Politics
GOP Congressman Says Fauci Needs To Answer For Why His Agency Bypassed Oversight Of Funding To Wuhan Lab
“When it comes to oversight of U.S. tax dollars headed to the Chinese Communist Party, Dr. Fauci seems like he’s literally whistling past the graveyard …”
Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania said it is “very concerning” that the federal infectious disease research organization led by Dr. Anthony Fauci bypassed federal oversight of a grant that funded a lab in Wuhan, China to genetically modify bat-based coronaviruses.
Infectious disease experts say the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases’ (NIAID) grant with the nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance, which involved the transfer of $600,000 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), described scientists conducting gain-of-function research on SARS-like viruses to make them even more contagious. But a federal oversight board created in 2017 to scrutinize such research was not notified of the grant because the NIAID opted against forwarding it for review, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported.
“When it comes to oversight of U.S. tax dollars headed to the Chinese Communist Party, Dr. Fauci seems like he’s literally whistling past the graveyard,” Perry told the DCNF.
The WIV is at the center of widespread speculation that COVID-19 could have accidentally leaked from its lab into the human population. A World Health Organization investigation into the origins of the pandemic concluded in late March that it was “extremely unlikely” that the virus could have escaped from a lab.