GOP lawmakers demand answers from Fauci — Analysis

US Republican lawmakers sent Dr. Anthony Fauci a request for clarifications about how he allegedly silenced concerns that Covid-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory.

Three US House Members sent Monday’s letter citing emails that suggested that Dr. Francis Collins (then director of National Institutes of Health) and Fauci tried to stop speculations among scientists in 2020 that the virus originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Instead of alerting national security officials to the pandemic’s potentially unnatural origin, Fauci and Collins sought to shut down the debate, the GOP lawmakers said.

Media outlets obtained the emails through Freedom of Information Act requests. The emails showed that some virus experts believed that this virus was laboratory-created. Some of these messages referenced a February 2020 conference call, in which many scientists supported the lab-leak theory. Robert Garry from Tulane Medical School said that he saw no evidence. “plausible natural scenario”Covid-19 may not be used in certain aspects.

“However, those same email communications, particularly when viewed in light of other publicly available information, demonstrate an apparent effort by you and Dr. Collins not only to cover up the concerns those virologists raised, but to suppress scientific debate about the origins of Covid-19,”The letter stated.

The letter was signed by representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Brett Guthrie, and Morgan Griffith (R–Virginia).

They demanded that Fauci provide details on how those conversations with scientists were initiated and who consulted him and Collins on Covid-19’s likely origins. They also demanded information about any communication between Collins and Fauci with Chinese scientists as well as documentation related to US funding for the Wuhan research.

Even as scientists were speculating about Covid-19’s potentially manmade origins, Fauci told reporters in April 2020 that the sequencing of the virus was “totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.”Collins had earlier that day sent Collins a concern message about the laboratory leak theory and asked how NIH could respond. “put down this very destructive conspiracy.”

Republican legislators have charged Fauci with directing taxpayer funds to gain-of function research that may make cells more lethal or transmissible. In Monday’s letter, the House members claimed the efforts to quell the lab-leak theory may have stemmed at least partly from fears of those grants being exposed. “It appears you and Dr. Collins may have done so to protect China and avoid criticism about incredibly risky research that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was funding at the Wuhan lab,”The legislators stated.