RAND PAUL WAS RIGHT: NIH sends letter to Congress CONTRADICTING untruthful claims by Fauci and Collins, admits they funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan

by The Right Scoop

It was revealed last night by Molecular Biologist Richard H. Ebright that officials at NIH sent a letter yesterday to the House Oversight Committee which contradicted untruthful statements by both Director Francis S. Collins and NIAID Director Fauci that there was no funding of gain-of-function research in Wuhan.

NIH did in fact fund this controversial research and claimed in the letter that the funding recipient, EcoHealth Alliance, had violated their terms and conditions by failing to report a much higher viral load in humanized mice after combining a spike gene of one SARS-related coronavirus with the genetic information of another.

Ebright explains it all below. I included some helpful tweets from Ebright answering questions about the letter:

 

 

 

 

 

The second paragraph referenced above, which Ebright says is just rehashed boilerplate, claims that none of the viruses being studied by EcoHealth at Wuhan could have possibly led to the coronavirus that caused the pandemic.

If it helps, here’s more from Breitbart explaining this:

Molecular biologist Richard H. Ebright on Wednesday posted a letter from the National Institute of Health (NIH) showing that an NIH grant did fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, contrary to what Dr. Anthony Fauci had testified to the Senate.

Fauci testified to Senators at a hearing in May that the NIH “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

However, the NIH’s October 20 letter to House Oversight Committee Ranking Member James Comer (R-KY) showed that the NIH grant, which was awarded to EcoHealth Alliance and then sub-awarded to the Wuhan lab, funded a research project during 2018 and 2019 that tested “if spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model.”

The letter added: “In this limited experiment, laboratory mice infected with the SHC014 WIV1 bat coronavirus became sicker than those infected with the WIV1 bat coronavirus.”

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, “gain-of-function” research is research that improves the ability of a pathogen to cause disease.

Ebright tweeted that in the letter, the NIH “corrects untruthful assertions by NIH Director Collins and NIAID Director Fauci that NIH had not funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan.”

Furthermore, Ebright noted that the NIH’s letter appeared to show that EcoHealth Alliance violated the Terms and Conditions of the NIH grant.

The NIH said “out of an abundance of caution and as an additional layer of oversight, language was included in the terms and conditions of the grant award to EcoHealth that outlined criteria for a secondary review, such as a requirement that the grantee report immediately a one log increase in growth.”

It continued:

These measures would prompt a secondary review to determine whether the research aims should be re-evaluated or new biosafety measures should be enacted.

EcoHealth failed to report this finding right away, as was required by the terms of the grant.

The letter pointed out that the coronaviruses studied under the grant were unlikely to have become SARS-CoV-2, now commonly referred to as the “coronavirus” or “COVID-19.”

 
Rand Paul responded to the revelation by saying “‘I told you so doesn’t’ even begin to cover it here.”

 
Tom Cotton said Fauci knew and “should be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

 
Below is the full letter sent by NIH to Congress for your reading pleasure:


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