Dr. Fauci Backed Controversial Wuhan Lab with Millions of U.S. Dollars for Risky Coronavirus Research
By: Fred Guterl (Newsweek)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Dr. Anthony Fauci is an adviser to President Donald Trump and something of an American folk hero for his steady, calm leadership during the pandemic crisis. At least one poll shows that Americans trust Fauci more than Trump on the coronavirus pandemic—and few scientists are portrayed on TV by Brad Pitt.
But just last year, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the organization led by Dr. Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.
In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million.
Many scientists have criticized gain of function research, which involves manipulating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans, because it creates a risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release.
SARS-CoV-2 , the virus now causing a global pandemic, is believed to have originated in bats. U.S. intelligence, after originally asserting that the coronavirus had occurred naturally, conceded last month that the pandemic may have originated in a leak from the Wuhan lab. (At this point most scientists say it's possible—but not likely—that the pandemic virus was engineered or manipulated.)
Dr. Fauci did not respond to Newsweek's requests for comment. NIH responded with a statement that said in part: "Most emerging human viruses come from wildlife, and these represent a significant threat to public health and biosecurity in the US and globally, as demonstrated by the SARS epidemic of 2002-03, and the current COVID-19 pandemic.... scientific research indicates that there is no evidence that suggests the virus was created in a laboratory."
The NIH research consisted of two parts. The first part began in 2014 and involved surveillance of bat coronaviruses, and had a budget of $3.7 million. The program funded Shi Zheng-Li, a virologist at the Wuhan lab, and other researchers to investigate and catalogue bat coronaviruses in the wild. This part of the project was completed in 2019.
A second phase of the project, beginning that year, included additional surveillance work but also gain-of-function research for the purpose of understanding how bat coronaviruses could mutate to attack humans. The project was run by EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit research group, under the direction of President Peter Daszak, an expert on disease ecology. NIH canceled the project just this past Friday, April 24th, Politico reported. Daszak did not immediately respond to Newsweek requests for comment.
The project proposal states: "We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential."
In layman's terms, "spillover potential" refers to the ability of a virus to jump from animals to humans, which requires that the virus be able to receptors in the cells of humans. SARS-CoV-2, for instance, is adept at binding to the ACE2 receptor in human lungs and other organs.
According to Richard Ebright, an infectious disease expert at Rutgers University, the project description refers to experiments that would enhance the ability of bat coronavirus to infect human cells and laboratory animals using techniques of genetic engineering. In the wake of the pandemic, that is a noteworthy detail.
Ebright, along with many other scientists, has been a vocal opponent of gain-of-function research because of the risk it presents of creating a pandemic through accidental release from a lab.
Dr. Fauci is renowned for his work on the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1990s. Born in Brooklyn, he graduated first in his class from Cornell University Medical College in 1966. As head of NIAID since 1984, he has served as an adviser to every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan.
A decade ago, during a controversy over gain-of-function research on bird-flu viruses, Dr. Fauci played an important role in promoting the work. He argued that the research was worth the risk it entailed because it enables scientists to make preparations, such as investigating possible anti-viral medications, that could be useful if and when a pandemic occurred.
The work in question was a type of gain-of-function research that involved taking wild viruses and passing them through live animals until they mutate into a form that could pose a pandemic threat. Scientists used it to take a virus that was poorly transmitted among humans and make it into one that was highly transmissible—a hallmark of a pandemic virus. This work was done by infecting a series of ferrets, allowing the virus to mutate until a ferret that hadn't been deliberately infected contracted the disease.
The work entailed risks that worried even seasoned researchers. More than 200 scientists called for the work to be halted. The problem, they said, is that it increased the likelihood that a pandemic would occur through a laboratory accident.
Dr. Fauci defended the work. "[D]etermining the molecular Achilles' heel of these viruses can allow scientists to identify novel antiviral drug targets that could be used to prevent infection in those at risk or to better treat those who become infected," wrote Fauci and two co-authors in the Washington Post on December 30, 2011. "Decades of experience tells us that disseminating information gained through biomedical research to legitimate scientists and health officials provides a critical foundation for generating appropriate countermeasures and, ultimately, protecting the public health."
Nevertheless, in 2014, under pressure from the Obama administration, the National of Institutes of Health instituted a moratorium on the work, suspending 21 studies.
Three years later, though—in December 2017—the NIH ended the moratorium and the second phase of the NIAID project, which included the gain-of-function research, began. The NIH established a framework for determining how the research would go forward: scientists have to get approval from a panel of experts, who would decide whether the risks were justified.
The reviews were indeed conducted—but in secret, for which the NIH has drawn criticism. In early 2019, after a reporter for Science magazine discovered that the NIH had approved two influenza research projects that used gain of function methods, scientists who oppose this kind of research excoriated the NIH in an editorial in the Washington Post.
"We have serious doubts about whether these experiments should be conducted at all," wrote Tom Inglesby of Johns Hopkins University and Marc Lipsitch of Harvard. "[W]ith deliberations kept behind closed doors, none of us will have the opportunity to understand how the government arrived at these decisions or to judge the rigor and integrity of that process."
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The famed "expert" helped fund the Wuhan Lab in such dangerous experimentation. I'm not against such studies, but the main goal has to be protecting the world from any leak of the virus until a vaccine is developed. A lab in China fails such a standard. Dr Fauci should have known better.
So much for the "experts."
Donald Trump is OFF TOPIC
Dr Birx is OFF TOPIC
I am OFF TOPIC
Rules of the group will be rigorously enforced
Thus the absence of our liberal friends.....................LOL
It makes it so much easier to get the message out to the curious readers of NT. They are the reason I have stayed on.
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Interesting to see how this plays out..
Let's see, Dr Fauci is the foremost member of the task force, an advisor to every president since the great Ronald Reagan. If he helped fund this lab in China to carryout very dangerous experimentation. Could we call it malpractice or a dereliction of duty?
Would be kind of interesting to find out what other labs around the world the U.S. has granted money to for research and into what. I'm confident that we are helping to fund all sorts of research. And if this virus had not begun a pandemic but increased our knowledge of virus's overall what would the general feelings about the lab be?
We're never going to learn everything about what happened with this, there's been to much cover up by now and the world is reduced to slinging words and accusations. It's a shame.
I agree, however we shouldn't be funding labs that are doing dangerous research and lack minimum safety standards. Our own State Department warned of the lack of safety standards at the Wuhan lab:
So, where was Dr Fauci for that?
And if this virus had not begun a pandemic but increased our knowledge of virus's overall what would the general feelings about the lab be?
Probably the same as the grotesque research conducted by Dr Josef Mengele. We would stop/condemn any one from doing it, but after the research has been documented, we examine it.
We're never going to learn everything about what happened with this, there's been to much cover up by now and the world is reduced to slinging words and accusations. It's a shame.
For now it looks that way. Destroy the evidence/hide the body is always the MO for the Peoples Republic.
I think you may want to rethink this reply. There is a huge difference between the work of studing a virus in a laboratory and the so-called research done on imprisoned human beings as done by Josef Mengele. Even with the suspected mistakes done in the lab in Wohan they were not experimenting on human beings as far as I know.
I mean I agree in part. The knowledge gained by Josef Mengele, as horrible as it was in performing experiments on imprisoned human beings, was not thrown away due to how it was gained. But it sickens me to use his name in a comparison. He was, IMO, a truly evil man where as the scientists in the Wohan lab were according to some thoughts just careless.
I agree for the most part. One of the most heart wrenching scenes I've ever seen was watching a film of two young children (sisters) walking, hand in hand, into the Mengele section. That is true evil.
He was, IMO, a truly evil man where as the scientists in the Wohan lab were according to some thoughts just careless.
In the broader perspective, we must always keep in mind, that the Wuhan scientists serve a regime that once slaughtered more people than any other.
I’ve got an article up today regarding Trump directing our intelligence services to get to the bottom of what happened in China in The Donald group. We need to hold China accountable for all their actions leading up to this and after it got loose.
so what?
next we'll hear that Dr Fauci and Joe Biden are cousins.
What a loser play by the right.
Facts are always a problem for the left. No conspiracy claim on this one?
If you invite a violation of your own rules
than the rules must be no longer valid. SP
The conspiracy claims in regards to Fauci seem to all be coming from the right. First it was he was "deep state" and now he's "Wuhan Helper!". I don't see any need to defend a single sentence from this seed, everything Fauci did was above board, so I'm puzzled as to why some fuck nut morons think this is somehow a "gotcha" as it's been presented.
Link please!
Fauci did write love letters to Hillary during the Obama regime.
The problem is more about the intent of the research rather than the methodology. The method is a low tech, low cost means of speeding the evolutionary process using a captive population of animals and time; very much like selective breeding. A similar method is also used for environmental research directed towards bioremediation.
The same thing can happening in an uncontrolled manner within a confined population of farm animals. That's why prophylactic antibiotics are administered. So, the SARS-CoV-2 virus could as easily be the result of unsafe farming practices. Since the virus emerged as the result of natural mutation it will be virtually impossible to determine the source by studying the virus. We can't tell if the virus mutated under controlled or uncontrolled conditions. The impossibility of determining source from the virus establishes doubt and everyone will hide behind that doubt to avoid blame.
The bigger problem is the intent of biomedical research to obtain a strain of pathogen that is capable of causing pandemic. The low tech, low cost method is deliberately used to develop and isolate a more deadly pathogen in the pursuit of knowledge of questionable utility. It's necessary to artificially create a genie to obtain knowledge but that knowledge isn't sufficient to keep the genie in the bottle. The knowledge is obtained from hindsight rather than foresight.
If Dr. Fauci is guilty of anything then it is the academic hubris of science providing the answer for everything and keeping the genie in the bottle. Dr. Fauci claiming 'I don't know' isn't humility; that's only a way to avoid blame. Since we are dealing with a Biblical failure of science, it would be appropriate to point out that stone age sheep herders understood the danger of eating the apple from the tree of knowledge. The genie is out of the bottle. And science cannot put the genie back in the bottle. We are only left with prayer.
At the very least, total transparency and accountability should go hand-in-hand with any funding for this research. So far, I haven’t seen any.
Hasn't this happened industrially, too? The US has developed so many rules to impede progress that dirty work is farmed out?
The work in question was a type of gain-of-function research that involved taking wild viruses and passing them through live animals until they mutate into a form that could pose a pandemic threat. Scientists used it to take a virus that was poorly transmitted among humans and make it into one that was highly transmissible—a hallmark of a pandemic virus. This work was done by infecting a series of ferrets, allowing the virus to mutate until a ferret that hadn't been deliberately infected contracted the disease.
If this is true, they were taking a bat virus (that in nature would never have mutated to infect humans) and forcing it to mutate to the point it had the receptors to infect humans, the part about developing a treatment for that virus is great, but just the act of mutating the virus sounds very bad.
Now you have to wonder, Dr. Fauci possibly knowing that this pandemic is from this research with his help, would a guilt trip be clouding his judgement and advice just to protect himself. What would that be like with this many deaths on your mind.