially released the virus.
“It’s been a very hard few months as these conspiracy theorists have gradually become politicized and hardened in their stance. Especially because the work we’ve been doing in collaboration with Chinese virologists has given us incredible insight into the risks that these viruses represent so that we can directly help protect our nation from bat-origin coronaviruses,” Daszak wrote.
He emphasized that they would fight “to keep the communications open” with Chinese colleagues so that they can better address future pandemics like COVID-19.
The redacted emails were questioned by many GOP senators. They said the Department of Homeland Security’s refusal to produce unredacted copies of all of Fauci’s emails is “troubling,” despite the fact they have the authority to request and do so. Investigative reporter Alison Young said it was a “troubling example” of how federal agencies work with each administration and redact information from documents that the public has every right to see.
It seems that Fauci’s involvement with the Wuhan Lab is being covered by more than just the Department of Homeland Security. Even top scientists are changing their minds on what they think about the origins of COVID-19.
Reps. James Comer and Jim Jordan recently wrote a letter to virologist Kristian Anderson at the Scripps’ Department of Immunology and Microbiology asking what made her change her mind about COVID-19. Anderson made her own hypothesis about the virus being engineered in an email to Dr. Fauci before flipping the script days later to call the lab leak hypothesis a “crackpot theory.”
Anderson first sent an email to Fauci with the subject line “Science: Mining coronavirus genomes for clues to the outbreak’s origins.” She wrote that the “unusual features” of the virus make up a small part of the genome and that some of the sequences look engineered. That email was sent on Jan. 31, 2020.
After attending a conference call with Dr. Fauci on February 1, Anderson wrote an email to Dr. Peter Daszak stating that the “main crackpot theories” going around at the moment that the virus is somehow being engineered is not the case.
“We are very interested in understanding what happened on that call or what science came to light that caused such a dramatic change in your own hypothesis as to the engineering of COVID-19. Therefore, we request a staff-level briefing as soon as possible but no later than August 5, 2021,” Comer and Jordan wrote.
Comer and Jordan are also calling on Fauci to explain more about his sworn testimony and emails to Daszak. While Fauci continues to insist that the NIH never funded gain-of-function research, there’s more evidence pointing to it by the day. There’s even a 2015 Nature Medicine article that points to the exact NIAID grant number that funded the research. They emphasized in the article that they have acknowledged the risks as to whether the data generated from these experiments outweigh the “inherent risks involved.” GOP reps said this raises serious questions as to who approved the research to take place in the Wuhan Lab.
It doesn’t come as a surprise that Fauci was more involved with the Wuhan Lab than he led on to believe with the public. But that’s how you maintain being the highest-paid government employee.
