: The following is adapted from a talk delivered on November 1, 2023, at
: the Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship
: on Hillsdale�s Washington, D.C., campus, as part of the AWC Family
: Foundation Lecture Series.

The Covid cover-up began in China. But in a way we make too big a deal of
that. No one should be surprised that a totalitarian government run by the
Chinese Communist Party would seek to cover up its responsibility for a
worldwide pandemic. What was mind-jarring�and what we should focus our
attention on�is the cover-up in our own country spearheaded by Dr. Anthony
Fauci and his fellow public health bureaucrats. And they might have gotten
away with their deception if a federal judge hadn�t ordered their emails
released.

In brief, these emails reveal that at the same time Dr. Fauci and other
public health �experts� were publicly disavowing the idea that the Covid
virus originated with a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China,
they were in general agreement among themselves that that was likely what had
happened. So why hide the fact?

In January 2020, Fauci was told that the Covid virus appeared �inconsistent
with expectations from evolutionary theory.� He and his fellow scientists
were worried that it may have originated in the Wuhan lab because they knew
that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), under
Fauci�s direction, had been funding work at the lab for years. They also knew
of a paper by Ralph Baric and Shi Zhengli describing gain-of-function
research�which involves taking two viruses and combining their genetics to
create something more dangerous, more lethal, or more contagious�on various
coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab.

On February 1, just before 3:00 a.m., Fauci sent an email to Robert Kadlec,
then-Secretary for Preparedness and Response at Health and Human Services. It
read: �This just came out today. Gives a balanced view.� He attached an
article published in Science arguing that Covid had jumped from bats to
humans and seeking to discredit the lab-leak theory. When this email came to
light, I was initially puzzled about its timing and urgency. But then I
learned that one of Kadlec�s duties was to chair the committee responsible
for screening gain-of-function proposals for safety purposes�and that the
Wuhan coronavirus research proposal never came before his committee!

For a long time, even we in the U.S. Senate didn�t know that Kadlec headed
the gain-of-function screening committee because of the pervasive secrecy
throughout our government. The makeup of the committee is a secret, its
deliberations are secret, and those on the committee do not like answering
questions asked by the American people�s elected leaders in Congress. To this
day, it is an open question how gain-of-function research was funded in Wuhan
without committee review. It is not a stretch to think that someone with
authority skirted the safety review process. If so, that person would have
had a good reason to be very worried, even to the point of dishonesty, when
the pandemic broke out.

Jeremy Farrar, the Anthony Fauci of the UK, told his brother that in the
early stages of the pandemic, �a few scientists, including me, were beginning
to suspect this might be a lab accident.� Farrar writes in his book Spike:
�During that period, I would do things I had never done before: acquire a
burner phone, hold clandestine meetings, keep difficult secrets.� Indeed,
many Western bureaucrats, especially in the U.S., began using various forms
of communication to shield their messages from future records requests. We
have an email from one of Fauci�s assistants instructing other government
employees to avoid using government email addresses. Which, by the way, is a
crime.

Kristian G. Andersen, a professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps
Research, headed up a group of virologists who, by his own account, were
�prompted by Jeremy Farrar, Tony Fauci, and [National Institutes of Health
Director] Francis Collins� to research and publish a paper that would
�provide agnostic and scientifically informed hypotheses around the origins
of the virus.� Andersen had written to Farrar a week earlier, alarmed by the
fact that the virus appeared to be manmade. But now, under pressure, he and
others were circling the wagons and changing their tune.

By mid-February, British zoologist Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth
Alliance and a Fauci ally, organized a letter that was published in The
Lancet stating that the authors stood together �to strongly condemn
conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.�
What the letter failed to mention is the fact that Daszak�s organization
received many millions of taxpayer dollars from the National Institutes of
Health (NIH) and the State Department�before and during the pandemic�and that
millions were funneled through EcoHealth to the Wuhan lab, some of which went
to coronavirus research.

In March, the Andersen group�s paper, arguing that Covid didn�t come from a
lab, was published in Nature Medicine. By that time, corporate media and Big
Tech had taken to labeling anyone who supported the lab-leak theory as a
purveyor of misinformation and disinformation. An ABC News article that cited
the Andersen paper is a case in point: �Sorry, conspiracy theorists. Study
concludes COVID-19 �is not a laboratory construct.��

As we now know�thanks to the release of the Twitter Files following Elon
Musk�s purchase of the company�the mainstream media and Big Tech did not act
alone. In fact, many of their efforts to censor speech about the lab-leak
theory, lockdowns, masks, vaccines, school closures, and a host of pandemic-
related topics were directed by the FBI and other intelligence agencies. In
other words, the First Amendment was thrown out the window.

***

The moral debate over gain-of-function research has been going on for a long
time. It came to prominence with the debate over avian flu research in the
early 2010s. Avian flu is a very bad disease, but like most animal viruses,
it is adapted for its host�in this case chickens or other birds. It does not
often infect humans, but when it does, certain strains kill up to 50 percent
of those infected.

During an outbreak in 2010, Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier wondered if it
would be possible to make the avian flu contagious through the air to
mammals, and his research became highly controversial. Proponents argued that
it could provide valuable data for scientists to predict or combat future
pandemics. Opponents argued that it could cause pandemics either through lab
leaks or terrorism. Fauci was intimately familiar with this debate, because
Fouchier�s research was funded by Fauci�s agency, and he argued at the time
that the potential benefits outweighed the risks.

A growing number of virologists and other scientists worry that a lab leak
will happen again, and with even more serious consequences. With Covid, the
mortality rate was far less than one percent. Experiments are now being
carried out with viruses that have the potential for mortality rates between
15 and 50 percent. In 2021, MIT biochemist Kevin Esvelt wrote:

Once we consider the possibility of misuse [of gain-of-function
research], let alone creative misuse, such research looks like a gamble
that civilization can�t afford to risk. . . . I implore every scientist,
funder, and nation working in this field: Please stop. No more trying
to discover or make pandemic-capable viruses, enhance their virulence,
or assemble them more easily. No more attempting to learn which
components allow viruses to efficiently infect or replicate within
human cells, or to devise inheritable ways to evade immunity. No more
experiments likely to disseminate blueprints for plagues.

The potential for disaster cannot be overstated. Right now, people can order
synthetic DNA on the internet, and if they know what they�re doing, they can
make the polio virus, among many others. And there are increasing numbers of
individuals who have the knowhow: according to Esvelt, �The U.S. grants 125
doctoral degrees in virology each year, accounting for one-third of the total
worldwide. At least four times as many individuals with degrees in related
fields . . . possess similar skills.�

The required information is publicly available due to taxpayer-funded
initiatives to identify all the viruses in the world. With the support of
people like Peter Daszak and Bill Gates, the U.S. has been the top
international funder of pandemic virus identification for decades. This
should give us pause: these programs involve digging rare viruses out of
caves where humans might never encounter them and transporting them to major
metropolitan areas, manipulating viruses to make them more dangerous and
transmissible, and publishing the resulting knowledge to the world.

Even if the goal is preventing future pandemics, the risk-benefit ratio
doesn�t add up. While advocates for identifying the world�s viruses argue
that the knowledge gained will aid in developing vaccines, decades of virus
identification have been fruitless, as no human vaccine has been developed in
advance of a human epidemic. If we continue down this path, Esvelt believes
that �deliberate pandemics� will kill �many more people than identification
could save.�

To think that we can prevent future pandemics, even as we continue to seek,
catalog, and manipulate dangerous viruses, is the height of hubris. Over the
last few years, public health �experts� were wrong about almost everything.
If we are to avoid these kinds of catastrophes in the future, we must reform
government and rein in out-of-control scientists and their enablers.

***

In December 2022, Congress passed a 4,155-page spending bill. It had a price
tag of $1.7 trillion, including over a trillion dollars that had to be
borrowed. It was appropriately called an �omni,� since everything but the
kitchen sink was thrown in. On page 3,354, the Secretary of Health and Human
Services was directed �not [to] fund research conducted by a foreign entity
at a facility located in a country of concern . . . involving pathogens of
pandemic potential or biological agents or toxins.�

This was a welcome attempt to stop the funding of dangerous research around
the world, but Americans and their representatives must watch carefully to
see whether our public health agencies attempt to sidestep it. The recent
behavior of NIAID and NIH bureaucrats, as exemplified by their attempts to
deceive Congress and the American people during the Covid pandemic, does not
instill confidence.

A group of 34 prominent scientists recently presented a series of reforms to
�strengthen the US government�s enhanced potential pandemic pathogen
framework.� This Gain-of-Function Reform Group (GoF Group) recommended that
gain-of-function experiments that confer �efficient human transmissibility�
on a pathogen should be regulated. Adopting this standard would explicitly
stop bureaucrats like Fauci from dancing around the gain-of-function
definition and looking the other way as researchers create viruses that
spread more easily in humans.

Current regulations allow gain-of-function research to occur if the research
is said to be concerned with �developing and producing� vaccines. However,
dangerous research should not be permitted or funded on the basis of a
potential product. Rather, we should ban clearly dangerous research and
highly scrutinize anything else that �could enhance the virulence or
transmissibility of any pathogen,� as the GoF Group recommends.

We should treat this research as we do nuclear weapons�as the potential
threat to human life is even greater. Ideally, as Rutgers University
molecular biologist Richard Ebright recommends, �responsibility for US
oversight of gain-of-function research of concern should be assigned to a
single, independent federal agency that does not perform research and does
not fund research. The oversight of research on fissionable materials by the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission provides a precedent and a model.�

Another pervasive problem is conflict of interest. Under our current lax
guidelines, researchers can essentially approve their own grants if they toe
the official bureaucratic line. Consider the particularly egregious example
of Kristian Andersen receiving a million-dollar grant mere months after
abruptly switching his scientific opinion on Covid�s origin from a likely lab
leak to �natural spillover.� We have always known that recipients of federal
dollars might try to game the system. Conflict of interest regulations are
littered throughout the federal code. One would think recusal for a conflict
of interest would be the standard fallback procedure for all federal science
funding. Yet when I questioned Fauci about whether any of the scientists on
the vaccine-approval boards also received royalties from the drug companies
that make vaccines, he responded that he did not have to inform Congress
about royalty payments. In addition to the fact that he was the highest paid
employee of the federal government, his own net worth is estimated to have
doubled to more than $12.5 million during the pandemic. This is an insult to
the American taxpayer and the American ideal. We should not allow this kind
of obvious corruption.

The GoF Group calls for regulators to �recuse any individual whose agency is
funding or participating in the proposed [gain-of-function research] from
decision making in the [pandemic] review process.� Reviewers �should be
subject to conflict of interest rules.� They also recommended including
�representatives of civil society� in the review of potential pandemic
pathogens.

For several years, I have proposed something similar for all grants funded by
the federal government. Even before I became aware of the extent of Fauci�s
abusive reign, I introduced the BASIC Research Act, which would add at least
one scientist to each funding committee from a major field of research that
has unanimity of support, such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and
Alzheimer�s. The goal is to create more debate on the best use of limited
government research funds. I would also add a taxpayer advocate to all
funding committees. Perhaps then we would start to question absurd
�scientific� research grants, such as the $2.3 million the NIH spent
injecting beagle puppies with cocaine, or the $3 million NIH grant to put
hamsters on steroids and watch them fight.

In addition, my legislation would prohibit grant applicants from requesting
their own friends for funding review. We should also make all federal grant
applications public.

To prevent what happened during the Covid pandemic from happening again,
Congress must address the concentration of power over long periods of time in
the hands of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. In particular, it
should divide the power of the NIAID into three separate institutes
overseeing allergic diseases, infectious diseases, and immunologic diseases.
Each institute should be led by a director who is appointed by the president
and confirmed by the Senate for a limited term of five years.

Anthony Fauci�who wielded tremendous power over many decades�funded dangerous
research, lied to Congress and the American people, flip-flopped on many of
his prognostications, issued edicts that defied science, and attacked and
smeared his scientific critics. His reprehensible behavior reminded me of
nothing so much as C.S. Lewis�s description of the moral busybody: �Of all
tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be
the most oppressive. . . . [T]hose who torment us for our own good will
torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own
conscience.�

We the American people must not allow bureaucratic �experts� to endanger our
lives, lie to us, or curtail our constitutional rights. Never again.