The scientists at the center of the “lab leak” theory about the origins of COVID-19 visited the Anthony Fauci institute at the National Institutes of Health in 2017 to discuss their research months before the NIH resumed creating new viruses in labs — a practice that scientists argue could lead to a pandemic.
Wuhan Institute of Virology scientist Shi Zhengli, known as the “bat lady of China” for her research on SARS-like coronaviruses in bat caves, presented her findings on the novel coronavirus to staff at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in June 2017, according to a report by US Right to Know.
The EcoHealth Alliance, a US research organization that funds Shi’s lab, arranged the meeting, which the group’s president Peter Daszak described as a “double action” between him and Shi.
Daszak also met with Erik Stemmy, who manages coronavirus research in NIAID’s Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.
The scientists at the center of the “lab leak” theory about the origin of COVID-19 visited the Anthony Fauci institute at the National Institutes of Health in 2017 to discuss their research. Getty Images
Four months later in October, Fauci met with Daszak himself, presumably to discuss an animal coronavirus outbreak called Acute Porcine Diarrhea Syndrome. In the same month, Fauci, Daszak and Shi all attended the same scientific conference.
By December of that year, the NIH resumed funding for research to develop new viruses in the laboratory following a three-year moratorium on the practice because of the possibility that such research could lead to an outbreak.
Emails obtained by US Right to Know through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the NIH and by FOIA, reveal that Fauci and his top aides were aware of ongoing novel coronavirus research at the epicenter of the outbreak before 2020.
Even so, Fauci did not mention the 2017 meeting with Daszak in 2022 during sworn depositions with the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana. The deposition is part of a lawsuit alleging that he and other White House officials leaned on social media companies to limit debate about COVID-19 during the height of the outbreak.
The scientists met months before the NIH resumed creating new viruses in the lab — a practice that scientists argue could lead to an outbreak. Action Press/MediaPunch
“I don’t remember meeting him, but I do know that somebody showed me a picture at a meeting where somebody said, here, take a picture with him,” Fauci said of Daszak at the time.
“But that’s not unusual, when you go to a scientific meeting, you’ll meet hundreds of people. And I believe that Dr. This Daszak is one of my closest — well, I ran into him because I believe I saw a picture of him and me together in a meeting.”
Fauci will also give sworn testimony to congressional investigators this week about his role in the US response to the outbreak.
Fauci will give sworn testimony to congressional investigators this week about his role in the response to the outbreak. AFP via Getty Images
House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup said in a statement that panelists will “demand an explanation for any pandemic-era failures” and “Fauci’s role as the face of America’s COVID-19 public health response.”
Wenstrup predicted that the former NIH official’s testimony “will shed light on topics that have never been asked by the Committee, Members or news outlets before.”
The subcommittee has focused on efforts by Fauci and former NIH Director Francis Collins to cover up any disagreement over the “lab leak” theory after obtaining internal communications from top health officials revealing they had asked scientists to author a paper in the journal Nature Medicine debunking the initial theory. the year 2020.
The COVID panel also subpoenaed one of Fauci’s top advisers in October for “potentially using his personal email to delete original COVID documents and avoid [Freedom of Information Act] the law.”
Fauci has denied that the NIH funded risky research at labs in Wuhan, where the outbreak first began. Getty Images
Fauci and Collins both denied in testimony to Congress that the NIH had funded risky for-profit research at a laboratory in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak began in late 2019.
Shi has leveled accusations that the origin of the outbreak came from a chance lab accident, calling the speculation “filth.”
“How can I offer evidence for something for which there is no evidence?” he told The New York Times in 2021. “I don’t know how the world has gotten to be like this, constantly pouring filth on innocent scientists.”
The Government Accountability Office released a report in June 2023 that found the NIH had contributed more than $1.4 million to Chinese research institutions between 2014 and 2019 despite serious biosafety concerns, including at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The research “included genetic experiments to combine naturally occurring bat coronaviruses with the SARS and MERS viruses, resulting in hybrid (also known as chimeric) coronavirus strains,” the report states, and funding has been cut.
Categories: Trending
Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
