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individually.
Are you aware of those? Dr. F
AUCI . Yes, I am.
MAJORITY STAFF . During previous TIs and hearings, when asked
if they supported every one of these actions and supported the sus-pension and debarment, both Dr. Collins and Dr. Tabak said yes.
Sitting here today, do you support the suspension and debarment
of EcoHealth?
Dr. F
AUCI . Yes.
MAJORITY STAFF . I want to move on to the kind of, like, ‘‘known
unknowns’’ of COVID origins, to quote Dr. Lipkin’s paper from early 2020.
On October 20, 2021, Dr. Tabak sent a letter to then-Ranking
Member Mr. Comer that said the bat coronaviruses studied under the EcoHealth Alliance grant could not have been the source of SARS-CoV–2 and the COVID–19 pandemic. You’ve testified simi-larly both back in January and today.
Some of the things that I believe Chairman Griffith brought up
was just kind of that statement results on some things—rests on some things that we just can’t know.
In your experience, Dr. Fauci, do researchers publish every virus
that they sequence?
Dr. F
AUCI . No. I mean, I think researchers don’t always publish
every single thing they do.
MAJORITY STAFF . Do they routinely publish every experiment
that they conduct?
Dr. F AUCI . I’m sure there are people who don’t publish every sin-
gle experiment that they do.
MAJORITY STAFF . And then is there a lag time between the sam-
pling, the analysis, and the publication?
Dr. F AUCI . Yes. I mean, publications often take months before
they come out.
MAJORITY STAFF . Is it possible, if not plausible, that EcoHealth
and the Wuhan Institute of Virology have samples from between 2020, when they originally published a paper—or, excuse me, 2015, when they originally published a paper with all their samples, and now that are unpublished?
Dr. F
AUCI . Sure, it’s possible. But, Mitch, I’m—I might just throw
in there you can’t get away from the fact that the viruses that were
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studied, that we—that the NIH gave them a grant to study, don’t
pull back on the fact that, no matter what you did with those vi-ruses, they were phylogenetically so different they could not pos-sibly be the precursor of SARS-CoV–2.
M
AJORITY STAFF . And I agree with that. I guess my only point
is that you don’t know all the viruses they were working with.
Dr. F AUCI . Yes. And let’s make that clear, because Griffith—Con-
gressman Griffith—asked it, and I answered you quite honestly, that none of us can know everything that’s going on in China or in Wuhan or what have you. And that’s the reason why I say today and I’ve said at the TI, I keep an open mind as to what the origin is.
M
AJORITY STAFF . The last thing, last topic I want to touch on is
gain-of-function. We touched on it in January. You touched on it a little bit today.
I know the pandemic has resulted, as I’m sure you’re aware, with
a rather large debate, including with the NSABB updating their dangerous research policies surrounding gain-of-function, P3CO, and dual use research of concern.
At the—prior to October 2021, the NIH website listed gain-of-
function as a type of research that modifies a biological agent so that it confers new or enhanced activity to that agent.
And the P3CO framework that the U.S. Government uses to fur-
ther regulate a subpart of that research, that it’s more dangerous, specifically that could cause widespread and uncontrolled death or disease in humans.
Putting aside what’s regulatory—I agree with you, the P3CO def-
inition is regulatory—are there types of research that could fall under the broad definition but not the P3CO definition?
Dr. F
AUCI . Well, I believe Members on the Minority side have
mentioned that. Influenza is a gain-of-function to a virus to make it grow better in eggs. Making an E. coli manufacture insulin is telling the E. coli to do something it wasn’t able to do before by mu-tation. Of course that’s the case.
M
AJORITY STAFF . So, in kind of the Venn diagram of this re-
search, something could fall under gain-of-function without falling under further regulation?
Dr. F
AUCI . I know where you’re going and you’re not going to get
there. But go ahead.
MAJORITY STAFF . According to EcoHealth’s year five progress re-
port, they facilitated an experiment in Wuhan that had seven mice infected with Wuhan Institute of Virology–1 as the backbone. Five survived. Then eight mice were infected with a chimera of WIV1 and the spike from another virus, and two survived.
In EcoHealth’s own words, these results suggest that the patho-
genicity of that full-length chimera is higher than others.
Dr. F
AUCI . Right.
MAJORITY STAFF . You were asked today and it was read back to
you a little bit, but on May 16, just a few weeks ago, Mrs. Lesko asked Dr. Tabak, ‘‘Did NIH fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through EcoHealth?’’
And Dr. Tabak answered, ‘‘If you’re speaking about the generic
term, yes, we did.’’
Dr. F
AUCI . Right.
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MAJORITY STAFF . On May 11, you were asked a similar question,
and you answered, ‘‘The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.’’
I’m going to ask it and you can answer it how you want to an-
swer it.
According to the broad definition of gain-of-function research and
the definition Dr. Tabak was testifying pursuant to, did NIAID fund gain-of-function research via EcoHealth in Wuhan?
Dr. F
AUCI . The broad definition of gain-of-function, in my mind,
is not applicable here and does nothing but confuse the situation.
And that is the reason why, after 3 years of deliberation by the
bodies, including the NSABB as well as the National Academies, it was decided to make an operative and regulatory definition.
If you harken back to the original broad definition, it does noth-
ing but confuse people. And that’s why every time I have men-tioned gain-of-function, at the Senate hearing with Senator Paul and the TI and today, the definition that I use is not my personal definition. It’s a codified regulatory and operative definition made by a body that has nothing to do with me.
M
AJORITY STAFF . Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Dr. W
ENSTRUP . I now recognize the Minority Staff for not longer
than 30 minutes.
MINORITY STAFF . Dr. Fauci, nice to see you. We’ve covered many
different topics today. We just want to make sure that you have the opportunity to provide your full perspective on any and all of them.
Is there anything you’d like to add, clarify, or say about any of
the topics we’ve discussed here today?
Dr. F
AUCI . Actually, I think we’ve covered just about everything,
but if you come up with something you want to ask me, I’d be happy to try to fill it in. But I think we’ve been rather extensive today.
M
INORITY STAFF . I think that’s great, and I think we agree.
And so, with that, we’ll yield back the remainder of our time. Dr. W
ENSTRUP . I would like to yield to Ranking Member Ruiz for
a closing statement if he would like one.
Dr. R UIZ. Dr. Fauci, I’d like to thank you for your testimony
today. And I would like to thank you for your decades of service to our Nation, especially with the HIV epidemic that our Nation suffered through, the pandemic flu, Ebola, Zika, and COVID–19, and your years of research and investment in—that led to the rapid development of the COVID–19 vaccine that saved millions of lives. Thank you.
And over the past 4 years, you have been personally targeted by
extreme narratives about the origins of the COVID–19 pandemic and the U.S. Government’s response to it. They began in force in retaliation to wisdom you offered that contradicted the reckless and dangerous therapeutic recommendations by President Trump and have remained part of House Republicans’ political playbook.
These extreme narratives have been the bedrock of the Select
Subcommittee’s Republican-led probe and the untenable inferences they’ve somehow drawn despite the overwhelming evidence that it is inconvenient to those narratives.
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I want to be clear. The evidence uncovered from more than
425,000 pages of documents and 20 closed-door interviews of cur-rent and former Federal officials has undermined the extreme nar-ratives behind the Republicans’ own probe.
As I alluded to at the beginning of this hearing, my Democratic
colleagues and I are committed to speaking objectively and truth-fully about what the evidence shows, and this is what it shows:
Dr. Fauci did not fund research through the EcoHealth Alliance
grant that caused the COVID–19 pandemic.
Dr. Fauci did not lie about gain-of-function research in Wuhan,
China.
Dr. Fauci did not orchestrate a campaign to suppress the lab
leak theory.
These findings are apparent from the evidence. In fact, this much
was clear by the time of Dr. Fauci’s 2-day transcribed interview this past January.
In the 5 months since, the Select Subcommittee has conducted
several more closed-door interviews and reviewed several thousand more pages of documents. This additional evidence and Dr. Fauci’s testimony today has only made Republicans’ claims less plausible and more preposterous.
And when I was named Ranking Member of the Select Sub-
committee, I made a commitment to follow the facts in objectively analyzing the origins of the COVID–19 pandemic.
If the Select Subcommittee is to meaningfully improve our Na-
tion’s preparedness for future pandemics, then we must take an ob-jective approach to the factual and scientific evidence available to us.
The origins of the COVID–19 pandemic remain uncertain. I
would like to remind my Republican colleagues that that uncer-tainty is not an opportunity for them to author fiction for partisan gain. It could have been a lab leak and it could have been an ani-mal transmission.
And, at the cost of meaningfully advancing our understanding of
COVID–19’s origins, Republicans have levied extreme allegations of creating SARS-CoV–2 against Dr. Fauci.
The result is that Republicans’ own probe has failed to shed any
additional light on a central question for our Select Subcommittee.
In fact, we are actually entering the fourth quarter of this Con-
gress and this Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, and what have we focused on? It’s not an objective investigation on the origin as either a lab leak or animal transmission.
We have spent the vast majority of time, like in this hearing,
with Republicans trying to prove that Dr. Fauci and Collins funded research through EcoHealth that created the SARS-CoV–2 virus. And in order for that to be true, it is dependent on proving the lab leak theory to be true.
So it has not been an objective investigation as to whether or not
the virus came from a lab or an animal transmission in order to prevent and prepare for the next pandemic. It has been to push this narrative. And this hearing is their climax, their star witness, to finally prove their narrative. And they did not do so.
Instead of focusing on solutions, like fortifying our public health
work force and infrastructure, securing domestic supply chain of
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vital public health equipment and medication, or equipping schools,
churches, synagogues, mosques, and businesses to safely stay open during the next deadly novel viral pandemic, instead they focused on accusation without evidence.
And it seemed like even though the evidence was there that the
accusations were false, it didn’t matter. They still accused him on a cover-up, suppressing the truth, that he initiated, prompted, or edited the proximal origins paper, that he funded gain-of-research that created the SARS-CoV–2 virus, even that he received royal-ties.
You know, his answers today and his transcribed interviews and
his countless emails refuted all of this. They always have. And his testimony today did again. But I guess that doesn’t matter for the Majority.
The truth is that there is no evidence to prove this narrative that
we’ve spent so much time addressing. Their accusations are with-out evidence. But it doesn’t matter to them.
Intentionally misleading the public is propagating
disinformation, and it’s wrong and dangerous not only because it manufactures distrust in our public health leaders and our public health agencies, but also because it targets Dr. Fauci and other public health officials for violent death threats.
Dr. Fauci just said that any time anybody alludes to the false ac-
cusation that he created the COVID–19 pandemic, his death threats go up. But irresponsibly and recklessly, Members on this Subcommittee continue to accuse him of that.
So, for the remaining months of the Select Subcommittee I reaf-
firm my commitment to take a serious, balanced look at the ques-tion and the possibilities of whether the novel coronavirus emerged from a lab or from nature.
And I emphasize to my colleagues that any uncertainty about
those origins is an opportunity for us to work constructively to-gether on forward-looking measures to improve our Nation’s readi-ness for future public health threats.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back. Dr. W
ENSTRUP . Thank you again.
Dr. Fauci, I want to thank you for coming here today. I, again,
truly appreciate your willingness to come voluntarily before the Se-lect Committee for both your transcribed interview and hearing today.
You know, this hearing was an opportunity to learn about our
COVID–19 response and how we can improve and do better. And we did some good things during that, and I’ll say Operation Warp Speed is one of them.
It’s also an opportunity to more closely examine the office in
which you served, because there seemed to have been some signifi-cant wrongdoings that took place. And I believe that we can make changes and prevent that from happening in the future. That’s my goal.
It’s an opportunity to take a close look about the processes and
the procedures in place in our health institutions in the United States. That’s our job, is oversight, in Congress. That’s what we’re supposed to do.
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I don’t know what playbook some are talking about, because it’s
been my goal as Chairman—and I think you’ve seen the staff speaking the same way—to take a hard look at the facts so that we can do better in the future.
I know that at the end of the transcribed interview, not only dur-
ing the interview, we talked about other types of vaccines we may be able to create, mucosal vaccines, maybe inhibitors of furin, if there’s a furin cleavage site as part of the vaccine. I appreciated that conversation so very much. And at the end, you thanked me for the fairness, and we had the opportunity to share a lot that day.
I think what I’m most concerned about as we go forward as a
country and from our agencies is that we can be trusted and that we are better in our messaging and talk about clarity.
Dr. McCormick today talked about what it was like actually
treating COVID patients day in and day out. I had recommended early on that America needed to hear more from doctors that were treating COVID patients, what they were seeing, what was work-ing, what was not working.
I compared it to General Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War. Ev-
eryone tuned in every night to hear what General Schwarzkopf had to say, not the politician, but what the general in charge had to say. And I think that was important, the one who was in the trenches.
But, look, you know, we’ve gone back and forth on the definition
of gain-of-function. I think it’s been pretty clear what you said was on your mind. And there were two different definitions, if you will, a generic definition and an operative regulatory definition.
But so, you know, when we go through this what America hears
is that you say NIH did not fund and Dr. Tabak said NIH did fund. Clarity matters.
I think it would have helped when you were in front of Dr. Paul
in the Senate if you were clear about what you meant. The Amer-ican people had never heard of gain-of-function until this came about. Clarity matters.
You know, we conducted great trials on the vaccines. I thought
they were phenomenal. Normally, you have eight to ten thousand people. We had about 40,000 people in each one of the trials.
And what we knew from the trials is that, one, it saved a lot of
lives. That’s one thing. But we also knew that if you got vaccinated you could still get COVID. We didn’t make that clear to the Amer-ican people, in my mind, and that you could still get sick.
And so, if someone stands up, not you, but if someone stands up
and says, if you get vaccinated you’re never going to go to the ICU and you’re not going to die, well, it was still happening.
So, where was the messaging? I wish you would have corrected
that right then and there.
You know, the President says, oh, maybe we just inject bleach.
Well, some people maybe thought that was serious. We made it clear it was not, and that was important.
But here we have Operation Warp Speed, which I know firsthand
you were working on, and you were kind enough to work with the Doctors Caucus to explain what was going on with Operation Warp Speed. And we have a Presidential candidate who says, ‘‘Well, if
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that’s developed, I’m not taking it’’—I’m paraphrasing—and then
takes it.
The American public deserve a lot better from their government.
And what should have been a 9/11 moment for this country, this pandemic, was turned into a political nightmare.
We need to do better. These are agnostic issues, not political. And I think from what we have learned from you in the TI and
here today, there’s a lot of things that we can do better, and the grant process being one of them. I mean, if you—look, when I sign a prescription, I’m responsible for it.
Somebody needs to be responsible. And if you’re signing for
grants but not responsible for it, you just sign it, then you’re not responsible for the dollars that are going out.
And then maybe it’s the Advisory Committee that needs to be
signing the grant so that there’s some level of responsibility, and responsibility for compliance. I think that’s one of the biggest les-sons learned through all this.
We can do better. America is a great country. We can fix our
problems. But we have to take a good hard look at what we did, what we didn’t do, be honest with ourselves, be better in our mes-saging to the American people, especially when it comes to health.
And that’s why I felt it was very important that we don’t do
things like mandates, but let patients have a conversation with the doctor that they know and trust and make sure that we’re getting the doctors all the information and data that they need, from ad-verse effects of the vaccine, which we’ve always done, adverse ef-fects of the vaccine, to what the vaccine can and can’t do, whether you’re at risk or not at risk, what are your risks.
Those are personal conversations that need to take place. And I
look forward to try and establish the system that does a better job at that.
I’m going to conclude and just say thank you once again, Dr.
Fauci. As a matter of fact, I’d be glad to have more off-the-record conversations about things we can do in the future, the drugs we may be able to develop, treatments we may be able to provide, and vaccines we may be able to produce.
And so, if you’re amenable, I might reach out to you for that, and
other scientists as well that may have varying opinions.
So, again, thank you again for being the witness today. With that, without objection, all Members will have 5 legislative
days within which to submit materials and to submit additional written questions for the witnesses, which will be forwarded to the witnesses for their response.
If there’s no further business, without objection, the Select Sub-
committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:30 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
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