Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ken., who is also a medical doctor, told Newsmax Wednesday that the people in the scientific community that want to conduct gain-of-function experiments with viruses have "a death wish for civilization."
"Taking a virus that has known danger and then trying to make it more infectious is kind of an existential problem. It's a death wish for civilization," Paul said during "Eric Bolling The Balance" Wednesday. "One of the other members' doctors has written in The Washington Post that this kind of risk is something that's risky to civilization itself. So we're talking about potentially having a virus that could wipe out half the population."
Paul said that during the first day of Senate hearings on the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, three scientists testified that the dangerous research conducted in the Wuhan, China, lab should have been reviewed before being allowed, possibly leading to the pandemic, which killed more than 6 million people worldwide.
"This is the research that [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director] Dr. Anthony Fauci says was not dangerous was not gain-of-function," Paul said. Dr. Fauci said [to me and the committee] a few months ago, absolutely, and without question, 'The [National Institute of Health] does not fund gain-of-function function research, and never has in Wuhan. Well, all three of these scientists contradicted him today, so this should be blockbuster news."
Paul said that while we do not know "for certain" that the COVID-19 virus came from the Wuhan lab, it is known that there is little evidence it evolved from animals.
"We do know that this lab, in particular, was asking for money to do research that would create a virus that would look very similar to what we saw with COVID-19," he said. "In 2018, these scientists in China ask us for taxpayer money to insert a special cleavage site. This is how the virus gets into the cell."
Paul said this exact "cleavage site" then appeared in the DNA of the COVID-19 virus.
"This virus actually contains the same cleavage site that they were trying to get us to pay for two years ago," he said. "That's why the people around Fauci at first said, 'Holy cow! This looks like an engineered virus,' until Fauci put his foot down and said, 'No dissent.'"
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