Rand Paul Urges Fauci to Abandon Gain-of-Function Research, Citing Possible COVID Lab Leak | National Review
Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) excoriated Dr. Anthony Fauci during a Tuesday hearing for continuing to defend gain-of-function research on deadly viruses despite the possibility that the novel coronavirus leaked from a laboratory that was performing such research in Wuhan, China.
Paul asked Dr. Fauci if he still supports National Institutes of Health funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where scientists performed gain-of-function research i.e. making viruses more infectious and/or deadly on bat coronaviruses. The EcoHealth Alliance diverted $600,000 in grants from the NIH to the WIV in the form of sub-grants from 2014 through 2019, for the purpose of studying bat coronaviruses.
For years, Dr. Ralph Baric, a virologist in the U.S., has been collaborating with Dr. Shi Zhengli from the Wuhan Virology Institute, sharing his discoveries about how to create superviruses, Paul said. This gain-of-function research has been funded by the NIH. & Dr. Fauci, do you still support funding of the NIH lab in Wuhan?
Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect, Dr. Fauci said. [The] NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
When I heard that the coronavirus might have come from incredibly dangerous research on building more deadly viruses the Chinese were doing, I thought, well, this would be even more profoundly stupid if we were the ones actually paying for the research. And then it turned out, we were! Ok, that’s not true. I did not foresee that we were the ones paying for the research, because in my habitual charity, I reasoned that we would not, obviously, be sending taxpayer money to a horribly evil, genocidal and totalitarian regime known to experiment with germ warfare among other nasty businesses. But I was wrong! Of course we would! It’s Science! International cooperation! Scientists just want to help people, everywhere and all the time. It’s really just too perfect. If this turns out the way it looks like it’s going to turn out, it will go down in history as the most cosmically, epicly, self-serving, utterly callous and stupid stunt that has ever been attempted to be pulled off by a bunch of noggin-scratching, beard-stroking, self-important and lying science-bureaucrats ever. I’ve a notion; bear with me. Can we just agree that those darn viruses are dangerous enough without trying to come up with even worse ones? They may have been trying to prove something else, but the virologists have certainly proved that.