NIH Officials Influenced Downplaying of COVID-19 Lab Leak Theory: House Report

NIH Officials Accused of Downplaying Lab Leak Theory

According to a report released on July 11 by the Republican majority on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, officials with the National Institutes of Health exerted “undue influence” in downplaying the theory that COVID-19 was the result of a lab leak.

The lengthy report (pdf) is the result of the Select Subcommittee viewing over 8,000 pages of documents, including email and Slack communications from former NIH Director Francis Collins, former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci, and World Health Organization (WHO) Chief Scientist Jeremy Farrar, among other top scientists.

It also includes transcribed interviews, which amounted to roughly 25 hours of testimony regarding the Wuhan, China lab leak theory, according to the subcommittee.

The report, titled “The Proximal Origin of a Cover-Up: Did the ‘Bethesda Boys’ Downplay a Lab Leak?” found the actions of the officials amounted to the “anatomy of a cover-up” regarding the lab leak theory.

Specifically, it found that Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins, and the NIH “exerted undue influence” over the drafting and publication of a paper titled, “The proximal origins of SARS-CoV-2,” which was published in Nature Medicine in March 2020 and which was heavily cited by experts and officials as evidence that COVID-19 did not originate from a lab leak.

The paper, which has been accessed over 5.8 million times and cited over 2,800 times, argued that SARS-CoV-2 was “not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus” but likely evolved naturally.

According to the subcommittee report, Dr. Fauci suggested the drafting of the paper to Dr. Kristian Andersen, a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research, twice, while Dr. Collins pushed for publication and approved of the “substance” of the paper.

Dr. Andersen was also one of the writers of the paper.

Fauci, Collins ‘Intimately Involved’ in Paper’s Creation

“Through the Select Subcommittee’s investigation, we discovered that Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins were intimately involved in the day-to-day creation of Proximal Origin that the authors were so comfortable with their involvement they coined the term ‘Bethesda Boys’ to describe the nation’s leading health officials,” the subcommittee report reads.

The goal of the paper, according to the report was to “disprove” the lab leak theory to avoid blaming China for the COVID-19 pandemic, and employed “fatally flawed science to achieve its goal” while its arguments suffer from “inaccurate assumptions and obvious inconsistencies.”

Both Dr. Collins and Dr. Fauci used the Proximal Origin paper to “attempt to kill the lab leak theory,” in part to avoid further worsening U.S.–China relations, the subcommittee said.

Elsewhere in their report, the subcommittee cited email communications between Dr. Andersen and WHO chief scientist Dr. Farrar, during which Dr. Andersen expressed concern regarding the possibility that COVID-19 was the result of a lab leak and that it had “properties that may have been genetically modified or engineered.”

Pointing to a transcribed interview between the subcommittee and Dr. Andersen, lawmakers said that Dr. Andersen had testified that after raising his concerns with Dr. Farrar, NIH officials began to organize a conference call with scientists on the matter.

The February conference call led to discussions over the possible political implications of the findings, according to the report.

In a Feb. 2, 2020 communication over Slack cited in the report, Dr. Rambaut allegedly told Dr. Andersen and others: “Given the [expletive] show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possibly distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content with ascribing it to natural process.”

Politics Played Role, SubComittee Says

In response to Dr. Rambaut’s message, Dr. Andersen allegedly replied, “Yup, I totally agree that that’s a very reasonable conclusion. Although I hate when politics is injected into science—but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstances.”

Dr. Collins, in emails following the February conference call, then stated, “The voices of conspiracy will quickly dominate, doing great potential harm to science and international harmony,” according to the report.

“It is clear, that all four authors, from the early stages, were concerned with Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collin’s thoughts regarding Proximal Origin,” the subcommittee report states. “While the exact motives to want to downplay a specific theory are not clear, the authors’ communications suggest they wanted to avoid blaming China and defend gain-of-function research,” the report reads.

“Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins were intimately involved throughout the process,” the subcommittee report continues. “After publication, Proximal Origin was used to downplay the lab leak hypothesis and call those who believe it may be true conspiracy theorists. Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins tracked the paper through the review and publication process. And finally, Dr. Collins expressed dismay when Proximal Origin did not successfully kill the lab leak theory. He subsequently asked Dr. Fauci if there was anything more they could do. The next day, Dr. Fauci directly cited Proximal Origin from the White House podium.”

The report