Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has previously admitted he does not know everything that goes on at the NIH.
The NIH recently concluded EcoHealth Alliance violated NIH guidelines when conducting bat coronavirus research while working with the lab, but Fauci maintained that this wasn’t gain-of-function research during a Senate hearing on Thursday during questioning by Sen. Rand Paul.
“So what you’re doing is defining a gain of function. You’re simply saying it doesn’t exist because you changed the definition on the NIH website,” the Republican pressed. “This is terrible, and you’re completely trying to escape the idea that we should do something about trying to prevent a pandemic from leaking from a lab. The preponderance of evidence now points to this coming from a lab. And what you’ve done is changed the definition on your website to try to cover your ass, basically.”
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Fauci accused Paul of “egregious misrepresentations” and said, “I don’t think I’d be able to refute all of them, but just a couple of them.”
“ I have no responsibility for the current pandemic. The current pandemic, OK?” Fauci declared. “Number two, you said the overwhelming amount of evidence indicates that’s a lab leak. I believe most card-carrying viral philologists and molecular virologists would disagree with you — that it’s much more likely, even though we leave open all possibilities, it’s much more likely that this was a natural occurrence.”
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The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released an assessment this summer affirming that one U.S. intelligence agency assessed with “moderate confidence” that COVID-19 most likely emerged from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan. In contrast, four U.S. spy agencies and the National Intelligence Council believe with “low confidence,” COVID-19 most likely has a natural origin.
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The U.S. intelligence community released a declassified version of its assessment last month. Included was a section titled “The Case for the Laboratory-Associated Incident Hypothesis,” which offered insight into the one intelligence agency that assessed that the virus most likely came from a Wuhan lab.
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Fauci, on Thursday, said, “You made a statement just a moment ago that’s completely incorrect, where you say we continue to support research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
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Paul retorted, “You approved it in August of last year.” Fauci announced the creation of the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases in August 2020 and said the NIH had awarded approximately $17 million for the first year with $82 million planned over five years. One of the 11 groups to win an award was EcoHealth.
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“No, no, your statement says, quote, I wrote it down as you were writing, 'You continue to support research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,'” Fauci responded. Paul’s exact quote earlier in the questioning was actually, “You continue to support NIH funding going to Wuhan.”
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