Dr. Fauci’s claim that he never funded gain-of-function research came crashing down Wednesday night and it was his own agency that blew apart his claim. The National Institutes of Health issued a letter that corrected the record on previous funding that went towards dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
NIH corrects untruthful assertions by NIH Director Collins and NIAID Director Fauci that NIH had not funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan.
NIH states that EcoHealth Alliance violated Terms and Conditions of NIH grant AI110964. pic.twitter.com/cFOtJlRoWl
— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) October 20, 2021
Townhall reports:
“The fifth and final progress report for Grant R01AI110964, awarded to EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. is attached with redactions only for personally identifiable information,” a letter written by NIH Principal Deputy Director Larence Tabak to Republican Congressman James Comer states. “It includes data from a research project conducted during the 2018-2019 grant period using bat coronavirus genome sequences already existing in nature.”
“The limited experiment described the final progress report provided by EcoHealth Alliance was testing if spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of biding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model,” the letter continues. “In this limited experiment, laboratory mice infected with the SHC014 W1V1 bat coronavirus became sicker than those infected with the W1V1 bat coronavirus.”
In the letter, Tabak maintains that while gain-of-function research was conducted, SARS-CoV-2 was not developed through that kind of research at the Wuhan lab.
“It is important to state at the outset that published genomic data demonstrate that the bat coronaviruses studied under the NIH grant to EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. and sub award to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) are not and could not have become SARS-CoV-2…the sequences of the viruses are genetically very distant,” Tabak writes.
Fauci has adamantly denied having funded gain-of-function research, often resorting to tense exchanges on Capitol Hill, especially with Senator Rand Paul.
