Fauci stated that he has always "kept an open mind" about the lab leak theory, despite being accused by the GOP-led Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic of attempting to disprove it.
March 13, 2023
When asked if his thinking on the theory has evolved, Fauci replied, "I've kept an open mind throughout the entire process." He explained that the evidence from "evolutionary virologists," who analyzed the virus from multiple standpoints, suggests that it was a natural occurrence from an animal to a human. Fauci also addressed the possibility that the virus resulted from gain-of-function research, in which a virus is manipulated to become more infectious.
Regarding the lab leak theory, Fauci stated that "the intelligence agencies agree unanimously that this was not engineered, namely, they didn't deliberately do this to make a bio weapon." However, he did suggest that the virus could have escaped from a laboratory accidentally.
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"A lab leak could be that someone was out in the wild, maybe looking for different types of viruses and bats, got infected, went into a lab and was being studied in the lab and then it came out of the lab, but if that's the definition of a lab leak, and then there still is a natural occurrence."
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In March 2020, Dr. Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research published "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2" in Nature magazine, which advanced the natural transmission theory. The paper was written at the behest of Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins, despite being warned in a February 2020 conference call that COVID-19 may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.
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In August 2021, unredacted emails between Fauci and Peter Daszak, working with Chinese virologists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, revealed evidence suggesting that the virus may have escaped from the lab.
The GOP members of the House Intelligence Committee alleged in December 2022 that there were "indications" that the COVID-19 pandemic could be the result of biological weapons research commissioned by the CCP.
Fauci emphasized the importance of keeping an open mind about the virus's origin, stating, "I will keep a completely open mind as to what the origin is."
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