BY MISES MEDIA
Despite his claims to the contrary, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, knew by January 2020 that his agency was funding gain-of-function research of novel coronaviruses in Wuhan, China.
A newly released email obtained by the investigative public-health non-profit U.S. Right to Know revealed that Fauci knew the extent of the Chinese coronavirus research before the pandemic broke out in the U.S..
In a January 27, 2020, email, Fauci received talking points from an aide regarding Wuhan Institute of Virology research that was being funded by the disease division of the National Institutes of Health. The former chief medical adviser to the president then spoke about Covid-19 at a press conference later that evening.
The NIAID funded the gain-of-function research through the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, which contracted the Wuhan lab “for the past 5 years,” according to the email.
“EcoHealth group (Peter Daszak et al), has for years been among the biggest players in coronavirus work, also in collaboration with Ralph Baric, Ian Lipkin and others,” Fauci’s chief of staff Greg Folkers wrote to his boss and other public health officials.
Folkers then went into detail, specifically regarding the research’s findings. With the financial backing of Fauci’s agency, approximately 10,000 bats and about 2,000 other mammals were sampled from 47 sites across the South China Sea, he wrote. This area was a prime location for discovering the closest relatives to SARS-CoV-2.
While in the South China Sea, the virus researchers reportedly discovered 52 novel sarbecoviruses, or coronaviruses related to SARS, which is the species that SARS-CoV-2 belongs to.
Folkers did not explicitly mention gain-of-function research, but he did note the novel coronaviruses did “cause SARS-like disease in humanized mouse models.”
Folkers cited “David M,” which likely refers to Fauci’s senior adviser David Morens, as the source of the information.
Gain-of-function research refers to making viruses more infectious or deadly for study in a laboratory.
Fauci played semantic games around the definition of “gain-of-function research” during multiple hearing exchanges with Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.).
In May 2021, Paul pressed the leading U.S. public health advisor on gain-of-function research. “Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Fauci replied.
Months later, a top NIH official admitted in an October 2021 letter that the NIH did fund gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, despite Fauci’s argument to the contrary.
In November 2021, Paul accused Fauci of changing the definition of gain-of-function research on the NIH’s website. He denied the charge, calling gain-of-function research a “nebulous term,” while also refuting the claim that Covid-19 emerged from a lab leak.
Paul continually slammed Fauci until the latter resigned in December 2022. Notably, four months after he stepped down, former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe told Congress that Fauci’s testimony was “inconsistent” with classified intel and publicly available information.
“My informed assessment as a person with as much access as anyone during the initial year of the pandemic has been and continues to be that a lab leak is the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science, and by common sense,” Ratcliffe said.
