Under the Pump: Fauci to Face Grilling Today by Republican Committee on Covid Origins
Dr. Anthony Fauci reiterated in his new book that COVID mostly likely did not emerge from a lab leak in Wuhan, China.
June 3 2024, Published 11:00 a.m. ET
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became the public face of the United States' response to the COVID-19 pandemic, will be grilled by Republicans on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in a hearing on Monday, RadarOnline.com has learned.
Fauci, who also served as chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden until his retirement in December 2022, is expected to return to Capitol Hill to testify about the origins of the virus and address theories that it emerged from research funded by his agency at a coronavirus research lab in Wuhan, China, The New York Times reports.
In his testimony, Fauci addressed theories that the pandemic emerged from research funded by his agency at a coronavirus research lab in Wuhan, China.
Republicans have focused on research grants given by the National Institutes of Health to EcoHealth Alliance, an American nonprofit group that partnered with international scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. "Covid-19 wasn’t created by bats in a wet market,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed last year. “It was manufactured in a lab funded by Fauci. He tried to cover it up.”
"Any qualified evolutionary virologist would confirm that the bat viruses that were studied at WIV under the NIH-funded grant were phylogenetically so far removed from SARS-CoV-2 that it would be molecularly impossible for those viruses to be turned into SARS-CoV-2," Fauci responded in opening remarks posted online on Sunday. "Any suggestion that the viruses studied under the NIH-funded sub-award to WIV resulted in the creation of SARS-CoV-2 is without the slightest bit of evidence or feasibility."
"Was it a lab leak or a natural spillover from an animal reservoir? I have repeatedly stated that I have a completely open mind to either possibility and that if definitive evidence becomes available to validate or refute either theory, I will readily accept it," he continued. "As of now, however, it is important to point out that the information currently available and that has been carefully examined and published in reputable peer-reviewed journals by highly respected virologists strongly suggests that the virus spilled over from an animal reservoir in the Hunan Seafood Market in Wuhan, leading to the COVID-19 pandemic."
In his new book, Fauci also detailed his battles with former president Donald Trump over the use of of anti-malaria medication hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19.
Fauci will also likely face scrutiny over email exchanges between his former aide Dr. David Morens and EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak suggesting that they used private emails to shield information from public records requests under the Freedom of Information Act.
In his opening statement, Fauci asserted that he "knew nothing" of Morens' email practices and that Morens helped him write scientific papers but "was not an adviser to me on institute policy or other substantive issues."
"Let me state for the record that to the best of my knowledge I have never conducted official business via my personal email," Fauci added.
Democratic lawmakers have warned that the subcommittee's probe into Fauci amounts to "an effort to weaponize concerns about a lab-related origin to fuel sentiment against our nation’s scientists and public health officials for partisan gain.”
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Democratic lawmakers have warned that the subcommittee's probe into Fauci amounts to "an effort to weaponize concerns about a lab-related origin to fuel sentiment against our nation’s scientists and public health officials for partisan gain.”
"Rather than tackling forward-looking reforms to strengthen public health, data collection, improve future testing and contact tracing capacity, or address the inequities laid bare by the pandemic, our majority colleagues have spent time and taxpayer dollars fishing for evidence to back up their most extreme members' claims about Dr Fauci," Democratic Rep. Raul Ruiz, the ranking member of the panel and a physician, said, per ABC News.
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