Despite repeated denials by Director Anthony Fauci that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) funded Chinese gain-of-function research on bats with coronavirus with American taxpayer money, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has admitted the research did happen.
In a letter to the House Oversight Committee ranking member, James Comer, R-Ky., the NIH said a “limited experiment” had been conducted.
Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky. frequently sparred with Fauci during Senate hearings on gain-of-function research and the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Earlier in the year, Paul accused Fauci of “obfuscating the truth.” Paul asked Fauci if he wanted to rescind any previous remarks because it is a felony to lie to Congress during the hearings. “If anyone is lying, it is you,” Fauci responded.
Senator Paul stated in a recent interview that the story should not be about him but instead about America’s national security and health.
“Five million people died from a virus that came out of a lab — wouldn’t we want to know, wouldn’t we want to prevent this from happening again? This virus is very deadly. What if we had a virus that had a 15% mortality rate?”
Senator Paul, also a doctor of ophthalmology, said that China is already conducting experiments with the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which emerged in the early 2000s. Paul notes that MERS has a 1 in 2 mortality rate.
“They still to this day are trying to get around the truth. They say, ‘well it was unexpected that it gained function,’” explained Paul.
Fauci’s claim: Virus outbreak may be worth it
Sen. Paul notes that Dr. Fauci previously claimed that an outbreak of a virus could be worth scientific value by the discoveries made in preceding experiments.
Back in 2012, Fauci said, “In an unlikely but conceivable turn of events, what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic? Many ask reasonable questions: given the possibility of such a scenario — however remote — should the initial experiments have been performed and/or published in the first place, and what were the processes involved in this decision?”
Paul said that despite he and other lawmakers referring Fauci to the Justice Department for investigation, he is not expecting many resources to be set aside by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.
“I don’t know if they have time to go after Dr. Fauci for lying. He should be held accountable because what we have developed as a system of health care in our country where doctors are afraid to speak out because they will cut out their research funding, doctors who have talked about innovative treatment to try to help people survive COVID are being lectured and told we will take your license.
“This is the kind of thing, this top-down centralization of medical authority, it’s not good for our country, and it’s not good for innovation,” Paul said.
Paul said he fears that a politically motivated doctor may come across a life-saving treatment for a different virus or disease but may instead choose not to publicize work and discard it out of fear of retribution of the medical establishment and Fauci, from whose office millions of dollars in grant monies are allocated.
