Back in the Spotlight: Anthony Fauci

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Tulsi Gabbard, U.S. director of National Intelligence, recently declassified records concerning U.S.-funded biological laboratories overseas. She has reopened a debate that many Americans thought had ended with the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to information released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the United States supported or funded more than 120 biological research laboratories in over 30 countries. Many of these facilities conducted what some contend were legitimate public health and disease surveillance work. Yet the disclosures also revive longstanding concerns about oversight; transparency; gain-of-function research; and America’s decision to collaborate with foreign laboratories, including facilities located in countries that are strategic adversaries.

For years, Americans were assured that international biological research partnerships were essential for preventing future pandemics. Today, however, many are asking a different question: Why would the United States share sensitive pathogen research with countries such as China, particularly when that knowledge could theoretically be used for military or biological weapons purposes?

The most famous foreign biolab was China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, given millions of dollars involuntarily by U.S. taxpayers through grants administered by EcoHealth Alliance and the National Institutes of Health, which supported coronavirus research involving bat viruses and their potential ability to infect humans. The stated goal was to better understand how viruses might jump from animals to people before a pandemic occurred. So they replicated in a lab what that might look like and created COVID-19, which apparently escaped from the Wuhan lab, killing millions of people worldwide. Truth also was killed in the process.

Supporters viewed the research as prudent preparation. Critics viewed it as playing with fire. Cynics question if it was all intentional to test how fast a novel new virus would spread and how quickly a vaccine could be administered to end the experimental plague.

The COVID-19 experience raises a fundamental national security question. China is not simply another scientific collaborator. It is America’s principal geopolitical competitor. So why would the United States fund and entrust to China the world’s most cutting-edge bio-weapon research to discover which viral mutations make pathogens more transmissible to humans? Do we believe for one moment that the Chinese Communist Party would allow its scientists to keep secret research “secret” from their secret police? This would be laughable if it weren’t for the death of millions of people from COVID-19.

Did Anthony Fauci mislead Congress? It depends on what your definition of gain-of-function is.

Fauci, then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the de facto COVID-19 spokesman during the pandemic, repeatedly testified that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had not funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. However, we now see that that simply was not true. The NIH simply funded an entity that in turn funded Wuhan. In a sense, it’s like hiring a hit man but saying you’re innocent because you did not pull the trigger.

Critics of Dr. Fauci argue that though those statements may have relied upon narrow regulatory definitions, they created a broader public impression that no taxpayer-supported research had enhanced dangerous viral capabilities, which runs contrary to the COVID-19 Final Report filed by the House Oversight Committee.

From this perspective, Fauci’s testimony amounted to what some describe as “technically accurate but practically misleading.” Critics contend that Congress, journalists, social media companies, and the public were left with an understanding that differed substantially from the underlying facts.

Fauci’s bureaucratic defenders see the issue differently. They note that gain-of-function research has specific regulatory definitions and that Fauci consistently testified according to those definitions. Under the framework used by NIH officials at the time, supporters argue, the Wuhan-related grants did not qualify as prohibited gain-of-function research.

But psychobabble is still psychobabble. Government officials frequently choose words that are technically defensible while still leaving audiences with a mistaken impression. But deceptive “truth” is a net lie. Americans deserve better than this from our leaders.

The consequences extended far beyond a congressional hearing room. During the pandemic, Americans who questioned official narratives found themselves marginalized. Social media platforms restricted or removed content. Videos disappeared from YouTube. Facebook users experienced their pages being throttled (reduced distribution). Individuals who suggested that COVID-19 may have originated from a laboratory were frequently labeled “conspiracy theorists” and publicly shamed by Anthony Fauci and other “experts” — who authored some of the wildest theories on the origins of COVID-19, including insisting that it likely originated in an exotic animal wet market, selling monkey meat!

This raises a troubling question: Were Americans discouraged from asking reasonable questions because government officials and major institutions prematurely declared certain topics settled?

In a free society, scientific debates should be resolved through evidence and open inquiry, not through censorship or appeals to authority. And public officials need to remember that they work for “we the people,” not the other way around.

There is another side to this debate that deserves careful consideration. Many Americans argue that all gain-of-function research should be banned immediately. Their reasoning is straightforward: If modifying pathogens creates any meaningful risk of accidental release, why conduct such experiments at all?

Yet national security, some argue, is rarely that simple, contending that America’s adversaries may not share the same ethical concerns. China continues investing heavily in biotechnology and synthetic biology. Advances in gene-editing technologies have made sophisticated biological research more accessible than ever before.

A fair comparative question might go like this: Just because someone else jumps off of a bridge, should we? But in the case of bioweapons, it’s more like someone pushing someone else off the ledge.

Regardless of the path we take in the future, at bare minimum, Americans deserve to know which laboratories received taxpayer funding, what pathogens were studied, what foreign governments were involved, and what safeguards were in place. After all, it’s our money.

Congress should demand a comprehensive accounting of all U.S.-funded overseas pathogen research. Lawmakers should require public disclosure of foreign partners, biosafety standards, military affiliations, and any experiments involving potentially pandemic pathogens.

The COVID era demonstrated that secrecy, bureaucratic word games by the nearly omnipresent Anthony Fauci during the epidemic, and widespread governmental and scientific suppression of legitimate questions can erode public confidence faster than any virus.

The American people are capable of handling the truth. The question now is whether Washington is willing to provide it. And if so, will and should Anthony Fauci or any other collaborators in the creation and spread of COVID-19 see prison time for the deaths of millions of people?

Jerry McGlothlin is a writer on topics including technology, politics, and global health. His articles have been published by American Thinker, Newsmax, and The Christian Post.

Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.