The House Select Subcommittee looking at the origins of the covid pandemic certainly has been busy.
We recently reported on the grilling EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak received. His group was responsible for partnering with Chinese bat virus researchers, and one of those coronaviruses may be the one responsible for the pandemic and the resulting destructive public health policies to contain it. During his testimony in front of the committee, Daszak indicated the intelligence community was aware of the coronavirus experiments carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology years before the pandemic.
Subsequently, all federal funding to Ecohealth Alliance was cut off.
Now the National Institutes of Health (NIH) principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak has admitted to the subcommittee that Americans taxpayers funded gain-of-function research at the institute in the months and years leading up to the pandemic.
“Dr. Tabak,” asked Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, “did NIH fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through [Manhattan-based nonprofit] EcoHealth [Alliance]?”“It depends on your definition of gain-of-function research,” Tabak answered. “If you’re speaking about the generic term, yes, we did.”The response comes after more than four years of evasions from federal public health officials — including Tabak himself and former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Dr. Anthony Fauci — about the controversial research practice that modifies viruses to make them more infectious.Tabak added that “this is research, the generic term [gain-of-function], is research that goes on in many, many labs around the country. It is not regulated. And the reason it’s not regulated is it poses no threat or harm to anybody.”
I must admit, I am feeling very vindicated right now. I spent a lot of time online trying to uncover the likely source of the virus. I highlighted the the virus’ unique molecular feature, called the furin cleavage site, as being indicative of genetic modification of another virus.
I uncovered information indicating that scientists discovered Banal-52, a coronavirus found in Lao bats, which shares 96.8 percent of its genome with Sars-Cov-2. Emails revealed viral samples from Lao bats were being collected and sent for study in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
I am not the only one feeling this way. The New York Post editorial board also recalls how hard it was to get information related to a lab leak scenario published and promoted on social media.
Anyone who questioned this claim — including The Post — was censored online in 2020. The reason? A statement published in Lancet by 27 scientists calling it a “conspiracy theory.”We now know that statement was drafted by Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, the company working on research in the Wuhan lab. He was just trying to cover his own complicity.All signs point to a lab leak. The only reason we can’t say it conclusively is because China has been allowed to destroy all evidence.. . . . Tabak’s new excuse? “Gain of function” doesn’t mean what we’ve always been told it means. It’s perfectly “safe,” he claimed.On cue, the National Institutes of Health has changed the definition of the term on its website to make it sound benign.Except it isn’t benign. EcoHealth was specifically working in China because such work was not allowed in the United States. What researchers were doing with coronaviruses was very dangerous.
Tabak was also forced to explain his agency’s communications department alteration of NIH’s definition for gain-of-function research, with the change being “vetted” by “experts.”
“The change was made by our communications department because of the confusion that people have about the generic term of gain-of-function and the specific term gain-of-function,” Tabak testified.Malliotakis responded by suggesting the communications department would not be qualified to make a change like this and must have had other input.“The content was vetted,” Tabak testified. “By individuals who are subject-matter experts.”
Tabak’s testimony suggests “subject matter expert” is another word for liar.
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