Bipartisan congressional members investigating the origins of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/covid-19">COVID</a> and the federal government&#8217;s gain of function research pushed a new memo Sunday claiming new evidence suggests Dr. Anthony Fauci &#8220;prompted the drafting&#8221; of &#8216;Proximal Origins&#8217; to disprove the lab leak theory.
The evidence reviewed by the GOP-led Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic members shows Fauci and at least 12 other scientists, including former National Institute of Health director Dr. Francis Collins, were first warned the virus possibly leaked from a lab in the central Chinese city of Wuhan on a conference call during the early days of the pandemic.
On February 4, 2020 — three days after the call —the memo suggested that four conference call participants who authored <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9">&#8220;The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2&#8221;</a> sent a draft for Fauci and Collins to edit and approve before Nature Medicine published the final paper.
&#8220;The evidence available to the Select Subcommittee suggests that Dr. Anthony Fauci &#8216;prompted&#8217; Dr. Kristian Andersen, Professor, Scripps Research (Scripps), to write Proximal Origin and that the goal was to &#8216;disprove&#8217; any lab leak theory,&#8221; the <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2023.03.05-SSCP-Memo-Re.-New-Evidence.Proximal-Origin.pdf">memo</a> reads.
Before Anderson published the article in Nature in March 2020, the subcommittee alleges the doctor wrote to the outlet saying, &#8220;there has been a lot of speculation, fear mongering, and conspiracies put forward in this space and we thought that bringing some clarity to this discussion might be of interest to Nature.&#8221;
&#8220;Prompted by Jeremy Farrah [sic], Tony Fauci, and Francis Collins, Eddie Holmes, Andrew Rambaut, Bob Garry, Ian Lipkin, and myself have been working through much of the (primarily) genetic data to provide agnostic and scientifically informed hypothesis around the origins of the virus,&#8221; a February 12, 2020 email written by Andersen to Nature reads.
According to the evidence the Select Subcommittee revealed, Andersen &#8220;privately&#8221; did not find the narrative of the pangolin sequences data disproved a lab leak theory despite saying so publicly. And while Nature Medicine peer-reviewed &#8216;Proximal Origin&#8217; more than a year earlier, Anderson did not find the pangolin data compelling.
&#8220;Dr. Collins emailed Dr. Fauci expressing dismay that Proximal Origin—which they saw prior to publication and were given the opportunity to edit—did not squash the lab leak hypothesis and asks if the NIH can do more to &#8216;put down&#8217; the lab leak hypothesis,&#8221; the memo reads. &#8220;The next day—after Dr.Collins explicitly asked for more public pressure—Dr. Fauci cited Proximal Origin from the White House podium when asked if COVID-19 leaked from a lab.&#8221;
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Although Andersen claims in an August 2021 letter that he &#8220;objectively weighed all of the evidence available to him while investigating the origins of the virus, lawmakers argue a previous email from Andersen deems the assertion as &#8220;demonstrably false.&#8221;
&#8220;Our main work over the last couple of weeks has been focused on trying to disprove any type of lab theory…,&#8221; a February 8, 2020, email from Andersen reads, according to the memo.
Unredacted <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fauci-s-emails-don-t-prove-wuhan-conspiracy-raise-further-n1269650">email exchanges</a> between Fauci and British zoologist Dr. Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance show that Daszak was working with Chinese virologists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, further suggesting the virus leaked from the lab.
The memo comes after <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-intel-prompts-energy-dept-to-assess-covid-likely-leaked-from-wuhan-lab-report">U.S. Department of Energy officials</a> revised a previous document that judged with &#8220;low confidence&#8221; that the virus had leaked from a Chinese laboratory, according to The Wall Street Journal.
New classified intelligence recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress showed Energy Department officials shifted their assessment of the pandemic&#8217;s origins in an updated 2021 report by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines&#8217;s office. The updated classified report also affirms the view that COVID did not stem from a biological weapons program. A lack of a definitive animal source has led researchers and U.S. officials to suspect a leak from Wuhan&#8217;s assemblage of laboratories, The Journal noted.
FBI director Christopher Wray also recently said the bureau assessed that the origins of COVID most likely leaked from a Wuhan lab.
The National Intelligence Council and four agencies, which the Journal says officials refuse to identify, <a href="https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Declassified-Assessment-on-COVID-19-Origins.pdf">still believe</a> with &#8220;low confidence&#8221; in the natural emergence theory. The Central Intelligence Agency and two other agencies reportedly still have not made a determination.

President Donald J. Trump

Pandemic Origins Subcommittee Suggests Fauci Prompted Doctors To Draft Paper To ‘Disprove’ Lab Leak Theory

Pandemic Origins Subcommittee Suggests Fauci Prompted Doctors To 'Disprove' Lab Leak Theory

Anthony Fauci

Congress

COVID-19

Francis Collins

Politics

Wuhan Institute of Virology

The top official at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has admitted to federal lawmakers that the agency hid the early genomic sequences of COVID-19 that it had uncovered after Chinese scientists requested the move.
Acting director Lawrence Tabak told a House Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday that NIH “eliminated from public view” the data that had come from a lab in Wuhan, China, the city where the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 first emerged.
But Tabak said that &#8220;researchers can still access it via an archaic &#8216;tape drive,'&#8221; the New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/05/11/nih-director-tabak-confirms-agency-hid-covid-genes-per-chinese/">reported</a>.
The admission followed a Vanity Fair <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/the-virus-hunting-nonprofit-at-the-center-of-the-lab-leak-controversy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a> that traced an evolutionary biologist named Jesse D. Bloom&#8217;s actions as he tried to &#8220;dig deep and discover the truth.&#8221; Bloom wrote a scientific paper and gave it to top U.S. immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci, setting off a firestorm.
&#8220;Bloom’s paper was the product of detective work he’d undertaken after noticing that a number of early SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences mentioned in a published paper from China had somehow vanished without a trace,&#8221; Vanity Fair reported. &#8220;The sequences, which map the nucleotides that give a virus its unique genetic identity, are key to tracking when the virus emerged and how it might have evolved. In Bloom’s view, their disappearance raised the possibility that the Chinese government might be trying to hide evidence about the pandemic’s early spread.&#8221;
&#8220;Piecing together clues, Bloom established that the NIH itself had deleted the sequences from its own archive at the request of researchers in Wuhan. Now, he was hoping Fauci and his boss, NIH director Francis Collins, could help him identify other deleted sequences that might shed light on the mystery,&#8221; the magazine wrote.
In the House hearing, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) asked Tabek why U.S. health officials would comply with China&#8217;s request to hide the genomic sequences.
“There’s no question that the communication that we had about the sequence archive — Sequence Read Archive — could have been improved. I freely admit that,” Tabek said. “If I may, the archive never deleted the sequence, it just did not make it available for interrogation.”
But he added that researchers can still get to the original sequences if they so desire.
It&#8217;s not the first scandal about the Wuhan lab. Documents published in September by The Intercept revealed that U.S. health officials indirectly funded so-called &#8220;gain of function&#8221; research at the Wuhan lab — including the modification of three bat coronaviruses distinct from COVID-19 and the discovery that they became much more infectious among “humanized” mice when human-type receptors were added to them. U.S. officials have denied the funding went to &#8220;gain of function&#8221; research.
Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the a.m. editor of the Drudge Report for four years. Send tips to josephcurl@dailywire.com and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.

Covid-19 Omicron sign

NIH Director Admits Agency Concealed Early COVID Genomic Sequences At Request Of Chinese Scientists

National Institutes Of Health Director Admits Agency Concealed Early COVID Genomic Sequences At Request Of Chinese Scientists

Wuhan

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/anthony-fauci">Anthony Fauci</a>, Francis Collins and other bigwigs at the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-in-leaked-audio-former-nih-director-new-biden-science-adviser-laughs-over-threatening-unemployment-to-force-vaccines-blames-trump-for-covid-19-deaths">National Institutes of Health</a> reaped more than $350 million in secretive &#8220;royalty&#8221; payments from drug companies and other third parties over a 10-year period, according to an <a href="https://www.openthebooks.com/substack-investigation-faucis-royalties-and-the-350-million-royalty-payment-stream-hidden-by-nih/">explosive new report</a> from a watchdog organization.
The report from <a href="https://www.openthebooks.com">OpenTheBooks.com</a> said the royalty payments, including at least 23 to Fauci and 14 to his former boss, Collins, were paid out between 2010 and 2020. Government scientists got the payments for being credited as &#8220;co-inventors&#8221; of various treatments and pharmaceutical products, according to the report.
&#8220;Because those payments enrich the agency and its scientists, each and every royalty payment could be a potential conflict of interest and needs disclosure,&#8221; OpenTheBooks.com co-founder and CEO Adam Andrzejewski wrote. &#8220;NIH is a revolving door of tens of billions of dollars in government grant-making coupled with hundreds of millions of dollars in private – non-transparent – royalty payments.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AdamAndrzejewski?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AdamAndrzejewski</a> for <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/OpenTheBooks?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#OpenTheBooks</a> at Substack: &quot;<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Fauci?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Fauci</a>’s Royalties And The $350 Million Royalty Payment Stream HIDDEN By <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NIH?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NIH</a>&quot; ( <a href="https://t.co/8znBqaxIMh">https://t.co/8znBqaxIMh</a> ) <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AnthonyFauci?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AnthonyFauci</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FrancisCollins?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FrancisCollins</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CliffordLane?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CliffordLane</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NIAID?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NIAID</a>
&mdash; Προμηθεύς (@_Prometeusz_) <a href="https://twitter.com/_Prometeusz_/status/1523998600056868867?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 10, 2022</a></blockquote>
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The report paints an incestuous picture of the NIH doling out $30 billion a year in grants to some 56,000 recipients in Big Pharma, research institutes and other entities, with money flowing back to the secretive agency&#8217;s scientists and senior management in the form of huge royalty payments. It is not yet known how much the payments to Fauci, who is the U.S. government highest-salaried employee at $456,028, totaled.
&#8220;Since the NIH documents are heavily redacted, we can only see how many payments each scientist received, and, separately, the aggregate dollars per NIH agency,&#8221; Andrzejewski wrote.&#8221; This is a gatekeeping at odds with the spirit and perhaps the letter of open-records laws.&#8221;
In addition to his salary and whatever royalty payments he has received, Fauci last year won a $1 million prize <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2022/01/15/disclosures-released-dr-fauci-household-profits-exceeded-17-million-in-2020--included-income-royalties-travel-perks-and-investment-gains/?sh=1acaeb8f7d5f" rel="">from the Dan David Foundation</a> for “speaking truth to power.”
<div id="attachment_379954" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-379954" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-379954 size-large" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/GettyImages-1228425162-864x576.jpg" alt="Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health, is one of several current and former NIH officials who received &quot;royalty&quot; payments, according to OpenTheBooks.com." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/05/GettyImages-1228425162-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/05/GettyImages-1228425162-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/05/GettyImages-1228425162-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/05/GettyImages-1228425162.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Former NIH boss Francis Collins allegedly received royalty payments from third parties. (Greg Nash- Pool/Getty Images)</div>
Collins resigned as NIH director in December after leading the agency for 12 years. Fauci is the longtime head of NIH’s National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and also serves as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden.
OpenTheBooks.com made the $350 million estimate by extrapolating from documents received as part of a federal lawsuit against NIH. So far, the group has uncovered evidence of more than 22,100 royalty payments totaling nearly $134 million paid from 2009-2014 to 1,700 NIH scientists. The group is awaiting another 1,800 pages of royalty disclosures which would cover the period from 2015-2020.
The NIH has resisted turning over information, treating the royalty payments like &#8220;a state secret,&#8221; according to Andrzejewski. The agency ignored OpenTheBooks.com&#8217;s Freedom of Information Act request, forcing the group to go to court with Judicial Watch, he said. Once in court, the NIH slow-walked production of documents it was ordered to hand over, and redacted key information, he said.
Under court order, the NIH has agreed to produce 300 pages a month, but insisted on producing documents related to Fauci last &#8211; sometime in November, according to Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch.
The Associated Press reported on the NIH&#8217;s royalty database and <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/story/govt-scientists-must-now-disclose-financial-stakes" rel="">found 900</a> scientists collected nearly $9 million in royalties 16 years ago. That report also determined some 51 NIH scientists who were paid royalties worked on experiments involving inventions for which they were already being paid. Among them was Fauci, who received $45,072.82 between 1997 and 2004 for a patent license on an experimental AIDS treatment that was funded with a $36 million NIH grant.
But Andrzejewski said the agency has become &#8220;a lot more secretive&#8221; since the AP report.
&#8220;When a federal bureaucrat pops up on television giving us health instructions, who has paid them and for what research and technology?&#8221; Andrzejewski asked. &#8220;When a patient agrees to a clinical trial or experimental treatment, what financial interests are involved?&#8221;

Dr. Anthony Fauci

Fauci, Collins Shared In ‘Secret’ NIH ‘Royalties’ Totaling $350M: Watchdog Report

Fauci, Collins Shared In Secret NIH 'Royalties' Totaling $350M: Watchdog Report

COVID

Judicial Watch

Former head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Francis Collins, appointed as President Biden’s new science adviser on February 17, has consistently maintained that he plays a nonpartisan role in the federal government. Collins told<a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/03/09/975263049/in-the-24th-mile-of-a-marathon-fauci-and-collins-reflect-on-their-pandemic-year"> NPR</a>, for example, that he and his former employee, Anthony Fauci, are “not political figures,” and expressed frustration over criticism directed toward them as being driven by “a very strong political overtone.” Their COVID policy recommendations, he insists by contrast, have been based solely on scientific data.
But a leaked audio recording obtained by The Daily Wire calls Collins’ claims of political neutrality into question.
During a private October 26 event at the University of Chicago, the physician wandered far afield of medical opinion, offering legal arguments for federal vaccine mandates and maintaining that the threat of job loss should be used to pressure citizens into getting the shots. He also took aim at former President Trump over COVID deaths that occurred early in the pandemic and admitted to greenlighting controversial research that relied on organs harvested from aborted infants.
‘My Employer Made Me Do It’
The event, which included an interview portion along with a question-and-answer session, was hosted by Christianity Today theologian Russell Moore on behalf of the Institute of Politics, an organization founded by senior Obama adviser, David Axelrod. It began with Moore introducing Collins — a personal friend and member of his book club — to a select group of students Moore described as “future elected officials, diplomats, [and] economists.”
Moore said he invited Collins to explain the efforts they have made “separately and together to deal with evangelical resistance to the vaccine with COVID and some of the controversies we&#8217;ve had over masking and government mandates.”
Though in January the Supreme Court struck down emergency Labor Department regulations that would have forced private businesses with 100 or more employees to require vaccinations, the mandates for health care workers and federal contractors still stand. According to a February 2 report from<a href="https://www.forbes.com/advisor/personal-finance/vaccine-mandate-withdrawn/"> Forbes</a>, the White House believes that a broader federal mandate is still on the table.
Six months before the Chicago event, in a separate<a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/better-samaritan/2021/june/how-evangelicals-can-grapple-with-vaccine-using-both-scienc.html"> interview</a> with Moore who was then head of the public policy arm of the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., Collins had assured evangelical audiences that there would not be “any mandating vaccines from the U.S. government.” However, by early September, Biden had <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/biden-vaccine-mandate-will-test-us-workplace-regulator-2021-09-13/">shifted</a> toward an aggressive pursuit of coerced vaccination under threat of unemployment. And Collins made it clear to Axelrod’s students that his views, too, had shifted in support of the new agenda.
Speaking from a legal rather than medical standpoint, Collins responded to a question regarding the wisdom of federal vaccine mandates by pointing to the 1905 Supreme Court case, Jacobson vs. Massachusetts, that dealt with the much-more deadly small-pox virus.
In a summary for the <a href="https://www.aei.org/articles/vaccine-mandates-and-jacobson-v-massachusetts-a-closer-look/">American Enterprise Institute</a>, legal scholar Sean Trende called the ruling a “previously obscure 116-year-old precedent [that] barely warrants a footnote in most constitutional law treatises.” But he noted that non-experts have taken to citing it “whenever anyone questions the legality or constitutionality of vaccine mandates in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.” Collins referenced it in just this fashion at the Institute of Politics engagement, telling the students that because of Jacobsen, “There&#8217;s no question in my mind that the mandates are legal.”
He then argued that intimidation tactics should be used to motivate the resistant to take the vaccine.
“The US government does have the authority to mandate vaccinations if there is an outbreak that is threatening people, because it&#8217;s not just about you, it&#8217;s about the people you&#8217;re going to infect,” Collins claimed, even though science <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02187-1">journals</a> were already reporting by that point that vaccinated people were just as likely to spread the then-dominant Delta variant as those who were unvaccinated.
Collins went on to ask rhetorically, “Do [mandates] convince people who otherwise wouldn’t get them?” He answered himself, “Oh yeah, especially if it means losing your job.”
As evidence, he described how successful the threat of unemployment was at persuading vaccine-hesitant NIH employees and contractors to get vaccinated. When Collins made it clear to the 2,000 out of 46,000 workers who had still declined to take the jabs that they were “in serious danger of being fired in the next month if they [didn’t] do something about it,” Collins said he got a “big response.”
“Reality [was] sinking in,” he explained, so that even the “pretty darn resistant” elected to get vaccinated. He then chuckled, “You get the feeling that their resistance was not maybe quite that deeply seated,” and he speculated that deep down, many unvaccinated people may actually want to get the vaccine but resist doing so out of peer pressure. “They&#8217;re sort of thinking to themselves, you know, maybe I really should do it, but if I do, I lose my credibility with my peeps,” Collins said.
Mandates, he argued, can give such individuals a way to save face because they can tell their social circle, “’Well, my employer made me do it. I didn&#8217;t really want to get them.’ They get, you know, bonus points, because they’re now a victim. But they&#8217;ve also gotten the mandated vaccine that they kind of wanted anyway.”
Collins said evangelicals, in particular, over-emphasize notions of personal liberty when it comes to mandates, saying they have so “wrapped themselves in the flag and wrapped themselves in this concept of personal freedom, that public health just grates on them.”
“[Evangelicals] have forgotten many times that freedom is not just about rights,” Collins contended. He then employed a mocking caricature of a Southern accent, asking the students, “How many times have you heard, ‘Muh freedom means I got rights’? Well, okay, you also have that other R-word: responsibilities. That&#8217;s what freedom is supposed to incorporate.”
Both Collins and Moore noted that they were enjoying the opportunity to speak freely because the event was not being formally recorded.
‘A Devil’s Bargain’
Arguably the most politically pointed portion of Collins&#8217; remarks came when Moore asked him about the political opinions of his fellow Christians. Collins answered by referencing an Atlantic<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/evangelical-trump-christians-politics/620469/"> article</a> by anti-Trump pundit Peter Wehner, another member of his and Moore’s book club, that argued evangelicals have “embraced the worst aspects of our culture and our politics” and that “churches [have] become repositories not of grace but of grievances, places where tribal identities are reinforced, where fears are nurtured, and where aggression and nastiness are sacralized.”
Building on this theme, Collins claimed that the Trump administration uniquely violated norms of separation of church and state in reaching out to white, Protestant voters. “[Separation of church and state] all got pretty muddy under the Trump administration. There was clearly a heavy effort to try to build political alliances with particularly white evangelicals. And it worked,” Collins said.
In fact, former Presidents Obama and Bush both<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/continuity-and-change-faith-based-partnerships-under-obama-and-bush/"> had</a><a href="https://www.georgewbushlibrary.gov/s3fs-public/2021-09/M%20Best%20Paper.pdf"> more</a><a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2010/12/obamas-stimulus-pours-millions-into-faith-based-groups-045897"> extensive</a><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WB-40023"> records</a> of relying on faith-based initiatives to support their agendas, while Trump erected new<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/new-religious-freedom-division-sows-fears-lgbtq-discrimination-n839256"> barriers</a> to state interference with religious organizations.
Then, contra his public claims of political neutrality, Collins went on to disparage Trump personally, stating that “every aspect of that President&#8217;s character seems to be the opposite of what evangelical Christians would admire.”
As The Daily Wire previously<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-the-federal-government-used-evangelical-leaders-to-spread-covid-propaganda-to-churches"> reported</a>, Collins has played a critical role in appealing to evangelical Christians to comply with federal COVID policies due to his relationships with prominent Protestant leaders and his self-identification as an evangelical himself. Nevertheless, at the University of Chicago event, Collins called evangelicals’ overwhelming support of Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections “divisive,” and a “devil’s bargain” that did “great damage to the credibility of the church.”
At one point, Moore brought up Collins’ work with Anthony Fauci, asking how they have “somehow ended up the controversial figures.” Collins did not mention <a href="https://denvergazette.com/news/fauci-shut-down-lab-leak-theory-despite-scientists-lending-it-credence-emails-show/article_908df8b6-2161-5b7e-b7ed-003be942e341.html">leaked emails</a> that showed the two colluded to suppress medical viewpoints they disapproved of or their ongoing push of COVID restrictions or the underwhelming success of the vaccines at <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html">stopping the spread</a> of the virus. Instead, he replied that their increasing<a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10398941/Only-31-percent-Americans-trust-Faucis-COVID-advice-dire-poll-administration.html"> unpopularity</a> is a result of the former President shifting blame in an attempt to deflect from the massive loss of life Trump ostensibly caused in the early stages of the pandemic.
“Great harm was done to the people in this nation by a very, very self-involved and misguided president in the previous administration. Hundreds of thousands of people have died who should not have had to do so,” Collins told the students, adding, “And so there was an effort to try to distract from that dreadful circumstance by finding somebody else to blame.”
In truth, as of December 18, 2021, more Americans have<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/its-official-more-americans-have-died-from-coronavirus-under-biden-than-trump-despite-biden-pledge-to-shut-down-the-virus"> died</a> from COVID-19 under President Biden’s administration than under Trump’s, despite the fact Biden inherited multiple vaccines and other federal infrastructure to help mitigate the spread of the virus. In August 2020, near the end of Trump’s tenure in office, the U.S.<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/08/05/899365887/charts-how-the-u-s-ranks-on-covid-19-deaths-per-capita-and-by-case-count"> boasted</a> an excellent case-fatality ratio in comparison to other countries, ranking twenty-fourth for the percentage of deaths arising from COVID cases.
Yet The Daily Wire was unable to find any reported instances of Collins criticizing Biden’s handling of the pandemic or placing any blame on him for COVID deaths that have occurred during his presidency.
The Horns of the Dilemma
Evangelical leaders like Moore have been<a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/evangelicals-who-are-good-bad-francis-collins-david-brooks/"> under</a><a href="https://wng.org/opinions/decadence-on-display-1645449344"> fire</a> since The Daily Wire<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-the-federal-government-used-evangelical-leaders-to-spread-covid-propaganda-to-churches"> detailed</a> their praise and promotion of Collins despite his record of funding controversial transgender research on minors and experimentation on organs collected from aborted infants.  Pundits like conservative talk show host Erick Erickson <a href="https://ewerickson.substack.com/p/im-going-to-regret-writing-this">questioned</a> whether Collins had knowledge of such projects, given the vastness of the NIH.
The University of Chicago event suggests that Collins was not only aware of such funding, but personally greenlighted some of it, and that Moore, at least, had previous knowledge of his friend’s professional history.
When one of the students asked Collins about the NIH funding experiments such as University of Pittsburgh <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/news/pro-lifers-speak-out-against-taxpayer-funded-experiments-using-aborted-fetal-body-parts">studies</a> that involved harvesting body parts from full term babies and grafting infant scalps onto lab rats, Collins did not deny knowing about or greenlighting such projects. He also did not say that he opposes abortion. Instead, he said that he is “troubled” by abortion and made a case for the morality and efficacy of research based on aborted tissue.
“After all,” he said, “pregnancy termination is, at the present time, legal in the United States. Whether you&#8217;re in support of it or not, it&#8217;s happened … The material from those elective abortions is discarded. There are aspects of fetal tissue that can be extremely valuable in understanding how life works, how development happens, and how to treat certain diseases like Parkinson&#8217;s disease, for instance.”
Collins then continued to press the argument that research derived from fetal tissue can be ethical.
“Fetal tissue is being discarded in large quantities every day,” he said, “If there were a circumstance where, with consent of the mother, having been obtained after the abortion, not in any way as an inspiration to carry it forward, the abortion…could ultimately help somebody. Which of those two choices is more ethical — discard all the tissue or use a small part? … Can you in fact, in some circumstances, even with actions that you consider immoral, derive something from it that might actually be moral and beneficial? That&#8217;s the horns of the dilemma upon which I have been resting here for these 12 years as NIH Director, trying to oversee human fetal tissue research, which is something that I have to make decisions about.”
For his part, Moore gave no indication that he was not aware of Collins’ background and views that diverge sharply from those of most pro-life activists and the mainstream evangelical Christians who make up Moore’s primary following. Instead, Moore told the student, “I don&#8217;t have to agree with every Christian on everything in order to see the fruit of the Spirit in that person … Nonetheless, I can respect him as a Christian.”
I reached out to both Moore and Collins for comment on the leaked audio. Moore’s assistant said he would not be able to comment due to scheduling commitments, while Collins did not respond.
Along with his new role as one of Biden’s top science advisers, Collins is also now co-chairman of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a group the<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/us/politics/biden-francis-collins-nih.html"> New York Times</a> describes as “high-powered [experts] in fields as diverse as agriculture, biochemistry, ecology and nanotechnology. The President created the council in September to advise the White House on how to handle future pandemics, climate change and other global challenges.”

EXCLUSIVE: In Leaked Audio Former NIH Director/New Biden Science Adviser Laughs Over Threatening Unemployment to Force Vaccines, Blames Trump For Covid Deaths

Readers Pass

Nearly two dozen GOP lawmakers are accusing the Biden administration of stonewalling efforts to investigate the origins of COVID-19.
Twenty-one House Republicans sent a <a href="https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Letter-to-NIH-Follow-Up1.pdf">letter</a> Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra and National Institutes of Health (NIH) acting director Dr. Lawrence Tabak on Wednesday pushing each department head to produce long-requested information on the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The institute is one of the leading suspects of the origin of COVID-19.
For months, HHS and NIH have failed to responded to GOP requests for documents regarding federal grant money that was awarded to EcoHealth Alliance, a research group that granted some of its received U.S. taxpayer money to the Wuhan lab to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-study-of-bats-in-china-met-nih-grant-requirements-ecohealth-says-11635441406">study</a> coronaviruses in bats.
The Republicans also say they have yet to hear answers back over concerns about conflicts of interests among over a dozen top federal health officials who shaped the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and former NIH director Dr. Francis Collins. Collins resigned from the NIH in December.
Fauci, Collins, and 11 other top government scientist spent months downplaying or flatly denying that the WIV could have played a role in the development and release of COVID-19. The scientists played down the possibility despite being aware of serious concerns early on in 2020 that COVID-19 may have originated in the Chinese lab.
Since first requesting documents in May 2021, the Republicans are now accusing Becerra and Tabak of flagrantly ignoring and stonewalling the lawmakers’ requests for information. The letter says:
<blockquote>Rather than be transparent with Committee Republicans, HHS and NIH have chosen to hide, obfuscate, and shield the truth. This stonewalling is particularly troubling considering NIH’s direct involvement in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the agency’s policy or practice to destroy potentially pertinent documents related to grant making decisions. For example, we know that an NIH advisor was forced by NIH to shred notes and other documents pertaining to the WIV grants as early as 2014.
By continuing to refuse to cooperate with our request, HHS and NIH are choosing to hide information that will help inform the origins of the ongoing pandemic, prevent future pandemics, strengthen the United States’ national security posture, and restore confidence in our public health experts and infrastructure. The agencies’ continued obstruction is likely to cause irreparable harm to the credibility of these institutions. By providing the requested documents and information, HHS and NIH will have the opportunity to help our country move forward in a positive, transparent direction following the COVID-19 pandemic. 
As an additional accommodation, we are providing more specificity to our original Requests. Therefore, we request the documents and information listed in the Appendix as soon as possible but no later than February 16, 2022. If HHS and NIH are unable to meet this deadline, please contact Committee Republican staff as soon as possible.</blockquote>

Xavier Becerra

House Republicans Accuse Top Biden Health Officials Of ‘Stonewalling’ Probe Into COVID-19 Origins

Fox News host and former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany mocked retiring National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins for his performance of a COVID-19 version of &#8220;Somewhere Over the Rainbow.&#8221;
<a href="https://dailywire.com/news/watch-nih-director-sings-over-the-rainbow-to-praise-himself-health-officials-insist-pandemic-isnt-over/">Collins</a> performed the tune, which he titled &#8220;Somewhere Past the Pandemic,&#8221; accompanying himself on a guitar — and McEnany said on Thursday&#8217;s broadcast of &#8220;Outnumbered&#8221; that she had initially thought it was intended to be a joke.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Director of the NIH, Dr. Francis Collins&#8230; <a href="https://t.co/tUKqkK84td">pic.twitter.com/tUKqkK84td</a>
— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) <a href="https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1470862234192474114?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 14, 2021</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Collins sang:
<blockquote>Somewhere past the pandemic, masks will come off ♪ 
♪ No more need for a nose swab every time we cough</blockquote>
&#8220;Wow. Yeah, so I think I first saw this clip on &#8216;Gutfeld!&#8217; last night and I thought to myself, &#8216;Wow, that is a really good impersonator of Francis Collins, the head of the NIH — and then I woke up and I see &#8216;America’s Newsroom&#8217; and I see this again and I go, &#8216;Wait, that wasn’t an impersonator, that was literally the head of The National Institutes of Health,'&#8221; <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/kayleigh-mcenany-sounds-off-on-don-lemon-after-cnn-host-says-opposition-to-crt-rooted-in-privilege/">McEnany</a> continued. &#8220;It doesn’t necessarily inspire confidence in public officials.&#8221;
&#8220;You know, it reminds me of Fauci, who never met a camera he didn’t like,&#8221; McEnany added. &#8220;Who, when we were in the White House working on COVID-19, he is posing for In Style magazine poolside — there’s a picture of it — sending emails about how he looks like Brad Pitt and &#8216;it looked exactly like me&#8217; when Brad Pitt impersonated him on &#8216;SNL,&#8217; saying that statement &#8216;made my year.&#8217; These are our public health officials, America. Do you have faith?&#8221;
If the comments that circulated on Twitter were any indication, Collin&#8217;s performance did not inspire the confidence he might have hoped it would.
&#8220;Confidence-inspiring or cringeworthy? My vote: The latter,&#8221; physician <a href="https://twitter.com/StevePhillipsMD/status/1470918301912023041">Steven Phillips</a> tweeted.
Newsmax National Correspondent <a href="https://twitter.com/MikeCarterTV/status/1471133873035792386">Mike Carter</a> added, &#8220;Here’s the outgoing NIH Director Francis Collins singing ‘Somewhere Past the Pandemic,’ while playing the guitar. Totally normal thing nbd.&#8221;
Collins had announced several weeks earlier that he intended to leave his position as the head of the National Institutes of Health — which oversees a number of other organizations including the one headed up by White House Chief Medical Advisor <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/how-do-you-overhype-that-fauci-objects-to-ron-johnson-claim-that-he-wants-to-keep-people-scared-of-covid/">Dr. Anthony Fauci</a>, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The NIH shared some of the accomplishments made under Collins&#8217; leadership in a Wednesday tweet, saying, &#8220;Under his leadership, Dr. Collins helped establish several #NIH initiatives to address pressing biomedical research and public health issues. A few of these include the #BRAIN Initiative, @AllOfUsResearch, #nihHEALinitiative, and #AMP. #ThankYouDrCollins.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Under his leadership, Dr. Collins helped establish several <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NIH?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NIH</a> initiatives to address pressing biomedical research and public health issues. A few of these include the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BRAIN?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BRAIN</a> Initiative, <a href="https://twitter.com/AllofUsResearch?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AllOfUsResearch</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/nihHEALinitiative?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#nihHEALinitiative</a>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AMP?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AMP</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ThankYouDrCollins?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ThankYouDrCollins</a>
— NIH (@NIH) <a href="https://twitter.com/NIH/status/1471219770209054731?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 15, 2021</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Collins shared his farewell interview video Thursday, adding, &#8220;I’m truly grateful for the sendoff I received today from my #NIH family and friends and colleagues from over the years! I couldn’t have had a nicer farewell, thank you all!&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
I’m truly grateful for the sendoff I received today from my <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NIH?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NIH</a> family and friends and colleagues from over the years! I couldn’t have had a nicer farewell, thank you all! <a href="https://t.co/o4uhgXQ7pW">https://t.co/o4uhgXQ7pW</a>
— Francis S. Collins (@NIHDirector) <a href="https://twitter.com/NIHDirector/status/1471558749458509826?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 16, 2021</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Senate Hearing Considers NIH Budget And State Of Medical Research

‘That Wasn’t An Impersonator’: Kayleigh McEnany Mocks Fauci’s Boss For ‘Somewhere After The Pandemic’ Performance

Pandemic

In a completely self-indulgent moment, Francis Collins, the outgoing director of the National Institutes of Health, sang a version of the iconic song “Over the Rainbow” with lyrics in which he seemingly refused to acknowledge there are swaths of America that have moved on beyond the pandemic and praised HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, who interviewed him, for being a “partner” who “will help to make the pathway clear to find true healing.” Collins also trumpeted himself and other health officials in the government, singing, “Somewhere past the pandemic we’ll hug our friends and thank the people and science that brought the pandemic’s end.”
In his preamble, Collins stated, “And now, if you’ll indulge me, because it’s been kind of promoted as if it might be a grand finale of a musical sort, I guess I’d like to play us out with a little song. So, if I might, I just need a microphone. Why, there’s a guitar right here. How about that? Ah, yeah, this is a song where the tune will be familiar to you, unless you came from another planet recently.”
Then he stated that Americans were not past the pandemic, continuing, “But the words are going to be quite different, because this really is a song for you, a song for all of us who have been going through this pandemic and trying to imagine how it’s going to feel when we’re finally past that. What will that be like? We are gonna get there, and you are going to help us get there. So that’s what this is about.”
He sang these lyrics:
<blockquote>Somewhere past the pandemic when we’re free
There’s a life I remember full of activity
Somewhere past the pandemic, masks will come off
No more need for a nose swab every time we cough
As we are gathered here today
COVID’s toll has hit and sent us reeling
But partners like the ones right here
Will help to make the pathway clear
To find true healing
Somewhere past the pandemic life will resume
We’ll all complain about the traffic
Forgetting how we hated Zoom
Somewhere past the pandemic we’ll hug our friends
And thank the people and science that brought the pandemic’s end
My dozen years are almost through
But it’s been great to work with you
Let’s end COVID now</blockquote>
<iframe loading="lazy" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ta_i4NJQX3s?start=345" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Last June, The Daily Wire <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/nih-deleted-coronavirus-sequences-at-request-of-chinese-scientists-congress-probing-new-lead-report/">reported</a> that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), led by Collins, deleted gene sequences of SARS-CoV-2 during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic after being asked to do so by Chinese scientists.
“The removal of the sequencing data is described in a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-official-said-we-may-never-know-origins-of-covid-now-scientist-says-he-discovered-deleted-evidence-of-earliest-known-covid-patients-in-wuhan">new paper posted online</a> Tuesday by Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle,&#8221; The Wall Street Journal reported. “The paper, which hasn’t been peer reviewed, says the missing data include sequences from virus samples collected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in January and February of 2020 from patients hospitalized with or suspected of having Covid-19.”
As reported by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-official-said-we-may-never-know-origins-of-covid-now-scientist-says-he-discovered-deleted-evidence-of-earliest-known-covid-patients-in-wuhan">The Daily Wire</a>, “The NIH confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that it deleted the gene sequences in June 2020 after they had been submitted three months earlier. This came months after serious questions had been raised about the origins of the pandemic inside China and whether China was being transparent about what was really going on. The NIH said, ‘Submitting investigators hold the rights to their data and can request withdrawal of the data.’’’

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