By Arjun Singh
A new document released by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus reveals that Anthony Fauci knew that gain-of-function research was occurring in Wuhan, China, prior to the global spread of COVID-19.
In an email to U.S. government public health officials in February 2020, Fauci wrote that “scientists in the Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments … associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection,” according to an image of the document tweeted by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus. The email reveals that Fauci knew of the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s research into coronaviruses that mirrored COVID-19 prior to his claim that there was no evidence that the virus was produced in a laboratory.
Fauci also wrote that “there were mutations in the virus that would be most unusual to have evolved naturally in the bats and that there was a suspicion that this mutation was intentionally inserted.” He claimed this was the conclusion of international physicians following a conference call on Feb. 1, 2020 — after which they wrote a now-controversial “proximal origins” paper that claimed the virus emerged naturally.
Fauci later claimed that there was “no scientific evidence” that COVID-19 was made in a laboratory, in an interview with National Geographic in May 2020. In 2023, the FBI and Department of Energy concluded that it was likely that the virus was produced in a laboratory.
At the time, Fauci was the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, responsible for research into viruses. His institute had previously funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which he initially denied in congressional testimony in 2021.
Fauci’s comments are part of a series of exchanges between the authors of that paper, released by the subcommittee as it investigates the origins of COVID-19. Two of the authors of the paper, Kristian Andersen and Robert Garry, testified before the subcommittee on Tuesday in support of their conclusion that the virus emerged naturally, despite text messages and emails revealing that they doubted the theory even after the paper’s first drafts had been produced.
Fauci’s email was sent to Brian Harrison, the chief of staff of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, among other senior government officials at the time. It also mentioned the involvement of Sir Jeremy Farrar, a British physician who was involved in the drafting of the proximal origins paper, yet not listed as an author, and is now the chief scientist of the World Health Organization (WHO).
The email ends with Fauci suggesting that the WHO convene a forum of scientists to examine the origins of the pandemic.
“In this way, there is no assumption of foul play or guilt on anyone’s part and merely an intense scientific look at the evolutionary origins of the virus. Where that leads remains to be seen,” the email reads.
Georgetown University, where Fauci currently serves as a distinguished professor, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
