Scientists central to the “lab-leak” theory of COVID-19’s origins visited Anthony Fauci’s institute at the National Institutes of Health in 2017 to discuss their research months before the NIH resumed creating new viruses in the lab — a practice scientists have debated could cause a pandemic.
Wuhan Institute of Virology Scientist Shi Zhengli, known as “the bat woman of China” for her research on SARS-like coronaviruses in bat caves, presented her findings on novel coronaviruses to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases staffers in June 2017, according to a report by U.S. Right to Know.
EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S. research organization that funded Shi’s lab, arranged the meeting, which the group’s president Peter Daszak dubbed a “double act” between him and Shi.
Daszak also met with Erik Stemmy, who managed coronavirus research at NIAID’s Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.
Four months later in October, Fauci met with Daszak himself, likely to discuss an outbreak of an animal coronavirus called Swine Acute Diarrheal Syndrome. That same month, Fauci, Daszak and Shi all attended the same scientific conference.
By December of that year, NIH resumed funding for research to develop new viruses in the lab following a three-year pause on the practice over the possibility that such research could cause a pandemic.
Emails obtained by U.S. Right to Know through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the NIH and by FOIA, reveal that Fauci and his top aides were aware of the novel coronavirus research underway at the pandemic’s epicenter well before 2020. ---->READ MORE HERE
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and a top adviser to two US presidents during the COVID-19 pandemic, “surprised” the chairman of a House subcommittee with “how much he doesn’t recall” about the early days of the outbreak that killed more than 1.1 million Americans.
Fauci, 83, had been “very cooperative” on the first day of his two-day transcribed interview with the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) told reporters.
“We’re doing a lot of conversation about developing the process of research, for grants, oversight, if you will, of regulations, and possible solutions for a better path going forward,” Wenstrup said of the interview, which he had teased that morning would cover “more than 200 pages of questions and approximately 100 exhibits.”
Wenstrup had also promised in a statement that panel members will “demand explanations for any pandemic-era failures” and Fauci’s “role as the face of America’s COVID-19 public health response,” predicting that the former NIH official’s testimony “will shed light on topics that no Committee, Member, nor news outlet has ever inquired about before.”
“This is an opportunity for Dr. Fauci to explain his COVID-19 policy positions. His forthcoming, honest, and transparent testimony over the next two days is critical for improving our nation’s future public health responses,” the lawmaker said.
Wenstrup’s subcommittee has focused in particular on efforts by Fauci and former National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins to silence dissent about the so-called “lab-leak theory” of COVID-19’s origins, obtaining internal communications from the top health officials that revealed they had prompted scientists to author a paper in the journal Nature Medicine debunking the theory early in 2020.
The COVID panel also subpoenaed one of Fauci’s top advisers in October for having “likely used his personal email to delete COVID origins documents and evade [Freedom of Information Act] laws.”
Fauci and Collins have both denied in testimony to Congress that the NIH had funded risky gain-of-function research at a lab in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic began in late 2019. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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