Dr Bhattacharya: Francis Collins DESTROYED Scientists Who Favored Covid Lab-Leak Theory

[Music] [Applause] good morning and welcome to Rising we have a great show for you today I'm Amber Duke joined by Jessica Burbank and we're going to get straight into the news this morning Eco Health Alliance came under Fire this week losing Federal funding after Health and Human Services dispart it for letting oversight at the Wuhan Institute of rology fall through the cow in a hearing earlier this week house select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic chairman Brad wstr grilled Peter darac the president of the nonprofit at the center of the origins of covid Let's watch unfortunately there do not appear appear to have been adequate oversight of Eco health and its experiments this issue has highlighted broader concerns with the NIH especially that it is up to the grantee to oversee themselves this is a recipe for Waste fraud abuse and deception who was at the helm during the onset of the covid-19 pandemic previously denied that the novel Corona virus came from a lab but a newly released transcripts of a closed door Congressional interview with the select subcommittee he appears to have changed his tune the majority Council asked Collins quote we've talked about this an awful lot I think I know the answer to the question but I want to ask it is the origin of Co 19 still unsettled science unquote to which Collins said yes here to dive further into this bombshell news is Dr Jay bachara professor of medicine economics and health research policy at Stanford University who face censorship in the past over his views on covid thank you so much for joining us today Dr bachara thanks for having me so I want to get into this you face some backlash can you talk about what that backlash was over was it over the origins of covid-19 being in a lab and what do you think the public health ramifications are with this honestly I would say Communications disaster really trying to Tamp down any idea of covid Origins being in a lab now how is science going to come back from this in a meaningful way there's some good research still going on but first I really want to hear about this backlash and how you feel now especially seeing this news uh yeah so the backlash I faced that was over my position on lockdowns that I argued that we should have focused protection of vulnerable older people and opening schools and letting younger people live their lives uh in October 2020 Francis Collins wrote an email calling me and my colleagues Martin korf of Harvard and and cetra gup of Oxford Fringe epidemiologist and then he called for a devastating takedown uh which led to I mean just media hit pieces uh vile attacks on me and my family uh it was it was really quite stressful um what the lab leak people who alleged the lab leak faced in 2020 was very similar uh that they were called conspiracy theorists racist because they somehow alleging that there was a lab leak was was a racist Theory uh and uh and a lot of a lot of that came from very top of the NIH came from people like Fran Tony fouchy and Francis Collins uh the uh uh in 2020 the idea of a lab leak was seen as as this sort of uh crazy idea that only only crazy people could have when in fact in reality there were a tremendous number of of honest scientists who real who thought that that there was a lab leak there was considerable evidence in favor of a lab League uh to see Francis Collins now say that it's a a matter of of of honest scientific discussion and debate is absolutely stunning at the time when he was the head of the NIH he could have convened a panel and said look let's look into this realistically let's look at let's look at the evidence for it uh let's have a honest discussion about it instead what he did was he uh countenance the destruction of the careers of scientists who disagreed with him uh both about lab leak and about lockdowns uh he abused his power as head of the NIH to create an illusion of consensus that there was no lab leak uh that there W that the lockdowns were going to work that the school closes were a good idea when in fact none of that was true um and I I'll tell you one other thing is about about the about the Francis Collins's uh behavior during the during the pandemic um that Abus of power I think in in part was motivated by the fact that during uh the leadup to the pandemic Francis Collins authorized the conduct of dangerous gain of function research the the the the abusive power to suppress the idea of a lab leak looks in retrospect very much like a a cya kind of kind of idea that you know in order to hide the fact that he had supported This research he uh supported he he suppressed the lab leak idea um when in fact it looks like it very likely was a lab League um and and I think uh it's it's finally it's great to finally see some kind of transparency happening on this topic yeah I mean you're talking about you know Francis Collins Collins's Behavior early on in the pandemic and sure enough there was an email that Dr Collins sent in April of 2020 in response to an article of BR Brett Bayer of Fox News citing sources telling him that they believe that this was indeed a virus with a lab origin Dr Collins sent this email to a multitude of doctors including Anthony fouchy saying is there something NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy and sure enough Dr fouchy Dr Collins and other members of the public health bureaucracy not only attacked other scientists that were talking about this possibility but also the president at the time Donald Trump who had suggested that this was a possibility they uh basically said that was crazy now we're you know four years on from the start of the pandemic and all of the people who were called conspiracy theorists are turning out to be right including yourself Dr bachara um I mean I'm glad to see that the the funding has been suspended for Eco Health Alliance but that seems like kind of a bare minimum where's the accountability for the public health officials who repeatedly lied to the American people and instituted these policies that destroyed so many lives well I think part of it is uh if you if you think about what kind of motivation people like Francis Collins and Tony fi have they're they're what they're mainly concerned about is how history will look at them and I think at this point history is not going to have a very very uh Happy judgment on the careers of these of these individuals um as far as like what has to happen next the the kind of oversight that led to these dangerous experiments the funding of these dangerous experiments the kind of kind of like structures of power that allowed people like Francis Collins and Tony fouchy to put themselves essentially on a pedestal above criticism Beyond even scientific ideas I think we that we mean what we need is fundamental reform of the funding mechanism of science uh we need fundamental reforms of the O oversight we need participation uh essentially democratization of the scientific Enterprise so that this kind of thing were to start to Bubble Up again would would very quickly get the scrutiny deserves rather than years later after tremendous damage has been done to basically every human on the face of the Earth because of dangerous scientific experiments authorized by people like Francis Collins there's also this element too of Peter dasac at Eco Health Alliance somehow being allowed to uh not only receive taxpayer funding which then went to the Wuhan Institute of rology but was also supposedly involved in drafting this paper that dispelled the La leak Theory which was in retrospect obviously a form of self- protection then Dr fouchy cites this paper as evidence that the lab leak theory was not true I mean how in in what world is is that kind of self-dealing allowed um with our taxpayer money I mean the interesting thing about that is that the uh the the the paper that you're talking about the this this proximal Origins paper it was it came out of a essentially a cover operation in the very earli days of the pandemic what you saw what foyet emails have revealed is that Tony fouchy and uh Francis Collins and uh Jeremy Ferrar who is the head of the welcome trust organized essentially a a cover up of the idea of a lab leak uh it was like in January February 2020 they organized uh the top vists that were involved Peter daak is is a is a man who's head of of a group called the Eco Health Alliance Eco Health Alliance was was a grantee of the National Institute of Health and they worked very closely with the uh Wuhan Institute of Urology to to conduct these kinds of dangerous experiments um you know like the whole Enterprise the idea was let's bring let's take viruses from out of the wild places bring them into labs and see if they can transmit to humans uh and and with the with the idea of of somehow we can prevent pandemics with them I mean not one single pandemic was prevented with this kind of Enterprise uh but uh but what happened then was the uh uh the top people in these in these scientific institutions that have control over scientific journals which uh which are not the independent bodies it turns out that we expect them to be uh they use that power to create this illusion of consensus that that that the lab leak idea could could not possibly be right that it was you know jumped from a Pengalin or something to to humans in a wet Market um and they essentially abuse that power to to to and use you know in in in in modern society the the uh the the role of science is essentially as an Arbiter of Truth uh essentially they hijack that role uh and to to to to cover their You Know cover cover their their their dangerous decisions they' made previously um I don't I don't even know what to what to say I mean I think it's it's so corrosive to the fundamentals of of uh fundamental sort of underpinnings of science to the and and so destructive in terms of the consequences so many kids lost their ability to go to school uh for years uh so many people died alone uh so the the the consequence of the virus itself on on you know millions of people of course the cost to our economies it's so destructive that it absolutely cries cries out for a a fundamental restructuring of how we do science how we fund science and we think about the oversight of science it needs to basic democratization because what we have now is a small number of people can do do tremendously destructive things to the whole world absolutely and I just thank God that at least to some extent this Congressional committee is starting to dig a little bit more into just how corrupt this entire process was Dr bachara thank you so much for joining us this morning on Rising thank you for having me [Music]

Channel: The Hill

Views: 166,535

Keywords: Rising, Progressive, Progressive Politics, Democrats, Democratic Party, Republicans, GOP, Republican Party, Covid-19, Coronavirus, Pandemic, Fauci, Francis Collins, NIH

Id: nAS8lJ_66B4

Length: 11min 31sec (691 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2024