White Coat Waste Meets White Coat Supremacy

The non-profit White Coat Waste Project charges that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) funded a lab experiment in Tunisia that drugged beagles and locked their heads in mesh cages filled with sand flies. White Coat Waste also claimed that some of the dogs had their vocal cords removed so their barking would not disturb the attending scientists. 

Rep. Nancy Mace fired off a letter to the National Institutes of Health, calling the corcectomies “cruel” and a “reprehensible misuse of taxpayer funds.” Mace is a South Carolina Republican but a number of Democrats signed on. Such bipartisan support has been missing in the wake of other NIH misconduct.

Gain-of-function research alters viruses to make them more lethal and transmissible. NIAID boss Dr. Anthony Fauci has denied funding this dangerous research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China. In a May 19 statement, NIH director Francis Collins said, “neither NIH nor NIAID have ever approved any grant that would have supported ‘gain-of-function’ research on coronaviruses that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans.” 

In October, weeks after Collins announced his resignation, the National Institutes of Health admitted funding a “limited experiment” to test if bat coronaviruses were “capable of binding” to a human receptor. That directly contradicts Dr. Fauci, the highest-paid bureaucrat in the entire federal government, who commands the NIAID budget of more than $6 billion

Anthony Fauci earned a medical degree in 1966 but in 1968 hired on with the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Fauci’s bio shows no advanced degrees in molecular biology or biochemistry, but in 1984 he became director of NIAID. 

In 2012, Fauci cited the risks of gain-of-function research, wondering “what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic?” The NIH banned gain of function research in 2014 but revived it in 2017 with no objection from Fauci. He funded the WIV, where gain-of-function research could be conducted in secret, with no accountability to American taxpayers. 

In early 2020, Fauci praised China’s handling of the pandemic and opposed the ban on travel from China. Fauci contends that the COVID virus developed naturally in the wild, a view that does not derive from a replicated scientific study. By contrast, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease control, got death threats for suggesting that the COVID virus leaked from a Chinese lab. New Zealand data scientist Gilles Demaneuf recently told Vanity Fair he was unsure about the origin but “100 percent sure there was a massive cover-up.” 

In light of recent revelations, Democrats and Republicans should support a full and independent investigation of Fauci, Collins and their respective government departments. A white lab coat places nobody above the law. 

K. Lloyd Billingsley is a Policy Fellow at the Independent Institute and a columnist at American Greatness.
Beacon Posts by K. Lloyd Billingsley | Full Biography and Publications
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