Gravitas: Did Dr. Fauci fund Wuhan Virus research?

for much of 2020 the former u.s president donald trump and his fellow republicans publicly denounced wuhan virus expert dr anthony fauci's suggestions for mitigating the pandemic these efforts have now taken a new flavor some republicans now suggest that dr fauci could be personally involved in the origin of the wuhan virus itself you heard that right a republican senator says that dr fauci authorized and funded risky research at the wohan institute of virology now there's nothing new about this theory it has surfaced several times in the past but republicans say that it was not examined and investigated properly due to lack of curiosity from health officials and the quote unquote pro-china bias of the american media that's what they say but how true is this theory let's separate the facts from fiction and i'll start with the accusation on monday the united states conducted a congressional hearing on the wuhan virus all top health officials testified before a senate committee the hearing covered a host of things like the ongoing vaccination drive president biden's pandemic response the future of the mask mandate and the origin of the wuhan virus now in the last issue the origin of the wahan virus a war awards broke out between rand paul a republican senator from kentucky and dr anthony fauci who is now president biden's pandemic advisor the senator rand paul accused america's federal agencies of funding a gain of function research at the wuhan institute of virology in china what is gain of function research we've covered it on the show before in simple words gain of function is a sort of experiment or experiments which involve genetically modifying viruses so you create variants that are more infectious in an effort to better understand them dr fauci happens to be a leading advocate of this type of research gain of function he supports it he was instrumental in reauthorizing it domestically in america after it was suspended due to safety concerns let me repeat that dr fauci authorized this kind of research domestically he allowed american scientists to create more infectious versions of viruses to study them now the republican senator said that dr fauci knew that china was conducting such experiments he prose pressed fouchy to call out what he called a conspiracy watch this think about that for a moment the sars virus had a 15 mortality we're fighting a pandemic that has about a one percent mortality can you imagine if a sars virus that's been juiced up and had viral proteins added to it to the spike protein if that were released accidentally dr fauci do you still support funding of the nih funding of the lab in wuhan senator paul with all due respect you are entitled entirely and completely incorrect that the nih has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the wuhan he did not stop there the hearing went on for hours and the senator did not budge he said labs in america were still conducting such experiments that they were fooling with nature he lashed out at dr fauci for allowing china to do the same watch the second exchange now in the u.s we have 11 labs doing it and you have allowed it here we have a committee to do it but the committee is granted every exemption you're you're fooling with mother nature here you're allowing super viruses to be created with a 15 mortality it's very dangerous and it was a huge mistake to share this with china and it's a huge mistake to allow this to continue in the united states and we should be very careful to investigate where this virus came from i fully agree that you should investigate where the virus came from but again we have not funded gain of function research on this virus in the wuhan institute of virology no matter parsing words say it there was research there was research done with dr she and dr barrack now the name of two institutes stand out in this face-off the first one is america's national institute of health nih the second one is china's wuhan institute of virology let's tell you a bit about the link between these two yes the two are linked did the national institute of health in america provide funding to the wuhan lab in china well this claim is partially true in 2014 the nih awarded a 3.4 million dollar grant this was to a new york-based non-profit organization called the eco health alliance remember this name ecohealth alliance this group conducted research on bat viruses at the wuhan lab of virology the wuhan institute of virology in china eco health alliance paid the wuhan laboratory more than five hundred thousand dollars over a period of five years and this was with the approval of the u.s state department so yes in a way america did fund research at the wuhan laboratory but there's no evidence whatsoever that the scientists quote unquote juiced up kobit 19 in the lab as the senator puts it or that this money funded gain of function research no proof of that this grant was approved in may 2014 five months later the obama administration announced it would not fund new projects that involved gain of function research citing safety and security risks so this issue is kind of settled unless the laboratories took money and used it for purposes that they did not disclose now as for the origin of the virus scientists are still uncertain they do not know where it came from most believe the virus jumped from animals to humans most likely in the wild in march a team of scientists from the who in china released a report it left the issue of origin unresolved we reported that but a lot of people still believe that the virus was designed in a lab now scientists from multiple countries have published and analyzed the genome sequence of the virus and they have overwhelmingly concluded that the virus originated in the wild that its genetic makeup showed no signs of alteration and that the ability of the virus to bind to human cells is most likely the result of natural selection but then again no research into the origins of the virus will be complete without investigations freely conducted in china without investigators having free access to the evidence in china which we highly doubt is possible anymore we on is now available in your country download the app now and get all the news on the move

Channel: WION

Views: 1,300,180

Rating: 4.7218804 out of 5

Keywords: us, america, joe biden, rand paul, dr fauci, anthony fauci, wuhan virus, wuhan virus research, wuhan lab research, gravitas, gravitas news today, gravitas wion, wion, wion news, wion news today, world, world news, international news, latest english news, english news today, english news, world news today, latest world news, english world news, world news in english, global news

Id: nTxyWjpZOdo

Length: 7min 24sec (444 seconds)

Published: Wed May 12 2021