Top Scientist: New FOIA Release Shows Fauci ‘Untruthful’, Construction Of ‘Chimeric Coronaviruses’ Funded in Wuhan
A report on Monday alleges that the U.S. government contributed funding to controversial gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, something Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has vehemently denied before Congress.
Surprise surprise – Fauci lied again
And I was right about his agency funding novel Coronavirus research at Wuhan.
Now, thanks to materials (here and here) released through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by The Interceptagainst the National Institutes of Health (which were unredacted enough to toss Fauci under the bus), we now know that Fauci-funded EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit headed by Peter Daszak, was absolutely engaged in gain-of-function research to make chimeric SARS-based coronaviruses, which they confirmed could infect human cells.
Peter Daszak (left), Anthony Fauci
While evidence of this research has been pointed to in published studies, the FOIA release provides a key piece to the puzzle which sheds new light on what was going on.
“This is a roadmap to the high-risk research that could have led to the current pandemic,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of U.S. Right To Know, a group that has been investigating the origins of Covid-19 (via The Intercept).
Wuhan Institute of Virology Shi ‘Bat Lady’ Zhengli toasts with Fauci-funded EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak (emerging viruses group photo)
And as Rutgers University Board of Governors Chemistry Professor Richard H. Ebright notes, “The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful.”
In short, Fauci lied to Congress when he denied funding Gain-of-Function (GoF) research.
“Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about.”
— Dr. Fauci after Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) accuses him of lying to Congress about gain-of-function research in Wuhan lab. pic.twitter.com/aGhn3ua9r0
Ebright summarized The Intercept‘s reporting in a Monday night Twitter thread:
"The trove of documents includes two previously unpublished grant proposals that were funded by the NIAID, as well as project updates relating to the EcoHealth Alliance’s research, which has been scrutinized amid increased interest in the origins of the pandemic."
“The trove of documents includes two previously unpublished grant proposals that were funded by the NIAID, as well as project updates relating to the EcoHealth Alliance’s research, which has been scrutinized amid increased interest in the origins of the pandemic.”
The materials show that the 2014 and 2019 NIH grants to EcoHealth with subcontracts to WIV funded gain-of-function research as defined in federal policies in effect in 2014-2017 and potential pandemic pathogen enhancement as defined in federal policies in effect in 2017-present.
(This had been evident previously from published research papers that credited the 2014 grant and from the publicly available summary of the 2019 grant. But this now can be stated definitively from progress reports of the 2014 grant and the full proposal of the 2017 grant.)
The materials confirm the grants supported the construction–in Wuhan–of novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses that combined a spike gene from one coronavirus with genetic information from another coronavirus, and confirmed the resulting viruses could infect human cells.
(Recombinant DNA includes molecules constructed outside of living cells by joining natural or synthetic DNA segments to DNA molecules that can replicate in a living cell, or molecules that result from their replication. –Science Direct)
The materials reveal that the resulting novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related coronaviruses also could infect mice engineered to display human receptors on cells (“humanized mice”).
The materials further reveal for the first time that one of the resulting novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related coronaviruses–one not been previously disclosed publicly–was more pathogenic to humanized mice than the starting virus from which it was constructed…
…and thus not only was reasonably anticipated to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity, but, indeed, was *demonstrated* to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity.
The materials further reveal that the the grants also supported the construction–in Wuhan–of novel chimeric MERS-related coronaviruses that combined spike genes from one MERS-related coronavirus with genetic information from another MERS-related coronavirus.
The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful.
* * *
When asked in the replies where to find specific evidence on GoF research, user @SnupSnus replied:
the same page is also numbered page 11- whoever made all those numberings set us up for lot's of confusion, "3.3.c humanised mouse experiments"
there is an easy clue; the acknowledgments section of the paper attached in Fauci's panicked e-mails obtained via FOIA. this is the work "expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone". pic.twitter.com/WbLIGDouRE
Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute, said the documents show that the EcoHealth Alliance has reason to take the lab leak theory seriously. “In this proposal, they actually point out that they know how risky this work is. They keep talking about people potentially getting bitten — and they kept records of everyone who got bitten,” Chan said. “Does EcoHealth have those records? And if not, how can they possibly rule out a research-related accident?” -The Intercept
In response to inquiries from The Intercept, EcoHealth communications manager Robert Kessler replied: “We applied for grants to conduct research. The relevant agencies deemed that to be important research, and thus funded it. So I don’t know that there’s a whole lot to say.”
Stay tuned, things should get really interesting for Fauci and Daszak in the near future.
So we paid the CCP to develop the virus that they unleashed on the world…Not surprising…The media will probably dig into this now just to avoid the Afghanistan disaster but that’s not going away anytime soon either .. https://t.co/Ud9YKvmrTt
