White House defends Fauci amid lying allegations to Congress about research into office

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White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki defended Dr.Anthony Fauci against new allegations that Fauci misled Congress about funding the National Institutes of Healths (NIH) for job search on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China at a press conference Thursday.

Gain-of-function research refers to efforts to improve the ability of a virus to study and develop treatments for it.

Fauci has repeatedly insisted that the NIH has not funded anything that can reasonably be considered a search for office in Wuhan. Many disagree. Dr Richard Ebright, a biosafety expert at Rutgers University, told National Review in May that the NIH-funded research in Wuhan that indeed fits the definition of gain-of-function research of concern for which the funding federal government was suspended in 2014-2017.

Earlier this week, The Intercept released new material, including a grant proposal describing research that Ebright again sees as a payoff. The viruses they built were tested for their ability to infect mice that were designed to display human-like receptors on their cells, he told The Intercept.

Psaki was outraged when Fox Newss Peter Doocy asked him if President Joe Biden would consider relieving Fauci as director of the National Institute of Allergic and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to the president, insisting that the NIH has refuted this information.

The NIH has never approved any research that would make a coronavirus more dangerous to humans, a reminder that there are earlier and different coronaviruses than the one that exists, said Psaki, who pointed out that the genomes of the coronaviruses described in NIH research differed from the virus that caused the ongoing pandemic.

It wouldn’t need to be proven that NIH research in Wuhan was linked to the pandemic for Fauci to be guilty of lying to Congress. Evidence that he was aware of previously debated gain-of-office research or that uncovered by The Intercept would make Faucis’ claims false.

The story continues

A visibly frustrated Fauci told Senator Rand Paul that the NIH never funded, and now does not fund, gain-of-office research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology earlier this year.

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