On Tuesday, during a heated exchange with Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, Fauci denied that NIH had funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab.
EcoHealth Alliance has received at least $3.7 million from 2014 to 2020, and Daszak, a member of a controversial WHO-China study team into the origins of COVID-19, steered at least $600,000 in NIH funding to the Wuhan lab for bat coronavirus research.
A State Department fact sheet released in mid-January contended Wuhan lab researchers "Conducted experiments involving RaTG13, the bat coronavirus identified by the WIV in January 2020 as its closest sample to SARS-CoV-2" and that the lab "Has a published record of conducting 'gain-of-function' research to engineer chimeric viruses."
Fauci replied: "With all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect - that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
An NIH spokesperson told the Washington Examiner in February that the Wuhan lab "Is not an NIH grantee" but instead that EcoHealth Alliance "Is the recipient of an NIH grant" and "Made a subaward" to the Chinese laboratory.
The professor concluded that "The Wuhan lab used NIH funding to construct novel chimeric SARS-related coronavirus with the ability to infect human cells and laboratory animals" and that "The research was - unequivocally - gain of function research."
NIH told the Washington Examiner that "An Assurance does not determine whether an organization can or will receive a grant," though it means the Wuhan lab is allegedly in compliance with NIH's policy on using lab animals.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/fauci-nih-wuhan-lab-bats-covid-everything-you-need-to-know
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