Republican Sen. Rand Paul demanded Dr.
Anthony Fauci be fired and claimed that he lied to him about gain-of-function research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that was allegedly funded by the United States.
Paul appeared on Fox News‘ The Ingraham Angle where he claimed that thousands of emails revealed by Buzzfeed News and the Washington Post proved Fauci may have been in-part responsible for the development of COVID-19.
At a Senate hearing last month, Paul accused the National Institutes of Health of funding Chinese research into bat coronaviruses that infect humans.
But Fauci told Paul: ‘You are entirely and completely incorrect.
The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute.’
On Wednesday, the junior senator from Kentucky said that Fauci bears ‘moral culpability’ while asserting that COVID-19 was created by the Wuhan Institute of Virology through funding from the NIH, a theory which has not been proven.
Fauci appeared in an interview with NewsNation Now anchor Leland Vittert on The Donlon Report in which he defended a grant the United States had provided the Wuhan lab.
Rand Paul appeared on The Ingraham Angle where he claimed revealed emails proved Fauci may have been in-part responsible for the development of COVID-19
The junior senator from Kentucky said Fauci bears ‘moral culpability’ for the pandemic and should be fired from his government roles
Paul asserted COVID-19 was created by the Wuhan Institute of Virology through National Institute of Health funding, a theory which has not been proven. Paul said: ‘In his email, in the subject line, he says ‘gain of function research.’ He was admitting it to his private underlings seven to eight months ago’
Scientists have primarily focused their beliefs about COVID-19 on the theory that it spread naturally from a bat to an intermediary animal before infecting humans.
Claims that the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology have been laughed off as conspiracy theories – but even researchers at a number of top universities like Harvard and Cambridge have suggested in a letter that the ‘hypotheses’ cannot be ruled out until there is more evidence.
In gain-of-function research, scientists alter organisms and diseases to study how they could become deadlier or more transmissible. The field of virology widely relies on such studies.
Fauci, who serves as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under the umbrella of the NIH, has denied that the NIH directly funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan.
However, Paul asserted to Fox News host Laura Ingraham that the recently reveals emails show Fauci admitted to funding gain-of-function research.
‘I think we’ve had a sea change of opinion. Everybody left-of-center was saying this was a conspiracy, no way it could have happened in the Wuhan lab.
Now even Dr. Fauci is saying we should investigate it,’ Paul said.
‘But the emails paint a disturbing picture, a disturbing picture of Dr. Fauci form the very beginning worrying that he had been funding gain of function research. And he knows it to this day but hasn’t admitted it.’
Paul claimed in the interview that ‘there is a lot of evidence’ that Fauci’s views on the Wuhan lab-leak theory were compromised by a ‘conflict of interest.’
‘If it turns out this virus came from the Wuhan lab, which it looks like it did, that there’s a great deal of culpability in that he was a big supporter of the funding,’ Paul said.
‘But he was also a big supporter to this day of saying that we can trust the Chinese on this, that we can trust Chinese scientists and I think that’s quite naïve and really should preclude him form the position that he’s in.’
Dr.
Anthony Fauci dismissed recent revelations that he was warned by scientist at start of pandemic that COVID-19 may have been ‘engineered’
Fauci made his comments in an interview with NewsNation Now anchor Leland Vittert on The Donlon Report where he also admitted he ‘can’t guarantee everything that is going on in the Wuhan lab’
The NIH awarded a $3.7 million grant to EcoHealth Alliance, which is based in the United States, to study the risk of coronaviruses emerging from bats in 2014. EcoHealth Alliance in turn distributed nearly $600,000 of that funding to its collaborator, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Paul claimed during the Fox News interview that Fauci’s emails show he was worried the NIH funded gain-of-function research as early as last February during the emergence of the pandemic.
‘In his email, in the subject line, he says ‘gain of function research.’ He was admitting it to his private underlings seven to eight months ago,’ Paul said.
In a February 1, 2020 email obtained by Buzzfeed News, Principal NIAID Director Hugh Auschincloss wrote to Fauci to discuss a paper the top infectious disease expert had sent him appearing to question if NIH grants funded gain of function research relating to coronaviruses.
In the email to Fauci, Auschincloss noted that a colleague would ‘try to determine if we have any distant ties to this work abroad.’
When Ingraham asked Paul if Fauci could face criminal culpability, he replied: Judi Poker Online ‘At the very least, there is moral culpability.’
Fauci, who is considered America’s top expert on infectious disease, also explained why scientists focused their theories on the natural transmission from bats rather than an accidental leak from the Wuhan lab
Researchers at a number of top universities have recently penned a letter claiming that theories that COVID-19 escaped from a Wuhan lab ‘remain viable’
The Wuhan Institute of Virology is about 20 miles from the Huanan Seafood Market where the first coronavirus cases are reported to have occurred
