Dr. Fauci is starting to tweak his answers before Congress after Senator Rand Paul’s amendment passed unanimously.
Fauci changed his tune this week and told the House Appropriations Committee that it’s possible US taxpayer funds went to fund research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Dr. Fauci said that “a modest collaboration with very respectable Chinese scientists who were world experts on coronavirus” received funds from the NIH. Just a week ago he told the Senate that taxpayer funds did not go to the lab in Wuhan. During his testimony before the House he reported that gain-of-function research “categorically was not done.”
Fauci made the admittance about the lab in Wuhan amid the unanimous bi-partisan passing of an amendment proposed by Senator Rand Paul. The amendment will prohibit any US government funds to be used for gain-of-function research.
“We don’t know whether the pandemic started in a lab in Wuhan or evolved naturally,” Paul said in a press release. “While many still deny funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, experts believe otherwise. The passage of my amendment ensures that this never happens in the future. No taxpayer money should have ever been used to fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan, and now we permanently have put it to a stop.”
Anthony Bellotti, president of taxpayer watchdog group White Coat Waste Project said, “Having first exposed secretive U.S. taxpayer funding for the Wuhan animal lab last year, we applaud Sens. Ernst, Paul, Marshall and Johnson for their outstanding work to protect taxpayers and public health by permanently defunding this dangerous CCP-run facility and any gain-of-function experiments anywhere in China. Taxpayers should not be forced to bankroll bat experiments or any other reckless spending in foreign labs and recent polls show that a majority of Democrat and Republican voters agree.”
After the amendment passed cheers went up in the Senate.
SENATE: The Senate chamber erupts into cheers after an amendment proposed by @RandPaul that bans US funding of gain-of-function research in China is passed by unanimous voice vote pic.twitter.com/8fQ6hAWpuW
— Forbes (@Forbes) May 25, 2021
