House Republicans want answers after recently unearthed emails appear to show Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins silenced scientists who believed early in the pandemic that COVID-19 may have originated from a Wuhan lab.
The emails appear to show that although Collins, the now-former head of the National Institutes of Health, and Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, worked behind the scenes to cast doubt on the lab leak possibility, they had good reason to believe it was plausible.
“Instead of alerting national security experts to the potential threat that scientists were questioning the origin of the SARS2 virus, you shut down debate about the COVID-19 origin,” Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and other Republican committee members said in their new letter to Fauci and Collins.
The emails, released under the Freedom of Information Act, show that in early February 2020, virology experts told Fauci and Collins they believed COVID-19 had lab-made features and that the virus may have escaped from a lab.
“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 coverup the concerns those virologists raised, but to suppress scientific debate about the origins of COVID-19,” the letter stated.
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Some of the emails included notes from a Feb. 1, 2020, conference call in which at least 11 scientists theorized about the virus’s origin, with many leaning toward the lab leak hypothesis.
Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome Trust, sent an email to Collins, Fauci, and NIH official Lawrence Tabak on Feb. 2, 2020, indicating that some of the scientists believed the lab leak hypothesis was viable. Farrar noted, for example, that Mike Farzan of Scripps Research found a key aspect of the virus “highly unlikely” to have developed outside a lab.
“So, I think it becomes a question of how do you put all this together, whether you believe in this series of coincidences, what you know of the lab in Wuhan, how much could be in nature — accidental release or natural event? I am 70:30 or 60:40,” Farrar recounted Farzan saying on the call.
Another scientist on the call, Tulane Medical School professor Robert Garry, apparently said he could see no “plausible natural scenario” for certain aspects of COVID-19.
But in another email from the same day, Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience warned that lab leak discussions could “do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular.”
Collins sent an email that day saying he was “coming around to the view that a natural origin is more likely” and saying that “a swift convening of experts in a confidence inspiring framework (World Health Organization seems really the only option) is needed, or the voices of conspiracy will quickly dominate, doing great potential harm to science and international harmony.”
But an email from Farrar to Fauci and Collins on Feb. 4, 2020, also indicated that Edward Holmes, a professor at the University of Sydney, was “60-40″ on a lab leak versus natural origin, while “I am 50-50.”
The Republicans asked for a host of answers by the end of February, including how the Fauci and Collins communications with virology experts beginning in January 2020 were initiated, the identities of any other individuals Fauci or Collins consulted with on COVID-19’s origins, and whether anyone at the Trump White House was briefed.
“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 Republicans told Fauci.
Yet another email, this one from Collins to Fauci and others and dated April 16, 2020, showed him trying to push back against reporting from Bret Baier of Fox News about the lab leak hypothesis.
“Wondering if there is something NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy, with what seems to be growing momentum,” Collins wrote. “I hoped the Nature Medicine article [from March 2020 casting doubt on the lab leak possibility] on the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 would settle this.”
Fauci replied, “I would not do anything about this right now. It is a shiny object that will go away in time.”
But when asked about the possibility of a lab leak during a White House press conference that day, Fauci argued in favor of a natural origin.
The GOP asked whether the two key officials had been involved in the emergency meeting at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened at the request of the White House and held on Feb. 4, 2020 and whether they influenced scientific papers on the origins of COVID-19.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released an assessment in the summer stating that one U.S. intelligence agency assessed with “moderate confidence” that COVID-19 most likely emerged from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan, while four U.S. spy agencies and the National Intelligence Council believe with “low confidence” COVID-19 most likely has a natural origin.
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Rodgers and the other GOP lawmakers asked whether Fauci and Collins were in touch with Chinese scientists about COVID-19 in January 2020 and “to what extent did preserving international harmony (especially with China) affect your advice to the White House, HHS, or anyone else involved in the COVID-19 response.”
The lawmakers also asked for the NIH to be directed to hand over all documents related to EcoHealth Alliance’s collaboration with the Wuhan lab. Republican lawmakers and others have charged that EcoHealth had conducted risky gain-of-function research with NIH funding, but the NIH and Fauci deny it.
