Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), admitted in a recent interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt that the institute lacked control over U.S.-funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the likely origin of the COVID-19 virus.
Collins’ claims contradict previous statements from his underling Dr. Anthony Fauci regarding American funding and oversight of research at the Wuhan lab.
Previously, Fauci adamantly denied the NIH’s role in funding “gain of function research” conducted at the Wuhan lab. He cast aside any and all possible conflicts of interest in his involvement with managing the national response to COVID-19 and what he and his colleagues referred to as the “conspiracy” of the lab leak theory.
In his interview, Collins directly contradicts Fauci’s previous statements, saying that “we had no control over what … they were doing with those funds.” If the United States government did not have control over the research it funded, then how can Fauci be sure — as he says he was — that “gain of function” research was not conducted with nefarious intent? After all, we now know Fauci was warned very early on in the pandemic that SARS-CoV-2 looked engineered.
When pressed by Hewitt about whether or not working with Chinese Communist Party–affiliated entities — like the Wuhan lab — was a good idea, Collins said that working with repressive totalitarian regimes is palatable so long as it is in the pursuit of obtaining and refinding scientific research:
I’m still not convinced that you’re making a case that would change our responsibility as the leading organization for pursuing biomedical research in the world…. I think when the dust all settles, a reasonable person will say we were doing what NIH should do to try to protect the public against a terrible outbreak.
Collins’ interview follows the release of thousands of pages of internal communications in which Fauci ignored early warnings about the Chinese Communist Party’s manipulation of information and discussed the government’s involvement in “gain of function” research despite stating under oath that the NIH was not funding it.
Dr. Fauci lied to the American people routinely. That is undeniable. He and his colleagues at the NIH were more focused on pursuing their ideologically driven goals than protecting the health and lives of the American people.
