Did the NIH fund gain of function research in Wuhan?
Did the NIH fund gain of function research in Wuhan?
Anthony Fauci, the most excellent hostile witness ever.
Simply on the basis of the following exchange in the July 20 senate hearings into the coronavirus response it is clear that Anthony Fauci admits that the NIH was funding research taking animal viruses and making them more transmissible to humans. Fauci refuses to admit that this is gain of function research, when animal-human increased transmissibility is actually the very definition of gain of function research.
Senator Paul: (50:05)
Dr. Fauci, as you are aware, it is a crime to lie to Congress. Section 1.0.0.1 of the US Criminal Code creates a felony and a five-year penalty for lying to Congress. On your last trip to our committee on May 11th, you stated that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wu Han Institute of Virology. And yet, gain of function research was done entirely in the Wu Han Institute by Dr. Shi and was funded by the NIH. I’d like to ask unanimous consent insert into the record the Wu Han virology paper entitled Discovery of a Rich Gene Pool of Bat SARS Related Coronaviruses. Please deliver a copy of the journal article to Dr. Fauci.
Seantor Paul: (50:51)
In this paper, Dr. Shi credits the NIH and lists the actual number of the grant that she was given by the NIH. In this paper, she took two bat coronavirus genes, spike genes, and combined them with a SARS related backbone to create new viruses that are not found in nature. These lab created viruses were then to shown to replicate in humans. These experiments combined genetic information from different coronaviruses that infect animals, but not humans, to create novel artificial viruses able to infect human cells. Viruses that in nature only infect animals were manipulated in the Wu Han lab to gain the function of infecting humans. This research fits the definition of the research that the NIH said was subject to the pause in 2014 to 2017, a pause in funding on gain of function, but the NIH failed to recognize this, defines it away, and it never came under any scrutiny. Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist from Rutgers, described this research in Wu Han as the Wu Han lab used NIH funding to construct novel chimeric SARS related to coronaviruses able to infect human cells and laboratory animals. This is high risk research that creates new potential pandemic pathogens, potential pandemic pathogens that exist only in the lab, not in nature. This research matches … these are Dr. Ebright’s words. This research matches, indeed epitomizes the definition of gain of function research, done entirely in Wu Han, for which there was supposed to be a federal pause. Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement of May 11th, where you claimed that the NIH never funded gains of function research in Wu Han?
Dr. Fauci: (53:05)
Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement. This paper that you were referring to was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain of function. What was … let me finish!
Seantor Paul: (53:25)
You take an animal virus and you increase its transmissibility to humans. You’re saying that’s not gain of function?
Dr. Fauci: (53:30)
Yeah, that is correct. 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, okay? You get one person … can I answer?
Seantor Paul: (53:46)
This is your definition that you guys wrote. It says that scientific research that increases the transmissibility among animals is gain of function. They took animal viruses that only occur in animals, and they increased their transmissibility to humans. How you can say that is not gain a function –
Dr. Fauci: (54:06)
It is not.
Seantor Paul: (54:07)
It’s a dance, and you’re dancing around this because you’re trying to obscure responsibility for 4 million people dying around the world from a pandemic.
In November 2021 the word play games continued:
Fauci: “First of all gain of function is a very nebulous term. We have spent – not us but outside bodies – a considerable amount of effort to give a more precise definition to the type of research that is of concern that might lead to a dangerous situation. You are aware of that. That is called P3-C0.”
Senator Rand Paul: “You deleted gain of function from the NIH website.”
Fauci: “Well I can get back to that a moment if we have time. But let’s get back to the operating framework and guiderails that we operate under. And you have ignored them. The guidelines are very clear that you have to be dealing with a pathogen that clearly has shown and very likely to be highly transmissible in an uncontrolled way in humans and to have a high degree of morbidity or mortality and that you do experiments to enhance that hence the word EPPP Enhanced Pathogens of Potential… I’d love to finish….”
Senator Rand Paul: “So when Eco Health Alliance took the virus SH014 and combined it with WV1 and caused a recombinant virus that doesn’t exist in nature, and it made mice sicker, mice that had humanised cells, you’re saying that that’s not gain of function research?”
Fauci: “According to the framework and guidelines…”
Senator Rand Paul: “So essentially you’re explaining away gain of function. You’re claiming that it doesn’t exist because you’ve changed the definition on the NIH website. This is terrible and you’re completely trying to escape the idea that we should do something to prevent a pandemic from leaking from a lab. A preponderance of evidence now points to this coming from the lab and what you’ve done is changed the definition on your website to try to cover your ass basically. That’s what you’ve done, you’ve changed the website to try to have a new definition that doesn’t include the risky research that’s going on. Until you admit that it’s risky we’re not going to get anywhere. You have to admit that this research was risky. The NIH has now rebuked them. Your own agency has rebuked them. But you’re still unwilling to admit that they gained in function when they say that they became sicker. They gained in lethality; it’s a new virus. That’s not gain of function?”
Fauci: “According to the definition that is currently operable – you know, Senator, let’s make it clear for the people that are listening. The current definition was done over a two to three year period by outside bodies including the NSABB, two conferences by the National Academy of Science and Engineering and Medicine, on December 2014 and March 2016. We commissioned external risk benefit assessment and then on January of 2017 the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the Whitehouse issued the current policy. I have not changed any definition…”
Rand Paul: “And coincidentally the definition appeared on the same day the NIH said that yes there was a gain in function in Wuhan, the same day the definition appeared, the new definition that tried to define away what was going on in Wuhan. Until you accept it, until you accept responsibility, we’re not going to get anywhere close to trying to prevent another lab leak of this dangerous sort of experiment. You won’t admit that it’s dangerous and for that lack of judgement I think it’s time that you resigned.”
The study Rand Paul is referring to is here. You can look at it for yourself.
Addendum: There has been some dodgy stuff happening with the ncbi.nlm.nih.gov links, so here is the article on archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230215123055/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/
Quoting the abstract:
Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system2, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone. The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. Additionally, in vivo experiments demonstrate replication of the chimeric virus in mouse lung with notable pathogenesis.
Let’s check the main features of the virus they created:
1) They inserted the spike protein that connects to the human ACE2 receptors.
2) It is based on the SHC014 bat coronavirus.
3) In Vivo experiments on the humanised mice (mice given human ACE2 receptors) demonstrate “notable pathogenesis” in the lungs.
This is completely damning - the virus they created in this study, created in the Wuhan lab in 2015, is identical in function and form to COVID-19, which emerged in December of 2019 in Wuhan.
One of the researchers on the study is Zheng-Li Shi, the infamous ‘bat lady’ of Wuhan, and Ralph S. Baric, who worked under the NIH.
It is absolutely staggering that the NIH should be funding and collaborating with China on gain of function research that has a clear military or hostile application, and that is clearly dangerous. Never mind whether or not this is actually the coronavirus.
Here is the list of grants and funding for the study, which includes the NIH, chaired by Fauci:
Research in this manuscript was supported by grants from the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Disease and the National Institute of Aging of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) under awards U19AI109761 (R.S.B.), U19AI107810 (R.S.B.), AI085524 (W.A.M.), F32AI102561 (V.D.M.) and K99AG049092 (V.D.M.), and by the National Natural Science Foundation of China awards 81290341 (Z.-L.S.) and 31470260 (X.-Y.G.), and by USAID-EPT-PREDICT funding from EcoHealth Alliance (Z.-L.S.). Human airway epithelial cultures were supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease of the NIH under award NIH DK065988 (S.H.R.). We also thank M.T. Ferris (Dept. of Genetics, University of North Carolina) for the reviewing of statistical approaches and C.T. Tseng (Dept. of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Texas Medical Branch) for providing Calu-3 cells. Experiments with the full-length and chimeric SHC014 recombinant viruses were initiated and performed before the GOF research funding pause and have since been reviewed and approved for continued study by the NIH. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.