Research, editing : Gan Yung Chyan, KUCINTA SETIA / Image : Video Screenshot
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) admitted that EcoHealth
Alliance – a research partner of the Wuhan Institute of Virology funded by
Anthony Fauci – carried out gain-of-function research and failed to report the
findings “as was required by the terms of the grant.”
The admission comes in a letter from Principal Deputy Director of
the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Lawrence Tabak, in response to
Congressman James Comer’s inquiries about a controversial, multi-million-dollar
grant from Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
(NIAID) to Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance.
The coronavirus-focused grant ultimately led to U.S. taxpayer
dollars funding EcoHealth Alliance’s “longtime collaboration” with the Chinese
Communist Party-run lab, believed by many to be the source of
COVID-19.
Tabak explains how the “limited experiment described in the final
progress report provided by EcoHealth Alliance 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. ”
“In this limited experiment, laboratory mice
infected with the SHC014 WIV 1 bat coronavirus became sicker than those infected
with the WIV1 bat coronavirus. As sometimes occurs in science, this was an
unexpected result of the research, as opposed to something that the researchers
set out to do,” he added.
Following the enhancement of the WIV1 bat
coronavirus, EcoHealth “failed to report this finding right away, as was
required by the terms of the grant.”
Paul asked Dr. Fauci
under oath if he had lied to Congress about his involvement in that forbidden
area of research, and the Good Doctor vehemently denied the charge.
However, according to a new letter published by a member of the NIH, Fauci has some explaining to do, and if the contents of the letter are true, he might be trading in his white lab coat for an orange jumpsuit in the not-too-distant future.
Breitbart reported the following:
“Molecular biologist Richard H. Ebright on Wednesday posted a letter from the National Institute of Health (NIH) showing that an NIH grant did fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, contrary to what Dr. Anthony Fauci had testified to the Senate….
However, the NIH’s
October 20 letter to House Oversight Committee Ranking Member James Comer
(R-KY) showed that the NIH grant, which was awarded to EcoHealth Alliance and
then sub-awarded to the Wuhan lab, funded a research project during 2018 and
2019 that tested ‘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 added: “In this limited experiment, laboratory mice infected with the SHC014 WIV1 bat coronavirus became sicker than those infected with the WIV1 bat coronavirus.”
Oops! It appears that the Good Doctor is in trouble. He owes Senator Paul and the American people a true explanation of what he knows.
In July, Senator Paul accused Dr. Fauci of funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, from which many people now believe the coronavirus emanated.
Gain of function refers to a procedure by which strains of virus present in animals are manipulated to transmit to humans as well.
So, let me ask: Why in the hell would anyone want to take a disease and make it transferable to humans? And why the hell was the United States government funding that research?
Well, that is exactly what Senator Paul was trying to figure out.
Here is the exchange between Fauci and Paul as reported by the Post Millennial:
“Knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement of May 11 where you claim that the NIH never funded gain of function research in Wuhan?” Paul asked Fauci.
“Senator Paul,” Fauci began, “I have never lied before the Congress and I do not retract that statement. This paper that you are referring to was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain of function.”
Paul interrupted, “You take an animal virus, and you increase its transmissibility to humans, you’re saying that’s not gain of function?” he asked incredulously.
“That is correct,” Fauci defended, “and Senator Paul you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially: You do not know what you are talking about.”
At the end of the day, this confirms what most of us have known all along: Anthony Fauci should have been fired a long time ago by either Donald Trump or Joe Biden. He is a mockery of the medical profession…and he is now a confirmed liar as well.
It is time to send Fauci the Fraud packing…or possibly to live behind bars.
Experts: Newly released documents show NIH funded gain-of-function research in China
Reporters : Zachary Stieber, Jeff Carlson / Publisher : The Epoch Times PREMIUM
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded research in China that created a more potent form of a bat coronavirus, according to newly disclosed documents.
An experiment conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, situated near where the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, compared mice infected with the original bat coronavirus to mice infected with a modified strain created by researchers, according to the documents.
The mice infected with the modified version “became sicker than those infected” with the original version, Lawrence Tabak, the principal deputy director at the NIH, told lawmakers in letters (pdf) on Oct. 20.
The “limited experiment” was aimed at seeing if “spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model,” Tabak wrote, adding that the “unexpected result” was not “something that the researchers set out to do.”
Whether intended or not, the research fits the definition of gain-of-function, some experts say.
“The genetic manipulation of both MERS and the SARS conducted in Wuhan clearly constituted gain-of-function experiments,” Jonathan Latham, executive director of The Bioscience Research Project, told The Epoch Times in an email. “Further, it is absurd of NIH to describe the enhanced viral pathogenicity that was observed in the experiments they funded as ‘unexpected’ when clearly these experiments were expressly designed to detect increased pathogenicity.”
The NIH “corrects untruthful assertions by NIH Director Collins and NIAID Director Fauci that NIH had not funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan,” Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist with Rutgers University, wrote on Twitter.
The newly released documents primarily consist of the fifth and final progress report (pdf) for the series of grants. The report was submitted on Aug. 3, over two years after the research concluded.
EcoHealth’s final report also contained a description of experimenting on clones of MERS-CoV, a virus that caused an outbreak in the Middle East in 2012 and has a mortality rate of approximately 35 percent, according to the World Health Organization.
The scientists said they used a “similar reverse genetics strategy” that they utilized in studies of the bat coronaviruses and, after constructing a “full-length infectious clone of MERS-CoV,” they replaced the receptor binding domain of the virus with domains from various strains of coronaviruses identified in bats from southern China.
Jack Nunberg, a virologist and director of the Montana Biotechnology Center at the University of Montana, told The Epoch Times in an email that both viruses use the same receptor protein.
“By keeping to the same receptor protein, I’d label the experiment overly risky (due to the pathogenic backbone and their previous findings of increased virulence in some chimeras) but not blatantly” gain-of-function, he said.
Both Dr. Francis Collins, the outgoing director of the NIH, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads the agency’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), have denied the agency has funded gain-of-function research in China.
“Neither NIH nor NIAID have ever approved any grant that would have supported ‘gain-of-function’ research on coronaviruses that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans,” Collins said in a May statement.
The term generally refers to any research that increases the pathogenicity or transmissibility of a biological agent like a virus.
The research in question was funded through millions of dollars of grants from the NIH to EcoHealth Alliance, which then funneled money to the lab in Wuhan.
The NIH has repeatedly declined to make documents concerning the research public, only disclosing many after being sued or pressured by members of Congress.
“Thanks to the hard work of the Oversight Committee Republicans, we now know that American taxpayer dollars funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab,” House Oversight Ranking Member James Comer (R-Ky.) told The Epoch Times in an email.
The documents were sent to the Comer and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The NIH says a review of EcoHealth’s research plan before it allocated the funding determined it did not fit the definition of research involving “enhanced pathogens of pandemic potential” because the bat coronaviruses “had not been shown to infect humans.” However, “out of an abundance of caution,” language in the terms and conditions of the grant award stated that a secondary review would be triggered by multiple scenarios, including EcoHealth reporting a one log, or 10-time increase, in growth.
“This means EcoHealth should have reported if any of the viruses being tested turned out to grow 10 times faster or more than the control virus would without their new spike proteins,” an NIH spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.
EcoHealth failed to abide by conditions of the grant, Tabak said, and was notified that it has five days from Oct. 20 to submit to NIH all unpublished data from the experiments and work conducted under the award.
Presented with the accusation by some that the new documents show Fauci and Collins lied to Congress, the NIH spokesperson said that the allegation is incorrect.
The challenge appears to revolve around different definitions of gain-of-function research. The NIH has defined it as research that is “reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to … viruses such that the resulting virus has enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility (via the respiratory route) in mammals.” Its parent office, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), defines “enhanced potential pandemic pathogens” in a framework (pdf) as a highly transmissible and highly virulent pathogen that is enhanced through research.
“While the findings of this limited experiment in mice were somewhat unexpected, NIAID reviewed the progress report and has determined that the research described in the progress report would not have triggered a review under the HHS P3CO Framework because the bat coronaviruses used in this research have not been shown to infect humans and the experiments were not reasonably expected to increase transmissibility or virulence in humans,” the spokesperson said.
The grant is suspended while the NIH conducts a review that includes working with EcoHealth to get more information about its noncompliance.
EcoHealth has not responded to requests for comment, including questions sent last month after another set of documents, detailing other work the nonprofit funded with U.S. taxpayer money, were made public.
The fresh disclosures add to the concern about government transparency, Gary Ruskin, executive director of U.S. Right to Know, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“It has been obvious for decades that our federal government is not transparent enough, that there is not nearly enough congressional oversight and that the Freedom of Information Act badly needs strengthening. We citizens need better transparency tools to uncover all sorts of corruption, mismanagement, waste, fraud, abuse of power, and impending disasters,” he said, adding that NIH in particular has an “abysmal” track record of being transparent.
“Even if the research EcoHealth conducted under the National Institutes of Health grant does not precisely fit the definition of gain-of-function, which is for scientists and not policy analysts to decide, government transparency certainly required the NIH to reveal this information at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. At this point, it is obvious that the NIH and other government health agencies require reform and far more intensive oversight by Congress, and in some cases outright abolition,” added S.T. Karnick, publications director at The Heartland Institute.
Trump Jr.: Fauci, Collins will blame others for gain-of-function "lies"
Reporter : Jack Gournell, Newsmax
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, will get away with lying to Congress about the NIH funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology because the press will protect them, Donald Trump Jr. told Newsmax's "American Agenda" on Thursday.
"You know, they'll blame someone who can no longer be held accountable. They'll blame someone who died recently. They'll do whatever they can to avoid any kind of accountability, and you think about it," Trump Jr. said of Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins, the retiring director of the National Institutes of Health.
The Federalist reported on Thursday that NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak, in a letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, disputed Fauci's Senate testimony that gain-of-function research never was never funded by NIH.
Donald Trump Jr., eldest son of former President Donald Trump, compared Fauci's testimony to his own 30-plus hours in front of Congress.
"There was nothing there, but they were hoping that if I said one little thing wrong, that's it, and they got you in a perjury trap," he said. "It seems to me that Dr. Fauci had perjured himself on many occasions about something serious — the origins of a pandemic that has killed millions of people across the world."
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has disputed Fauci's claims on several occasions, with Fauci firing back that Paul was "entirely and completely incorrect."
"Each time they lie," Trump said, "each time the media covered up, each time the Democrat machine social media, mainstream media went into full PR mode to try to cover for Dr. Fauci and say that these things are lies."
Anyone else would have been thrown off social media six months ago for saying what is now being reported as fact, he said.
Fauci "actually did lie, but of course I think accountability prosecution for these kind of lies that's only reserved for the Democrats' political enemies, not for clowns like Anthony Fauci, who has done a terrible job with all of this, who hasn't gotten seemingly anything right in the last two years,'' Donald Trump Jr. said.
''And you know, again, he'll skate and probably get a lot of TV time on the talk shows that will treat him as though he is the Lord."
The National Institute of Health in the United States indirectly admitted that it had funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology
Officials from the National Institute of Health (NIH) of the United States recently admitted indirectly that the hospital had funded research on the enhancement of functions of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China through a non-profit organization.
The American conservative publication National Review reported on the 21st that Lawrence Tabak, the first deputy dean of the National Institutes of Health, was giving the House of Representatives Supervision and Reform Committee Chief Republican Member James Comer ( James Comer's letter mentioned a "limited experiment" that aimed to test "whether the spike protein of the natural bat coronavirus spread in China can bind to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model." Tabak admitted that laboratory mice infected with modified bat coronaviruses ("SHC014 WIV1 bat coronaviruses") were "more sick" than mice infected with unmodified bat coronaviruses ("WIV1 bat coronaviruses").
Although Tabak did not use the term "gain-of-function", because its description is in full compliance with the popular definition of "gain-of-function", it indirectly confirms that the National Institutes of Health actually funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology's gain-of-function project. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), previously explicitly denied that NIH had funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology's functional enhancement research.
Ref: https://www.ntdtv.com/gb/2021/10/22/a103250191.html
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