Anthony Fauci, Senator Rand Paul in heated clash over coronavirus origins
- Dr Anthony Fauci and Republican Senator Rand Paul spar in Senate hearing on Capitol Hill
- Paul accused Fauci of lying about role of research at Chinese lab he said the US funded
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In a fiery confrontation rarely seen in the normally sober hearing rooms of Congress, Paul on Tuesday accused Fauci of “obfuscating the truth” about a government agency funding controversial research at China’s specialised laboratory at the centre of theories about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
That research is known as gain-of-function, in which scientists work to increase the transmissibility and virulence of microorganisms in order to better predict emerging infectious diseases.
“Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly – and I want to say that officially,” Fauci said in his fiercest outburst on Capitol Hill in scores of hearings attended since the start of the crisis more than 18 months ago.
“If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you,” Fauci steamed, pointing a forefinger at the lawmaker from Kentucky.
Paul had warned Fauci of the criminal penalties for lying to Congress, reminding the top Biden aide that he had previously told lawmakers the National Institutes of Health had not funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab.
The senator read aloud from a doctor’s assessment that he said confirms that such research indeed took place in the secretive Chinese lab – and that the NIH funded it.
“They took animal viruses that only occur in animals, and they increased their transmissibility to humans,” Paul said.
When Fauci said several virologists judged the research to not be gain-of-function work, Paul launched a blistering accusation.
“You’re dancing around this because you’re trying to obscure responsibility for four million people dying around the world from a pandemic,” Paul said.
“There will be a responsibility for those who funded the lab, including yourself.”
Fauci, who worked in Donald Trump’s administration but has since become the face of Biden’s fight against the pandemic, bristled.
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The global spread of the highly contagious Delta variant of Covid-19
“You are implying that what we did was responsible for the deaths of individuals. I totally resent that,” Fauci said.
Fauci later said the senator has engaged in a “pattern” at multiple hearings, “based on no reality”.
Paul has clashed multiple times with Fauci as the senator has seized on a recurring theme: that Washington has helped fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan lab at the heart of a theory, championed by Trump, that the virus leaked from the facility.
That hypothesis was initially widely dismissed as a conspiracy, but Biden in May ordered intelligence agencies to investigate the origin of the pandemic, including the lab-leak theory.
US cases of Covid-19 last week increased by 17,000 nationwide over a 14-day period for the first time since late fall, and an increase in death historically follows a spike in illness. Much of the worsening problem is being driven by the Delta variant first identified in India, which has since hit the United Kingdom and other countries.
Additional reporting by Tribune News Service
