OPINION:
Since the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Anthony Fauci have, like the Chinese Communist Party, dismissed the idea that the virus was started by a lab leak (“Republicans offer COVID-19 Origin Act over concerns about possible link between pandemic, Wuhan lab,” Web, April 22). Here’s why we can’t trust NIH to investigate on its own:
In 2015, Dr. Fauci started funding studies at the CCP-run Wuhan Institute of Virology to capture coronavirus-infected bats and manipulate the viruses in “humanized” mice to make them deadlier and more contagious. Dr. Fauci’s NIH division allowed this project to skip the review process for risky projects with pandemic-causing potential.
In 2017 and 2018, the State Department visited WIV and warned that these coronavirus experiments could cause a pandemic.
Yet in 2019, the NIH re-authorized the WIV to get more taxpayer funds for animal testing through 2024.
In late 2019, WIV workers got sick with a COVID-like illness. Soon after the pandemic emerged right near the lab.
Kudos to Congress for taking steps to investigate a potential lab leak in Wuhan. That the pandemic could have been caused by animal experiments Dr. Fauci funded with U.S. tax dollars is Dr. Fauci’s inconvenient truth.
JUSTIN GOODMAN
Vice president, advocacy and public policy
White Coat Waste Project
Washington
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