Just a few months ago, President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci told Sen. Rand Paul that they had not funded any gain-of-function research through EcoHealth Alliance. That turned out to be a lie as stacks of evidence provided details about the US-funded research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
There are more than 900 pages of documents detailing the work at the lab. Some of the work explains how EcoHealth Alliance was testing to see if spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of being bound to human receptors. They were testing to see if the bat coronavirus spike proteins could bind to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model, which violated the terms of service related to the National Institute of Health grant.
The NIH made a request to EcoHealth Alliance, asking them to submit any unpublished data from the experiments conducted under the grant. They even state that NIH Director Francis Collins and NIAID Director Fauci gave “untruthful assertions” that the NIH had not funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan when they had.
The NIH describes gain of function research as improving the ability to cause disease, adding that the infected lab mice with the SHC014 WIV1 bat coronavirus became much sicker than those infected with the WIV1 bat coronavirus. The letter notes that the EcoHealth Alliance violated the terms under the grant and failed to report any findings, as required by the terms of the grant.
“Out of an abundance of caution and as an additional layer of oversight, language was included in the terms and conditions of the grant award to EcoHealth that outlined criteria for a secondary review, such as a requirement that the grantee report immediately a one log increase in growth. These measures would prompt a secondary review to determine whether the research aims should be re-evaluated or new biosafety measures should be enacted,” the letter states.
After the Wuhan lab findings, many politicians are calling on public health officials to address their blatant lies. Sen. Tom Cotton has demanded that Dr. Anthony Fauci be investigated for his role in funding gain-of-function research and then lying about it to Sen. Rand Paul in front of Congress. He said that Fauci knew about the NIH’s research at the Wuhan lab and then lied about it in front of the Senate in May. Sen. Cotton emphasized how Fauci should be “investigated and prosecuted” to the fullest extent of the law.
Molecular biologist Richard H. Ebright points out that the NIH has corrected its “untruthful assertions” about the research and went so far as to accuse Fauci and Collins of “willfully” lying about it to the press, Congress, and the American public. “Knowingly. Willfully. Brazenly,” Ebright tweeted.
But along with Hunter’s laptop and Clinton’s emails, we just might never get to the bottom of the Wuhan lab scandal. Especially when our own administration hides everything already.
