Fauci Knew Chinese Lab Was Conducting Risky Experiments: Email

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during a briefing in Washington on Dec. 1, 2021. Susan Walsh/AP Photo

Dr. Anthony Fauci knew that researchers at a U.S.-funded laboratory in China were conducting risky experiments, according to a newly disclosed email.

Dr. Fauci, at the time the head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, joined a call on Feb. 1, 2020, with scientists around the world to discuss the possibility that COVID-19 was engineered or otherwise came from the lab in Wuhan, the city where the first COVID-19 cases were identified.

After the call, Dr. Fauci wrote in the newly released missive that some of the scientists on the call expressed concerns after viewing mutations in the virus that causes COVID-19.

“There was a suspicion that this mutation was intentionally inserted,” Dr. Fauci wrote. “The suspicion was heightened by the fact that scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine the molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan.”

The email was obtained and released by the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. It had previously been made public through a Freedom of Information Act request, although that version was almost entirely redacted.

Dr. Fauci was reporting what transpired during the call to Trump administration health officials, including Brian Harrison and Robert Kadlec.

In public just days later, Dr. Fauci dismissed the idea that COVID-19 originated from the lab as a conspiracy theory. In congressional hearings in 2021, he said the United States didn’t fund gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan lab. The U.S. National Institutes of Health has since stated that it funded experiments at the lab that experts said meet the gain-of-function definition.

“In this e-mail, Dr. Fauci admits that there was gain-of-function research occurring in Wuhan before the pandemic emerged,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chairman of the subcommittee, said in a letter to U.S. Health Secretary Xavier Becerra.

The panel also obtained an email from the World Health Organization that asked Dr. Fauci to produce a summary of the call and said it has learned that the summary was produced and that the U.S. government has notes from the call.

Dr. Wenstrup asked for the summary and notes by no later than July 27 as the subcommittee investigates the origins of COVID-19.

Dr. Fauci and the Department of Health and Human Services didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The subcommittee has asked Dr. Fauci to answer questions in a transcribed interview, but the interview hasn’t occurred, a spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.

The panel previously uncovered that Dr. Fauci suggested that the researchers on the call pen a paper about the COVID-19 origins, with the resulting product painting a lab release as improbable. One of the researchers said in an email that the group was focused on “trying to disprove any type of lab theory.”

Intelligence officials have since acknowledged that some agencies believe that the virus came from the lab, although others maintain support for a natural origin. No animal host has been identified as of yet, a necessary component for the latter theory.

Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) in Washington on June 13, 2023. Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images

Other Developments

The same panel recently said in a report that Fauci and his boss at the time, Dr. Francis Collins, exerted “undue influence” over the drafting of the paper, which was named Proximal Origin.

“Through the Select Subcommittee’s investigation, we discovered that Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins were intimately involved in the day-to-day creation of Proximal Origin that the authors were so comfortable with their involvement they coined the term ‘Bethesda Boys’ to describe the nation’s leading health officials,” the subcommittee said.

Hidden messages in the report show the authors acknowledging over Slack that the virus likely came from the lab.

“The main issue is that accidental escape is in fact highly likely—it’s not some fringe theory,” Kristian Andersen, one of the authors, wrote in one message.

Andrew Rambaut, another author, said the group should steer clear of suggesting a lab association.

“I agree it smells really fishy but without a smoking gun it will not do us any good,” he wrote. “The truth is never going to come out (if escape is the truth). Would need irrefutable evidence. My position is that the natural evolution is entirely plausible and we will have to leave it at that. Lab passaging might also generate this mutation but we have no evidence that that happened.”

Mr. Andersen separately told Nature, which ultimately rejected the paper, that a lab origin “must be considered as a serious scientific theory.”

The first published version of the paper states that it “provides evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct nor a purposefully manipulated virus.” The final version states that the paper “clearly [shows] that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”

Mr. Andersen and his co-authors defended the discrepancies during a hearing on July 11, telling members of Congress that their conclusions in the paper were based on scientific data they reviewed. They also denied being influenced by Dr. Fauci.