Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,
In a remarkable interview Thursday, Anthony Fauci had the gall to defend dangerous gain of function research, which in all likelihood was the direct cause of the COVID pandemic, and mocked the idea that a lab leak is being covered up.
Appearing on Fox News, Fauci told anchor Neil Cavuto “If you shut off all gain of function research. Did you get the flu shot this year, Neil? If you did, and you got it from an influenza vaccine, that was gain-of-function that made that influenza vaccine. That’s what people don’t understand.”
Fauci twice suggested that he should be “taken out of this,” reasoning that “I’m a charged person,” and went on to argue the case for gain of function research, which makes pathogens more deadly.
“The whole scientific community feels that you have to have some degree of being able to manipulate organisms,” Fauci claimed, adding “When you do it, you have to do it carefully and under very controlled conditions.”
All the while, Fauci was again careful not to define exactly what gain of function is, having previously changed the definition to cover his own culpability.
When asked if the research serves any value, Fauci stated “It depends on what your definition of gain of function is,” going on to say “Look at a whole array of virologists and scientists who do research that is absolutely critical for the health of the country. Some of that involves manipulating organisms. You want to call it gain of function. It really is not, in many respects, but it needs to be very well-regulated.”
Fauci
also mocked the idea that discussion of a potential Wuhan coronavirus
lab leak was dismissed and suppressed, after Jim Jordan, the chairman of
the House Judiciary Committee, suggested that Fauci bribed scientists
into silence on the matter with a $9 million grant.
WATCH: @Jim_Jordan DEMOLISHES Fauci’s COVID origins story pic.twitter.com/k9muabjAS7
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) March 8, 2023
Jordan was referring to testimony earlier this month by Dr. Marty Makary, a professor at Johns Hopkins, who charged that
two scientists who believed that COVID-19 leaked from a lab changed
their minds after receiving the $9 million grant from Fauci.
Dr. @MartyMakary: Two top virologists warned Fauci about the lab leak in 2020, but “changed their tunes days later in the media, and then both scientists received $9 million subsequent in funding from the @NIH” pic.twitter.com/k3Va3cIjwk
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 1, 2023
“I almost have to laugh at that, Neil. That’s totally bizarre,” Fauci responded, going on to explain “First of all, I wasn’t leaning totally strongly one way or the other. I’ve always kept an open mind. As the data evolved and evolutionary virologists looked at the data, it looked more likely it was a natural occurrence from an animal reservoir.”
“I have always kept a completely open mind that it could be one or the other. Quite frankly, the evidence weighs more likely towards one, namely a natural occurrence,” Fauci claimed.
“The other absolutely preposterous thing that Jim Jordan said was that we gave the investigators $9 million bribe to change their mind. Is he kidding me?” Fauci further stated.
He continued, “They put in a grant about a year and a half before this all happened. The grant was reviewed by a peer review and put before an independent council and approved before the meeting even took place.”
“So to assume that they were getting a $9 million grant because of the fact that we tried to get them to change their mind is beyond ludicrous. Beyond ludicrous,” Fauci asserted.
Earlier this week, Senator Rand Paul accused Fauci, along with other scientists working with him at the National Institutes Of Health of engaging in an “elaborate cover-up” of the lab origin of the coronavirus pandemic in order to hide their own involvement.
