Republican Senator Rand Paul had a succinct message for Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday after the National Institutes of Health (NIH) admitted they had in fact funded gain-of-function research.
Dr. Fauci, who is the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the White House Chief Medical Advisor, famously lied during a congressional hearing that took place in July over a grant that was rewarded by EcoHealth Alliance but not directly by the NIH.
"I told you so' doesn't even begin to cover it here," Sen. Paul took to Twitter to say, sharing Richard H. Ebright's screenshot of the NIH's correction that admitted EcoHealth Alliance, which received a grant from NIH, had in fact violated the terms and conditions of the grant to fund gain-of-function research.
The Daily Caller reported that in the correction, the NIH described an experiment conducted by EcoHealth Alliance that "was testing if spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model," the letter read. "All other aspects of the mice, including the immune system, remain unchanged."
The letter, which was dated October 20, explained that the NIH reviewed the research before granting the funds and decided that the research did not involve "enhanced pathogens of pandemic potential" because the bat viruses did not demonstrate an ability to infect humans, which led them to conclude that the research was not subject to departmental review. The NIH said that they had also outlined specific criteria for another review.
However, EcoHealth Alliance had failed to report their findings as required by the grant. The NIH concluded, "published genomic data demonstrate that the bat coronaviruses studied under the NIH grant to EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. and subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) are not and could not have become SARS-CoV-2."
The New York Post reported that Dr. Fauci has been accused of lying several times, including as recently as last month after documents obtained by The Intercept proved that the NIH provided grants to EcoHealth Alliance for bat coronavirus research.
The grant proposal detailed in the documents was for research titled "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence," which involved analyzing thousands of bat samples and people who worked with live animals for novel coronaviruses. The grant had a $3.1 million price tag, which was broken down over the course of five years, from 2014 to 2019.
The grant also funnelled $599,000 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for bat coronavirus research. After the funding was renewed in 2019, the Trump administration suspended it in April 2020.
Washington D.C.-based commentary writer Drew Holden took to Twitter this week to challenge the mainstream media outlets to "correct the record from when they assured us this wasn't happening," referring to the moment Dr. Fauci said, while he was under oath, that U.S. taxpayers never paid for gain-of-function research in Wuhan. He went on to share several screenshots from CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC News, Reuters, and more.
