The White House signaled Thursday its continued support of the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, following the release of documents detailing U.S.-funded coronavirus research in China.
Critics say the documents show Fauci misled Congress when he repeatedly asserted the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has never funded the controversial gain-of-function (GOF) research at the Chinese lab.
When asked at Thursday’s White House Press Briefing if she would retract a previous statement that under “no circumstances” President Joe Biden would consider firing Fauci, White House press secretary Jen Psaki doubled down in support of the doctor.
“NIH has never approved any research that would make the coronavirus more dangerous to humans,” said Psaki.
“A reminder that there are previous and different coronaviruses than the existing one we’re battling, and the body of science produced by this research demonstrates that the bat coronavirus sequences published from that work the NIH supported were not the strain, the COV-2 strain. So, what [Fauci] said was correct.”
The newly released documents include two grant proposals funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The bat coronavirus grant provided EcoHealth Alliance with a total of $3.1 million, including $599,000 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology used in part to identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans, according to The Intercept.
Fauci has sparred repeatedly with Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R) on the issue of GOF research during congressional hearings, including one instance in July where Paul suggested Fauci lied to Congress about whether the NIH funded GOF.
Fauci responded by saying he “never lied before the Congress” and that the NIH did not fund GOF research at the Wuhan lab. Fauci told Paul, “you do not know what you’re talking about, quite frankly.”
Paul seemed to see the release of documents by The Intercept as a victory when he tweeted out Tuesday: “I was right about his agency funding novel Coronavirus research at Wuhan.”
Paul’s tweet was a re-tweet of Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, who wrote: “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.
“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.”
