According to a bombshell (but not-at-all surprising) report from The New York Post, National Institutes of Health (NIH) principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak admitted to Congress Thursday that U.S. taxpayers funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan.
“Dr. Tabak,” asked Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, “did NIH fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through [Manhattan-based nonprofit] EcoHealth [Alliance]?”
“It depends on your definition of gain-of-function research,” Tabak answered. “If you’re speaking about the generic term, yes, we did.”
And just like that, after years of denials and showdowns between Dr. Anthony Fauci and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, the truth comes out.
“This is research, the generic term [gain-of-function], is research that goes on in many, many labs around the country. It is not regulated. And the reason it’s not regulated is it poses no threat or harm to anybody,” Tabak added.
Well, after the lab-leak theory went from fringe conspiracy to likely conclusion, we know that statement from Tabak isn’t exactly true.
“Tabak was engaging in the usual obfuscation and semantic manipulation that is so frustrating and pointless,” said Dr. Bryce Nickels, a professor of genetics at Rutgers University and co-founder of the pandemic oversight group Biosafety Now.
“Instead of addressing [it] directly, Tabak launched into a useless response about how ‘gain-of-function’ encompasses many types of experiments,” he added.
From The New York Post:
EcoHealth Alliance president Dr. Peter Daszak, in a hearing earlier this month before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, testified that his organization “never has and did not do gain-of-function research, by definition.”
But that claim directly contradicted Daszak’s private correspondence, including a 2016 email in which he celebrated the end of an Obama administration pause on gain-of-function research.
The EcoHealth head was also called out in sworn testimony to the COVID panel by Dr. Ralph Baric, a leading coronavirologist who initiated the research himself and declared it was “absolutely” gain-of-function.
The lies and the liars are finally coming to light. But what about Dr. Anthony Fauci, who once said “The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology?”
“Some of the most damning things that implicate Anthony Fauci are actually, in his own words through Freedom of Information Act, looking at his own emails that admit that this actually was gain of function research,” Paul said during a recent interview.
Will Rand Paul finally get his man?
