The National Institutes of Health has finally admitted to funding gain of function research on bat coronaviruses in it's Wuhan laboratory despite Dr. Fauci's denials to congress that no such research took place.
The admission came in a letter addressed Kentucky congressman James Comer on Wednesday, in which NIH's principal deputy director Lawrence A. Tabak refers to a 'limited experiment' conducted to test if 'spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model,' at the Wuhan lab.
According to Tabak, the mice infected with the modified bat virus 'became sicker' than those infected with the unmodified bat virus.
NIH's principal deputy director Lawrence A. Tabak admitted to funding gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses in it's Wuhan laboratory
In a new letter, NIH's principal deputy director Lawrence A. Tabak (pictured) says lab rats were infected with the modified bat virus in the Wuhan lab in China
'As sometimes occurs in science, this was an unexpected result of the research, as opposed to something that the researchers set out to do,' Tabak said.
While never using the term, Tabak essentially confirms that gain of function research, which looks at both transmitting disease between animals and humans and is a way for scientists to alter organisms and diseases to study how they could become deadlier or more transmissible, took place at the Chinese lab despite consistent denials from Dr. Fauci.
The letter shifts the blame to U.S non profit EcoHealth Alliance, which used NIH money to fund research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, for not being transparent about the kind of research they were doing.
'EcoHealth failed to report this finding right away, as was required by the terms of the grant,' Tabak wrote in his letter. 'EcoHealth is being notified that they have five days from today to submit to NIH any and all unpublished data from the experiments and work conducted under this award.'
In response to the letter, senator Rand Paul, who has been widely mocked and dismissed for adopting the theory early on that COVID could have originated in the Wuhan lab and leaked from it, tweeted: 'I told you so' doesn't even begin to cover it here.'
Fauci has testified on several occasions before Congress that American taxpayers never financed what is called 'gain of function' research in China - which would make a virus more contagious or deadly.
In May, Dr. Fauci (pictured) testified that the NIH 'has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology'
The blame was placed on EcoHealth Alliance, which used NIH money to fund research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,(pictured) for not being transparent about their research
In May, Fauci testified that the NIH 'has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.'
