NIH Admits: Yes, U.S. Government Did Fund Research In Wuhan Lab

On Wednesday, a letter from a top National Institute of Health (NIH) official admitted that U.S. dollars had funded gain-of-function research in the Chinese Wuhan lab some have suspected of being the origin of COVID-19.

Not just any gain-of-function research: specifically, research on bat coronaviruses.

This sounded different from what top White House doctor Anthony Fauci told Congress when he was asked about possible U.S. funding of the lab by Sen. Rand Paul.

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The letter from the NIH is quick to point out that the research conducted on coronaviruses “are not and could not have become SARS-CoV-2”, the technical term for COVID-19, and claims they only funded a “limited” experiment. 

Nevertheless, many have long contended that the U.S. did in fact fund gain-of-function research in the now-infamous Wuhan lab.

When Paul pressed Fauci on the funding question in late July, Fauci replied, “You do not know what you are talking about. If anybody is lying here, Senator, it is you!”

“You are entirely and completely incorrect, the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Fauci insisted at the time.

In the NIH official letter, National Review reported that it “revealed that EcoHealth Alliance, the U.S. non-profit that funneled NIH money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was not transparent about the work it was doing.”

“In the letter to Representative James Comer (R., Ky.), Lawrence A. Tabak of the NIH cites a ‘limited experiment’ that was conducted to test if ‘spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model,” NR reported.

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Will There Be Any Repercussions For Fauci?

“The laboratory mice infected with the modified bat virus ‘became sicker’ than those infected with the unmodified bat virus,” the conservative news outlet noted.

Now that someone at the NIH has come out with information that seems to go against what Dr. Fauci, will he be challenged or be held accountable if needed? Will anything happen to him if he is shown to have lied before Congress? Will he even have to explain himself?

It’s certainly possible that Fauci didn’t know about every single grant issued by the NIH. But will he even be asked?

Read the letter from the NIH here.