The admission contradicts a direct denial by Dr. Fauci that gain-of-function in Wuhan had ever been funded by the NIH.

Summary

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) principal deputy director, Lawrence Tabak, admitted to Congress on Thursday that U.S. taxpayers had funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.

This admission follows more than four years of evasions from federal public health officials—including Tabak and former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Dr. Anthony Fauci—about the controversial research practice of making pathogens more transmissible with the goal of improving vaccines and treatments. [See “US Taxpayers Money Used for Controversial Virus Research in Wuhan”]

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic continues to investigate whether Covid-19 accidentally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China’s east-central province of Hubei. Various U.S. intelligence agencies and experts, including former CDC Director, Dr. Robert Redfield, and former Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, have indicated this is a plausible cause of the pandemic.

When asked directly by Rep Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz) of the select subcommittee if the NIH had funded gain-of-function research at Wuhan through the Manhattan-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, Mr. Tabak replied, “It depends on your definition of gain-of-function research. If you’re speaking about the generic term, yes, we did.”

Mr. Tabak also confirmed gain-of-function research was not regulated and encompassed a variety of experiments without addressing its risk to create “pathogens of pandemic potential.” [See “NIH Official Finally Admits Taxpayers Funded Gain-of-Function Research in Wuhan—After Years of Denials”]

At a Senate hearing in May 2021, under oath, Dr. Fauci denied the NIH had ever funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan facility. [See “The Repeated Claim That Fauci Lied to Congress About ‘Gain-Of-Function’ Research”]

Dr. Fauci’s statement contradicts a letter sent to Congress by a top NIH official that said the EcoHealth Alliance—which received NIH funding for research on the potential for bat-specific pathogens in nature to jump to humans—did not report an experimental finding that indicated a spike in viral growth. [See “The Repeated Claim That Fauci Lied to Congress About ‘Gain-Of-Function’ Research”]