Rand Paul Grills a Squirming Anthony Fauci About NIH Funds Going To Wuhan Lab

P. Gardner Goldsmith | May 13, 2021
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Contrary to harsh, a-priori posing by The Washington Post, on Tuesday, May 11, Kentucky Senator Dr. Rand Paul (R) did Americans – and the entire world – a service by asking Dr. Anthony Fauci many of the key questions media outlets like the WaPo could have been asking over a year ago. 

On the Senate floor, Paul focused on numerous unethical, unconstitutional, and potentially illegal tax-funded ties between Dr. Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the funding of gain-of-function, “Bio-safety Level 4” (aka BSL4) viral researchers at the Wuhan, China BSL4 lab long suspected by many of being the epicenter for the SARS-CoV2 outbreak. And Dr. Fauci’s bitter, contentious “responses” often were not only non-responsive, they were classic examples of parsing, prevarication, equivocation, and misrepresentation in an exchange that only taps the surface of the deep iceberg that is Anthony Fauci’s NIH.

The full exchange is worth watching, but key elements demand additional attention, especially from those who only recently started to hear the terms “gain-of-function” or see some in the media start to seriously discuss the NIH involvement in such dangerous viral research, both here in the U.S., and in China.

Opening his questions, Senator Paul laid out the terms, key figures, and government connections:

Gain-of-function research, as you know, is juicing-up naturally occurring animal viruses to infect humans. To arrive at the truth, the U.S. government should admit that the Wuhan Virology Institute was experimenting to enhance the coronavirus’s ability to infect humans. Juicing-up super-viruses is not new. Scientists in the US have long known how to mutate animal viruses to infect humans. For years, Dr. Ralph Baric, a virologist in the U.S., has been collaborating with Dr. Shi Zhengli, of the Wuhan Virology Institute, sharing his discoveries about how to create super-viruses. This gain-of-function research has been funded by the NIH. The collaboration between the U.S. and the Wuhan Virology Institute continues. Doctors Baric and Shi worked together to insert bat virus spike-protein into the backbone of the deadly SARS virus, and then used this man-made super-virus to infect human airway cells.

All of which is correct.

Rand Paul continued by asking, “Dr. Fauci, do you still support funding of the NIH funding of the lab in Wuhan?”

Fauci’s prevarication and back-tracking are astoundingly revealing, as he responded:

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.

Which not only includes what likely is a spontaneous and unintentional double-negative that, if taken literally, would be an admission to the accusation, it is, as investigative reporter Sheryl Atkinson said on Twitter, “wordsmithing” similar to Bill Clinton’s infamous verb-tense, time-sensitive parsing when asked in 1998 if his lawyer, Bob Bennett’s claim that “there is absolutely no sex of any kind in any manner, shape or form, with President Clinton [and Monica Lewinsky]" was truthful, and Clinton replied, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

And Fauci’s cloddish word-dance became more evident as Paul pressed, “Do you fund Dr. Baric’s gain-of-function research?”

"Dr. Baric does not doing (sic) gain-of-function research…” Fauci replied, but continued, in the same sentence, to contradict himself, or leave himself an out to claim “ignorance”, “…and if it is, it’s according to the guidelines and it’s being conducted in North Carolina, not in China.”

All of which is a word-salad that demands more attention – attention that Senator Paul provided.

After testy disagreement as to whether the term “gain-of-function” can be applied to taking naturally occurring pathogens and synthetically amplifying their lethality and infection power against humans (indeed, it can be, for that is PRECISELY the definition of that kind of research – Rand Paul is correct), Paul asked Fauci’s ethical position on sending U.S. taxpayer cash to Wuhan for that kind of research.

So, do you still support sending money to the Wuhan Virology Institute?

And, again, Fauci was not only not cooperative, he obfuscated, using Clintonesque language.

"We do not send money now to Wuhan Virology Institute,” he said, stumbling over his words.

Paul would not be fooled.

We did, under your tutelage. We were sending it through EcoHealth. It was a sub-agency and a sub-grant. Do you support the money from NIH that was going to the Wuhan Institute?

And then, Fauci was forced to admit the truth, saying, “Let me tell you why that was done…”

Yes. Even though Fauci uses the passive voice to deflect, it was done. By people. By people at the NIH and EcoHealth. And Fauci was one of those people at NIH.

But he still plays semantic games. Even after Rand Paul has laid out not only the major figures involved, but the NIH grant pathway to Wuhan, Fauci claims:

…But, again, we have not funded gain-of-function research on this virus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. No matter how many times you say it, it didn’t happen.

 


Which is as obnoxious as a child whose eaten a cookie insisting that, “There IS no cookie,” after a parent asks if he’s eaten that cookie.

Technically, Fauci can claim that “we” have not funded gain-of-function research on THIS virus, because the gain-of-function research wasn’t done ON a SARS Cov2 virus that didn’t exist. Gain-of-function experimentation is done to DEVELOP new viral strains and pathogens. Research wasn’t done ON SARS CoV2 because CoV2 didn’t exist to have research done on it. The question is whether research was done to DEVELOP it.

Related: Fauci Calls Gun Violence a 'Public Health Issue'

And Fauci’s side-step of the funding source is just as repulsive. Rand Paul already correctly noted the funding path via a sub-group. We already know the players involved, and Fauci’s attempts to hide behind technicalities and parsing are utterly contemptuous dodges.

But Paul’s response is precise and deserves reiteration. 

You’re parsing words. There was research done, with Dr. Shi and Dr. Baric. They have collaborated on gain-of-function research where they enhanced the SARS virus to infect human airway cells, and they did it by merging a new spike protein on it. That IS gain-of-function. That was joint research between the Wuhan Institute and Dr. Baric. You can’t deny it.

And the problem goes deeper. The NIH funding to enhance the infection capacity and lethality of pathogens at the BSL4 lab in Chapel Hill, at UNC where Dr. Shi and Dr. Baric collaborated, and the subsequent relocation of pathogenic enhancement research to Wuhan through EcoHealth continued during a period when the Obama administration had placed a moratorium on gain-of-function research.

Indeed, one of the few good things the Obama administration did was place a moratorium on gain-of-function experimentation in 2014 – a moratorium that was not lifted until 2017.

Yet Baric’s name is on a 2015 document from the HHS announcing their work ramping-up the SARS COV virus. 

Let’s quote from their glorious and damning abstract:

In this study, we examine the disease potential for SARS- like CoVs currently circulating in Chinese horseshoe bat populations. Utilizing the SARS-CoV infectious clone, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse adapted SARS-CoV backbone. The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild type backbone can efficiently utilize multiple ACE2 receptor orthologs, replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells, and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. 

And, among the many important points Rand Paul made when speaking to FoxNews’ Brian Kilmeade later Tuesday, Paul noted Peter Daszak, the head of EcoHealth Alliance was the very man chosen by the parasitic and confused World Health Organization (WHO) to report on whether or not the SARS CoV2 pathogen could have originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

They (the WHO) hired the person to investigate whether there was a problem at the lab? They hired the guy that gave them (the Wuhan lab) the money. So, if something came out that said this virus came from the lab, do you think the person that gave them the money might have culpability? So they hired the guy to do the investigation who has a conflict of interest here. So you start to wonder… all these wagons are circling… 

Enough.

Fauci cannot continue to escape the scrutiny, and, likewise, his cheerleaders in the pop media, the White House, and on Capitol Hill cannot hide his errors and deceptions.

But, two things they WILL continue trying to hide are, first, the fact that the NIH has joint ownership of the patent for the Moderna COVID19 jab, and, second, the fact that none of this viral research is, in any way, sanctioned by their so-called rule book, the US Constitution.If Rand Paul were to take the next steps by exposing the patent info and calling for the elimination of the CDC, the NIH, NIAID, and all other unconstitutional tax-eating pathogens, America would be a lot healthier.

As it stands, he has gotten a good start on a subject that could have been addressed years ago.

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