Dr. Fauci denies the NIH funded gain of function studies in Wuhan. But last May, WUWT reported on a published gain of function paper which includes a top Wuhan virologist as an author, and acknowledges NIH funding.
Rand Paul: Dr. Fauci lied to Congress about Wuhan lab research funding
Fauci denies US funded ‘gain of function’ research in China
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., claimed on Wednesday that Dr. Anthony Fauci lied to Congress when he denied that the National Institute of Health was funding research at the controversial Wuhan lab.
…
“Dr. Fauci, do you still support funding of the NIH funding of the lab in Wuhan?” he asked the NIH chief.
“Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely, entirely, and completely incorrect,” a clearly irritated Fauci shot back. “The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.“
While speaking to co-host Bill Hemmer, Paul elaborated on his allegation and claimed that Dr. Shi Zhengli, the Wuhan-based ‘bat woman’ virologist who researched coronavirus variants in animals, wrote a paper that MIT scientists surmised was referencing gain-of-function research (making pathogens deadlier or more easily transmissible).
Paul claims that the paper acknowledged that their funding came from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), a subset of the NIH where Dr. Fauci is the director.
…
Read more: https://www.foxnews.com/media/rand-paul-dr-fauci-lied-congress-china-virus-research
WUWT reported the apparent collaboration between US and Chinese researchers on “gain of function” research in May 2020.
The following is a link to a paper which acknowledges NIH funding, and which discusses dangerous gain of function studies, in which animal viruses or human viruses are genetically engineered to add new traits which make the viruses more dangerous to humans. Senior Wuhan virologist Shi Zhengli is one of the authors. The paper contains the warning “the potential to prepare for and mitigate future outbreaks must be weighed against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens.”.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/ (backup copy here).
So I suggest Senator Rand Paul is on pretty firm ground when he suggests Dr. Fauci might have his facts wrong, on US funding for gain of function studies.
I think it is important to note that gain of function is not an attempt to create a biological weapon, the researchers are trying to simulate what might happen anyway, by turning the clock forward so they can view what Pandemics might emerge in the near future. Viruses continuously genetically engineer themselves, by grabbing pieces of other viruses and incorporating those pieces into the next strain. If researchers discover that say one or two minor changes to an animal virus results in a dangerous human pathogen, they can flag the original virus as a pandemic in waiting, an imminent risk to humans.
But in the process of turning the clock forward, researchers by their own admission risk accidentally releasing the very pandemic they fear will emerge naturally. There is a strong case that such experiments are simply too dangerous to perform.
This evidence of a connection between the NIH, Wuhan and gain of function studies is not proof that Covid-19 is the unfortunate outcome of an insanely high risk joint Chinese US virus study which leaked out of the laboratory. But I think it is reasonable to conclude that Dr. Fauci needs to answer a lot more questions, and clarify his answer on NIH funding for gain of function studies.
I want to add the following to the record:
An Interview with Richard Ebright: The WHO Investigation Members Were “participants in disinformation” By Jorge Casesmeiro Roger March 24, 2021
https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/an-interview-with-richard-ebright-anthony-fauci-francis-collins-systematically-thwarted/
Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University, Dr. Richard H. Ebright, PhD, is also Laboratory Director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology …
* * *
JCR: Regarding the inspection personnel, at least one member of the WHO mission team, Ecohealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak, seems to have conflicts of interest that should have disqualified him from being part of an investigation of the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
RHE: Yes. Daszak was the contractor who funded the laboratory at WIV that potentially was the source of the virus (with subcontracts from $200 million from the US Department of State and $7 million from the US National Institutes of Health), and he was a collaborator and co-author on research projects at the laboratory.
* * *
JCR: What biological evidence regarding the structure and behaviour of SARS-CoV-2 points to a pure zoonosis? And what to the lab theory?
RHE: The genome sequence of the outbreak virus indicates that its progenitor was either the horseshoe-bat coronavirus RaTG13, or a closely related bat coronavirus. RaTG13 was collected by Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2013 from a horseshoe-bat colony in a mine in Yunnan province, where miners had died from a SARS-like pneumonia in 2012, was partly sequenced by WIV in 2013-2016, was fully sequenced by WIV in 2018-2019, and was published by WIV in 2020.
Bat coronaviruses are present in nature in multiple parts of China. Therefore, the first human infection could have occurred as a natural accident, with a virus passing from a bat to a human, possibly through another animal. There is clear precedent for this. The first entry of the SARS virus into the human population occurred as a natural accident in a rural part of Guangdong province in 2002.
But bat coronaviruses are also collected and studied by laboratories in multiple parts of China, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Therefore, the first human infection also could have occurred as a laboratory accident, with a virus accidentally infecting a field collection staffer, a field survey staffer, or a laboratory staffer, followed by transmission from the staffer to the public. There also is clear precedent for this. The second, third, fourth and fifth entries of the SARS virus into human populations occurred as a laboratory accident in Singapore in 2003, a laboratory accident in Taipei in 2003, and two separate laboratory accidents in Beijing in 2004.
JCR: So for you there is still a fifty-fifty chance?
RHE: At this point in time, there is no secure basis to assign relative probabilities to the natural-accident hypothesis and the laboratory-accident hypothesis. Nevertheless, there are three lines of circumstantial evidence that are worth noting.
JCR:Proceed, Doctor.
RHE: First, the outbreak occurred in Wuhan, a city of 11 million persons that does not contain horseshoe-bat colonies, that is tens of kilometers from, and that is outside the flight range of, the nearest known horseshoe-bat colonies. Furthermore, the outbreak occurred at a time of year when horseshoe bats are in hibernation and do not leave colonies
JCR: Another one.
RHE: Second, the outbreak occurred in Wuhan, on the doorstep of the laboratory that conducts the world’s largest research project on horseshoe bat viruses, that has the world’s largest collection of horseshoe-bat viruses, and that possessed and worked with the world’s closest sequenced relative of the outbreak virus. The laboratory actively searched for new horseshoe-bat viruses in horseshoe-bat colonies in caves in remote rural areas in Yunnan province, brought those new horseshoe-bat viruses to Wuhan, and then mass-produced, genetically manipulated, and studied those new horseshoe-bat viruses, year-round, inside Wuhan.
JCR: A remarkable coincidence. The last one?
RHE: Third, the bat-SARS-related-coronavirus projects at the Wuhan Institute of Virology used personal protective equipment (usually just gloves; sometimes not even gloves) and biosafety standards (usually just biosafety level 2) that would pose very high risk of infection of field-collection, field-survey, or laboratory staff upon contact with a virus having the transmission properties of SARS-CoV-2.
* * *
JCR: … Dr. Ebright, as a longstanding opponent of biological weapons proliferation (Nature: Jan. 24/02 & Jan. 15/12) and Founding Member of the Harvard “Cambridge Working Group Consensus Statement on the Creation of Potential Pandemic Pathogens (PPPs)”, does the current crisis demand a new debate and moratorium on these highly risky experiments, and this these time with a more international engagement?
RHE: Yes.
JCR: What went wrong for the Cambridge Working Group thesis during the 2014-2016 USA official moratorium and deliberative process on Gain-of-Function Research of Concern (GoFRoC)?
RHE: The Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have systematically thwarted efforts by the White House, the Congress, scientists, and science policy specialists to regulate GoF research of concern and even to require risk-benefit review for projects involving GoF research of concern.
In 2014, the Obama White House implemented a “Pause” in federal funding for GoF research of concern. However, the document announcing the Pause stated in a footnote that: “An exception from pause may be obtained if head of funding agency determines research is urgently necessary to protect public health or national security”. Unfortunately, the NIAID Director and the NIH Director exploited this loophole to issue exemptions to projects subject to the Pause –preposterously asserting the exempted research was “urgently necessary to protect public health or national security”– thereby nullifying the Pause.
In 2017, the Trump Administration announced a Potential Pandemic Pathogens Control and Oversight (P3CO) Framework that implemented a requirement for risk-benefit review of GoF research of concern. However, the P3CO Framework relies on the funding agency to flag and forward proposals for risk-benefit review. Unfortunately, the NIAID Director and the NIH Director have declined to flag and forward proposals for risk-benefit review, thereby nullifying the P3CO Framework.
* * *
JCR: Drs. Imperiale and Casadevall, both Cambridge Work Group Board Members, echoed last summer: “Most experts who have been studying and discussing preparedness agree that the source of the pathogen does not significantly change the nature of the response. Is that right, Dr. Ebright, or maybe the outcome of knowing CoV-2 origin could have saved lives?
RHE: Understanding the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is not crucial for responding to the present pandemic. But it is crucial –absolutely crucial– for preventing future pandemics.
JCR: Regarding prevention, it was precisely Dr. Peter Daszak, with a renewed grant from the NIH, now to target deadly viruses in South Asia, who stated in August 2020: “We’re going to work in remote parts of Malaysia and Thailand to get to the front line of where the next pandemic is going to start”. Now, though Dr. Daszak is not openly cited in the March 4 Open Letter, he is clearly the WHO team member with a more biased vision and unresolved conflict of interest when it comes to inspecting a possible leak in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. So going back: if the origin of Covid-19 was a lab accident, GoF, or in between, this would change the narrative of the whole pandemic, and so the measures that should be taken to prevent another one: like, for instance, keeping crackpot scientists far away from deadly viruses. Am I wrong?
RHE: You are not wrong.
JCR: Thank you for your attention, Dr. Ebright.
The interview with Ebright is a very imporatnt document. Particularly the bold paragraphs toward the end. I would label them as the indictment of Saint Anthony Fauci.
J’accuse, Dr. Fauci
This just in:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/ohio-state-professor-jailed-lying-chinese-funding
Washington Examiner:
The story also relates that Zheng was involved with five different Chinese university and research organizations, not just Sun-Yat Sen U.
Before you ask, yes, I know that this is a different Zheng. Even sharing a common surname, I am reasonably sure that the two are not closely related (Zhengs/Chengs in China being near as common as my ancestral Joneses in Wales). Point in poisting this here is more NIH medical malfeasance in connection with identified and unnamed medical research institutions under CCP control.
Senator Paul almost asked the right question which was whether any US funds found their way to the Wuhan lab which they did. The second question is what the purpose of the US funds was. The third question is what the US funds were actually used for. The fourth question is how Fauci knew that no funds had been diverted from their purpose.
Any creative administrator knows that funding is fungible. The easiest way to get funds applied to the wrong (or is that right) purpose is to divert unrelated funding. You get a grant to mow the lawns and that means you can use your actual lawn mowing money somewhere else.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33942847/
An evolutionary portrait of the progenitor SARS-CoV-2 and its dominant offshoots in COVID-19 pandemic
“However, multiple coronavirus infections in China and the USA harbored the progenitor genetic fingerprint in January 2020 and later, suggesting that the progenitor was spreading worldwide months before and after the first reported cases of COVID-19 in China.”
Cut the crap. Just demand the lab reports and notebooks for the NIH- NIAID grant that went to manipulating the S spike protein at the Wuhan BSL-4 lab. Fauci won’t permit the reports to be seen. CALL HIS BLUFF! Let’s see what’s there.
Send in the US Marshals and seize everything, including his personal financials and all the top people involved.
I want to know precisely how much Fauxi is personally profiting from all of this.
That these gain of function studies were NOT the most intensely discussed “ecological” and “systemic” and “sustainability” subject last years shows how utter vacuous and dishonest the whole System is.
This article operates on the discredited hypothesis that Dr Fauci is an honest and diligent scientist. He is not! It has been shown that he hasn’t seen a patient in 20 years and, therefore, has no inkling of what this SARS-Cov2 virus is and how it can be treated. He has shown a complete lack of understanding and commitment to data analysis that disproves any justification of the world-wide totalitarian threat to our civil and human rights. He is financially committed to the ongoing hysteria he, personally, has helped cause. This, so his investments in certain pharmaceutical companies will do better as they create these experimental immunotheraputic drugs mislabeled “vaccines” (they are designed to reduce symptoms not prevent transmission – we might find out about transmission in the future (kind of like we’ll know what’s in the bill after we pass the bill)).
Come on, man. 🙂
Amazing.
(One thing to check is names of labs, I gather there is more than one in or near Wuhan.)