Emails between Dr. Anthony Fauci and other scientists reveal that there was an effort to suppress the theory that the coronavirus was leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, said Sen. Roger Marshall.
Scientists sent emails at the beginning of the pandemic to Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.
These emails suggest that scientific leaders believed the virus possessed features that looked engineered, writes the Kansas senator in The Washington Examiner.
But over the next several months, many of these same scientists, federal grantees, completely reversed their opinion and stated in three separate scientific journal articles that the lab-origin theory was impossible, according to Sen. Marshall, who is a medical doctor.
"On Feb. 1, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins spearheaded a private, off-the-record teleconference with several of these scientists to influence them and reverse their opinion that "the genome is inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory” and may have been engineered in a laboratory," he writes.
Six weeks later, a Nature Medicine article written by these scientists stated that the novel coronavirus came from nature, and a lab origin was out of the question. Collins, Fauci's boss, encouraged him in emails to dismiss the lab-leak theory, Marshall writes.
"A letter published on Feb. 26 in Emerging Microbes and Infections cited 'no credible evidence supporting claims of the laboratory engineering' of the virus. However, emails between two of the authors on Feb. 16 had stated, 'We cannot rule out the possibility that it comes from a bat virus leaked out of a lab.'
"Coincidentally, since the publication of their article, the authors have received over $15 million in federal research dollars from Fauci and Collins."
The senator refers to a third letter, published in The Lancet in late February 2020 by 27 scientists and public health professionals, which condemned "conspiracy theories suggesting COVID-19 does not have a natural origin."
"Reports later showed 26 of those scientists have ties to researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Ten of the authors of the Lancet letter have close ties to EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S. nonprofit group spearheaded by Peter Daszak, which studies emerging infectious diseases utilizing taxpayer funds.
"The money comes from grants that the likes of Fauci and Collins provide, as well as the Department of Defense. Annual grant reports provide evidence that EcoHealth Alliance and its sub-awardee, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, were engaged in gain-of-function research, of which the NIH may not have been fully aware," Sen. Marshall writes.
"Not long ago, the national media ridiculed and dismissed anyone who suggested a lab origin or leak of the virus that causes COVID-19. Additionally, after the 'Emerging Microbes and Infections' article was published, Collins penned a revealing email to Fauci stating, 'Wondering if there is something NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy, with what seems to be growing momentum. I hoped the 'Nature Medicine' article on the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 would settle this. But probably didn't get much visibility.
"'Anything more we can do? Ask the National Academy to weigh in?' When billions of taxpayer dollars remain in the brain trust of a few powerful bureaucrats for decades, conflicts of interest — both conscious and subconscious — can arise and cloud the vision, decisions, and scientific assessments of nearly anyone. Human nature dictates as much. Scientists have now gone on the record recounting concerns about backlash if they did not toe the line."
Marshall and his Republican colleagues have introduced legislation for a nonpartisan, 9/11-style commission to determine the origins of COVID-19.
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