Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House’s top medical advisor, and Sen. Rand Paul exchanged heated words at a Senate hearing after Sen. Paul accused Anthony Fauci of lying to the Congress about funding a Wuhan, China, facility that led to the COVID-19 epidemic.
Paul, R-Kentucky, made reference to a May meeting between Congress and Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Anthony Fauci said that the NIH did not finance a gain-of-function study at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which involves enhancing the transmissibility of viruses.
On May 19, the NIH released a statement that it has previously funded projects to further our understanding of viruses in mammals and bats but had never authorised a program to increase the transmissibility and lethality of COVID-19.
Paul maintained, however, that the study was sponsored by the NIH.
Paul referenced a 2017 research article that said the NIH sponsored the discovery of new SARS strains that will offer new insights into the genesis and development of SARS-CoV and emphasizes the need of preparation for the future appearance of SARS-like illnesses.
When Paul inquired if Anthony Fauci wanted to withdraw his earlier remark, Fauci said emphatically that he had never lied to the Congress.
The two then started conversing over one another, until Paul said that Anthony Fauci was dancing around the notion that scientists enhanced the transmissibility of animal viruses to humans.
Paul told him that he is attempting to evade accountability for the deaths of 4 million people worldwide as a result of a pandemic.
In reply Fauci asked him if he was suggesting that our actions directly resulted in the deaths of people.
When Senator Tina Smith, D-Minn., inquired if he had any further remarks on Paul’s allegation, Fauci said that it is a pattern that Sen. Paul has established in many hearings based on a lack of truth.
He said that he has never lied, especially not in front of Congress.
This is not the first time the two have disagreed on this point. Fauci informed Paul in September 2020 that he was distributing false information about the virus, and Paul claimed in May that the virus might have originated in a Wuhan laboratory.
