Posted on 07/29/21
| News Source: National Review
Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo is escalating his attacks on Dr. Anthony Fauci, telling National Review that the top NIH official should be removed from his post for refusing to acknowledge that the U.S. was funding dangerous virology research in China — and for continuing to defend such funding despite the events of the past year.
During several tense exchanges with Senator Rand Paul, Fauci has argued that the research being conducted in Wuhan with American dollars does not qualify as “gain-of-function,” though previously published papers by Chinese scientists credit the U.S. with funding experiments designed to make bat coronaviruses more contagious, which fits the NIH’s own previously published definition of gain-of-function research.
Fauci and Paul have traded blows in congressional hearings for months, but things came to a head in early July when Paul accused Fauci of lying to Congress. Fauci insisted he’s never lied to Congress and said the Wuhan research “was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain of function,” citing the extremely narrow gain-of-function definition developed by the Department of Health and Human Services, rather than the one commonly used by virologists.
But the specific label is beside the point, according to Pompeo.
“My wife and I always taught our son, you tell the whole truth, you don’t quibble,” Pompeo said during a Monday night interview. “He is at best playing some sophisticated word game for his elitist doctor buddies. I don’t know the purpose of it but it’s dangerous.”
Fauci defended the NIH’s partnership with the Wuhan lab as recently as Sunday, and suggested that the agency has no plans to cut off funding for the kind of research which mounting circumstantial evidence suggests sparked the pandemic.