In a back-and-forth we’ve seen before, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Senator Rand Paul had another heated exchange. Dr. Fauci and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky testified in front of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Tuesday morning. The video above shows some of the back-and-forth.
It started with Senator Paul insinuating the U.S. helped fund research at a Chinese lab that could have sparked the COVID-19 outbreak. “Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement of May 11th where you claimed that the NIH never funded ‘gain-of-function’ research in Wuhan,” Paul asked.
“Gain-of-function” research is the practice of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential impact in the real world.
“Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement,” Fauci responded. “This paper that you were referring to was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being ‘gain-of-function’.”
Fauci went on to say the study the senator mentioned referenced a different sort of virus entirely from the one responsible for the coronavirus outbreak.
“Senator Paul, you do not know what you’re talking about, quite frankly,” Fauci said. “And I want to say that officially, you do not know what you’re talking about.”
Paul said all he was alleging was “that ‘gain-of-function’ research was going on” at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, “and NIH funded it”. However, Fauci accused Paul of “Implying that what we did was responsible for the deaths of individuals”.
“I totally resent that,” Fauci said. “If anybody is lying here, Senator, it is you.”
It was the latest in a series of clashes between Paul and Fauci about the origins of the virus. U.S. Intelligence agencies are currently exploring theories that an accidental leak from that lab could have led to the pandemic.