Commentary: Agenda Driven Science Endangers Our Health, Survival
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Commentary by Dr. Tom Borelli originally published by NewsmaxInsider.com
New information released by congressional investigators shows officials at the National Institute of Health (NIH) were involved in the effort to crush the idea that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was a result of a genetically modified virus that was released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
According to The U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic memo, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was actively involved in shaping research to support the natural origin hypothesis.
If proven true, this is an outrageous display of agenda-driven-science by top officials at NIH where potentially federal money was to reward scientists to manufacture the desired result to shape public opinion about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Such research interference is fundamentally unscientific but also shows taxpayer money was used with the apparent goal to protect top NIH officials and their role in funding gain-of-function research.
The motivation for advancing the natural origin hypothesis over a lab leak is clear.
The former absolves NIH from sharing any responsibility for the pandemic because the cause was mother nature.
On the other hand, the latter implicates NIH and Fauci — the man charged with stopping pandemics — for playing a role in creating the pandemic by funding gain-of-function bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan lab, via the EcoHealth Alliance.
The memo also revealed involvement of then NIH head Dr. Francis Collins who considered the lab leak hypothesis a “conspiracy.”
What’s most interesting is the abrupt change in tune from Dr. Kristian Anderson from the Scripps Research Institute.
In a Jan. 31, 2020 email to Fauci, Anderson initially believed that ” . . . some of the features (potentially) looked engineered,” and following discussions with other scientists he felt ” . . . the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.”
Subsequently, on Feb. 1, 2020, Anderson and a small group of scientists participated in a conference call with Collins and Fauci.
Just a few days later, Anderson and others wrote a paper that was subsequently published in Nature Medicine, “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” which concluded “Our analyses clearly shows that SARS-CoV-2 was not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”
However, the revelations disclosed in the congressional memo show there was more behind the paper’s conclusion highlighted by Fauci involvement and inconsistent statements from Anderson and Scripps.
In an August 2021 letter, Scripps defended Anderson’s work saying it was objective using “the evidence at his disposal.”
Yet in an email, Anderson exposed his bias by describing his research as an effort ” . . . focused on trying to disprove any type of lab theory . . . ”
Moreover, Scripps said Fauci didn’t influence Anderson’s research.
That statement was contradicted by Anderson’s Feb. 12, 2020 email to Nature Medicine where he admitted the research was “Prompted by Jeremy Farrah [sic], Tony Fauci and Francis Collins . . . ”
The Congressional memo also found Anderson forwarded a draft of the paper to Fauci and Collins and he gave Fauci an opportunity to edit and approve it.
There is also a concern that federal research money might have influenced Anderson. The Washington Examiner reported Anderson received about $20.4 million in NIH grants from 2020 to 2022.
Finally, Collins obsessed with ending the lab leak hypothesis expressed frustration in April 2020 that Anderson’s paper didn’t end the Wuhan lab leak discussions and he wanted more to be done to silence that idea.
The New York Post exposed Collins’ agenda in an email to Fauci,
“Wondering if there is something NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy, with what seems to be growing momentum,” wrote Collins.
The following day, Fauci mentioned the conclusion of the Nature Medicine paper without reference to mentioning the publication’s name or its authors or his role in the research paper.
Fauci said the virus contained “mutations” and they were “totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.”
That’s the conclusion that would protect Collin’s and Fauci’s reputations and their decision to fund dangerous gain-of-function research.
Finding the truth about the origins of the pandemic is not an academic exercise but is extremely important for public health.
If the COVID-19 pandemic was a result of laboratory manipulation of a virus, it would bring to light the dangers of gain-of-function research.
Ironically, it appears the real conspiracy is former NIH officials seeking to manipulate evidence to deceive the public to protect themselves and not those believing the pandemic was a result of a lab leak.
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Dr. Tom Borelli is a contributor to Newsmax TV. Read more commentaries here.
