‘Delete From The Deleted File’ — Fauci Tried To Destroy Gain-Of-Function Research Email, New Docs Reveal
Eight years before COVID emerged, a journalist issued a prophetic warning that risky viral research could usher in “doomsday” and damage the reputation of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Anthony Fauci groused in an email to an aide about that warning, then instructed the aide to permanently delete the exchange, documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation show.
The documents add to growing evidence that Fauci destroyed public records despite his sworn testimony that he never did. Deleting government records violates federal law.
Fauci did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2011, the advent of gain-of-function research — experiments that make viruses more infectious or deadly in the lab — caused its first major controversy. With funding from Fauci’s institute at the NIH, Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier had made an airborne strain of a bird flu with an estimated 50% fatality rate, which he described as “probably one of the most dangerous viruses you can make.”
Fauci and New York Times science writer Phil Boffey traded barbs in newspaper opinion pages about the work.
Manmade pandemic viruses are a “risk worth taking,” Fauci insisted in a December 2011 Washington Post editorial, because they could help drugmakers and public health get a jump start if they emerge in nature. NIH Director Francis Collins and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Vaccine Research Center Gary Nabel co-authored the op-ed. (Read more from “‘Delete From The Deleted File’ — Fauci Tried To Destroy Gain-Of-Function Research Email, New Docs Reveal” HERE)
