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The greatest threat to public trust comes when powerful people and institutions use their authority to suppress the truth.
The latest revelations from Sen. Rand Paul’s investigation into the origin of Covid expose what may be one of the most consequential scientific deceptions in history.The 1,123 pages of private Slack messages exchanged among the authors of the highly influential “Proximal Origin” paper reveal that the scientists who publicly declared that a laboratory origin of Covid was not plausible privately held a very different view. They repeatedly acknowledged that a laboratory origin remained possible, discussed flaws in their own arguments, and struggled to defend the natural origin theory.
In the first batch of Slack messages between the authors, which was released by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in 2023, Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research, the lead author of “Proximal Origin,” privately described the possibility of a laboratory origin as “friggin’ likely.” In another exchange, he wrote, “The main issue is that accidental escape is in fact highly likely — it’s not some fringe theory,” and elsewhere another author acknowledged that Covid “easily could have” leaked from a laboratory. Yet only weeks later, on March 17, 2020, they published “Proximal Origin,” declaring that a laboratory-based scenario was not plausible.
When those earlier messages became public, Andersen offered a simple explanation. He argued that his initial doubts had been resolved before publication and that the messages merely reflected a normal scientific process of considering possibilities before reaching a conclusion.
The latest Slack disclosures completely destroy that claim.
The doubts did not disappear after publication. The newly released messages show the authors continuing to wrestle with evidence they found troubling. In one exchange from June 2020, Andersen wrote: “Gotta say — some smoking(ish) guns starting to appear that I’m not comfortable with.”
But rather than publicly admitting that their paper got it wrong, they instead discussed strategies for defending the natural-origin theory and finding arguments that could preserve it despite mounting problems.
The Genesis Of The Paper And The Hidden Hand Of Anthony Fauci
To understand why the scientists doubled down on their deception, it is necessary to understand how “Proximal Origin” came into existence and how it became one of the most influential scientific papers of the modern era.
“Proximal Origin” was conceived during a secret teleconference convened by Anthony Fauci on Feb. 1, 2020, as concerns grew that Covid might have originated from a laboratory. During that call, Fauci directed a group of scientists, led by Andersen and Robert Garry of Tulane University, and including Andrew Rambaut of the University of Edinburgh and Edward Holmes of the University of Sydney, to produce a paper addressing the possibility of a laboratory origin. Lipkin did not participate in the Slack exchanges that have since become public.
Upon its March 17, 2020 publication in Nature Medicine, the article reached a sweeping conclusion that a lab-based scenario was entirely implausible.
Despite Fauci’s central involvement in initiating the effort and shaping the discussion around the paper, his role was not disclosed to the public. The public was left with the impression that “Proximal Origin” represented an independent scientific assessment rather than a paper whose creation had been facilitated by the nation’s leading infectious disease official. That omission was particularly consequential because Fauci had himself been involved in funding gain-of-function research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology after similar research had been restricted in the United States, making him not merely a commentator on the controversy but a figure directly implicated in the questions the paper sought to settle.
When President Donald Trump raised the possibility of a laboratory origin on April 17, 2020, Fauci cited “Proximal Origin” as evidence that the theory was unsupported. Fauci even told reporters that he could not recall the names of the authors. The reality was that he had been involved with them from the beginning.
Quickly becoming one of the most cited scientific publications in history, “Proximal Origin” established itself as the definitive authority on the origins of Covid, serving to dismiss anyone who argued that a laboratory leak deserved serious investigation. After the paper’s publication, several of the authors received tens of millions of dollars in grant funding through Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
The newly released Slack messages show that Fauci’s involvement did not end once the paper was published. On May 23, 2021, the day reports emerged that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been hospitalized with Covid-like symptoms in November 2019, Andersen revealed that he had just met with Fauci and his team. “Just had a meeting with Fauci and his team this morning,” he wrote. “They get it and deeply appreciate what we’re doing, so we’ll keep dancing …” Three days later, President Biden ordered an intelligence review into Covid’s origins. Days after that, Fauci’s emails revealing the secret February 2020 teleconference became public under FOIA.
Technical Flaws And Private Admissions
In truth, the problems with “Proximal Origin” were visible from the beginning. One of the most important examples involved the authors’ claim that Covid could not have been engineered because it did not contain a known viral backbone.
The argument was presented as a decisive reason to reject a laboratory origin. Yet the paper’s own citation pointed to a list of known viral backbones from 2014. Even if that list had been complete, it could not possibly account for years of subsequent research. --->READ MORE HERE
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