Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) led the Senate’s first hearing on Wednesday to determine whether U.S. taxpayer-funded gain-of-function research contributed to the spread of COVID-19. The hearing was held by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Spending Oversight. Not one Democrat attended.
“The purpose of this hearing by the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Spending Oversight is to discuss, as our name implies, the emerging threat posed by gain-of-function research,” Paul said to begin the hearing.
Paul has been a steady critic of gain-of-function research and has repeatedly warned of its dangers and whether it had a role in causing the coronavirus pandemic. The topic has often resulted in him butting heads with Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In May 2021, the two disagreed over whether the National Institutes of Health funded gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Paul declared that “superviruses” were created. Fauci dismissed Paul’s accusations as “entirely and completely incorrect.”
“Gain-of-function research is a controversial scientific research method involving the manipulation of pathogens to give them a new aspect or ability, such as making viruses more transmissible or dangerous to humans,” Paul said. “Despite all we have learned about the potential risks of this particular method of research, this is the first congressional hearing on this subject since the pandemic began.”
Paul was on Jesse Watters Primetime to discuss the hearings. He emphasized the findings of three scientists and how a committee formed in 2017 to investigate gain-of-function research ignored its duties and never looked at the research.
“We learned that Dr. Fauci has been lying to us,” Paul said. “The three scientists agreed that this was dangerous research. Two of the three absolutely said it was gain of function. The third said it was dangerous research and should have gone before a committee. When Dr. Fauci said, ‘Oh, we’ve reviewed this, and the experts have looked at this and said it’s not gain of function,’ even that wasn’t true. There was a committee that was formed after 2017 to look at this dangerous research. They didn’t look at this research at all because they never reviewed it. So no one reviewed this to say it wasn’t gain-of-function research. They didn’t review it, period.”
As of today, over a million Americans have died from COVID-19. Its origins should be investigated on a bipartisan basis. The fact that not one Democrat showed up for the hearing should raise red flags. One would think that at least one Democrat would be interested in the discoveries of the scientists who participated in this investigation.
“We also learned from the scientists today that the committee that is supposed to review these viruses is secret,” Paul said. “We don’t know the names. We don’t know that they ever meet, and we don’t have any records of their meetings. It’s top secret. Congress is not allowed to know. So whether the committee actually exists, we’re uncertain. We do know that they’ve met three times and there are thousands of gain-of-function research proposals. They’ve only met three times — they’ve only reviewed three projects. So we learned a lot of things, but I think we reconfirmed that Dr. Fauci is not being honest with us.”
Recall how Democrats constantly attacked precautions that former President Donald Trump was trying to implement to stop the spread as being “racist” and “xenophobic.” Then, after hundreds of thousands had died while Trump was president, they criticized him even more, with many calling him responsible for the deaths. Now that he is out of office, their appetite for understanding COVID-19’s origins and how it spreads has completely disappeared.
Were they ever genuinely interested in understanding the virus, or was it always just a way to attack Trump in hopes of winning the presidency in 2020?
