White House endorses COVID lab leak theory, but will anyone be held accountable?



On April 18, the White House publicly endorsed the COVID lab leak theory. The government’s official COVID website was also redirected to a new page titled “Lab Leak: The True Origins of COVID-19,” which contends that the virus originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, and was leaked by accident.

The revamped site criticizes Anthony Fauci, David Morens, Andrew Cuomo, the WHO, EcoHealth Alliance, and the Biden administration, among others, for actively promoting false information and covering up the truth.

It cites five points to support the lab leak claim:

1. “The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature.”

2. “Data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover events.”

3. “Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research (gene altering and organism supercharging) at inadequate biosafety levels.”

4. “Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with COVID-like symptoms in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market.”

5. “By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. But it hasn’t.”

After years of the Biden administration and his loyal media allies promoting a lie, it’s refreshing to see the government proclaim the truth.

But while Glenn Beck sees the website as “an amazing thing,” the information on it isn’t exactly news.

“Most of this stuff we had within six or eight months of the actual outbreak,” he says.

The real question is: “Who’s going to jail over this?”

The other question is: Why doesn’t the legacy media seem interested in correcting the narrative?

“Millions of people died here. You'd think that it would be something [the media] would focus on and draw a lot of attention to and continue to kind of beat the drum until someone was held responsible, and they don't seem to have any interest in that,” says co-host Stu Burguiere, noting that most of these outlets “have run an op-ed” about the lab leak theory and called it good.

“If we make a mistake, we correct it because it drives us crazy that we made the mistake, and I don’t want anybody to believe that I’m standing behind something that is wrong and a lie,” says Glenn.

The legacy media clearly doesn’t have the same convictions.

“They knowingly lied” about COVID, Joe Biden’s cognitive state, and Russiagate, and yet, “There’s no consequence.”

“They’re not going to lose any advertisers. The New York Times hasn't lost any real money because of this. Their people just continue to watch,” says Glenn.

To hear more of the conversation, watch the clip above.

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'An outrage': Biden admin hid report of US service members getting sick at Wuhan military games in October 2019



Nearly 10,000 athletes from over 109 countries traveled to Wuhan, China, to compete in the 7th Military World Games from October 18 to October 28, 2019.

Participants from various nations, including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Luxembourg, reported taking ill with COVID-like symptoms at or after the games — a damning coincidence granted the games took place near the suspected origin of the virus, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where dangerous experiments were long performed with poor safety protocols on coronaviruses.

The Biden administration apparently sat on a December 2022 report indicating that some of the 263 members of the U.S. delegation who attended the games may have also caught COVID-19 or something just like it months before the supposed zoonotic leap at a wet market.

By concealing the document, the administration effectively left the public with then-Pentagon spokesman John Kirby's 2021 assertion to the Washington Post that there was no knowledge of American infections at the games and no evidence to indicate U.S. military personnel were infected before travel restrictions were implemented in early 2020.

The 2022 National Defense Authorization Act included a requirement that former President Joe Biden's then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin submit to congressional lawmakers a report on the military games detailing:

  • the number of American athletes and staff "who attended the 2019 World Military Games and became ill with COVID-19-like symptoms during or shortly after their return to the United States";
  • the results of any blood testing done on American participants;
  • the number of home station Pentagon facilities of participating members that experienced outbreaks in early 2020; and
  • whether the Pentagon discussed the illnesses surrounding the games with other militaries.

In addition to disclosing such information to the House and Senate armed services committees, the NDAA required that the Biden administration make the report publicly available.

'It is an outrage that the Biden White House and the 118th Congress Senate and House Armed Services Committees did not publicly release this information.'

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Biden administration refrained from releasing the report to the public, and it wasn't until March 2025 when the Trump administration uploaded it to the Defense Department website that the document became widely accessible.

Contrary to Kirby's suggestion that there was no knowledge or evidence of infection, the Pentagon concluded that of the 263 total American participants in the game — of whom 2019 were military personnel — seven service members "exhibited COVID-19-like signs and/or symptoms during the timeframe of October 18, 2019, through January 21, 2020."

Members of the U.S. delegation to the games were not tested for COVID-19 or antibodies "as testing was not available at this early stage of the pandemic," so there is apparently no definitive proof these were indeed COVID-19 infections.

The report indicated the symptoms could have been caused by other respiratory infections and that all seven infected service members' symptoms resolved within six days.

The report noted further that there was "no statistically significant difference in COVID-19-like symptoms cases at installations with participating athletes when compared to installations without them."

Molecular biologist Dr. Richard H. Ebright of Rutgers University told the Free Beacon, "It is an outrage that the Biden White House and the 118th Congress Senate and House Armed Services Committees did not publicly release this information when it became available in 2022, but, instead, withheld this information for the duration of their terms."

"This new information strengthens U.S. and allied intelligence data indicating that COVID-19 was circulating in Wuhan in October-November 2019, U.S. and allied intelligence data indicating that researchers working with genetically enhanced SARS viruses at Wuhan Institute of Virology contracted COVID-19 in October-November 2019, and phylogenomic data indicating that the virus that causes COVID-19 entered humans in July-November 2019," added Ebright.

Sen. Jodi Ernst (R-Iowa) told the Free Beacon that the report helped put a nail in the coffin of the theory that the virus originated in a Wuhan wet market in December 2019.

"Taxpayers deserve to know the truth about COVID-19 origins, but the Biden administration concealed this information from the American people for years," said Ernst. "This report should have been made public immediately and not restricted to Washington insiders. If Americans visiting Wuhan were potentially infected with the COVID-19 virus in October 2019, those claiming the pandemic began in a wet market just two months later would be completely off base."

Ahead of the games — as early as August 2019 — hospitals in the region were apparently overwhelmed with an unseasonably high number of patients, while regional queries for the terms "diarrhea" and "cough" spiked on China's equivalent of Google.

An American researcher and several European researchers noted their suspicions in a September 2022 study that the Wuhan games "may have contributed to the dissemination of SARS-CoV-2" but indicated that "no official information has been made available despite reports that some foreign participants experienced Covid-19-compatible symptoms that were attributed to influenza or gastroenteritis."

French pentathlete Elodie Clouvel, Luxembourg swimmer Julien Henx, German volleyball player Jacqueline Brock, and Italian fencer Matteo Tagliariol also indicated they and/or members of their team got sick while in Wuhan.

Brock indicated in early 2020 that "after a few days, some athletes from my team got ill, I got sick in the last two days."

"I have never felt so sick," continued Brock. "Either it was a very bad cold or COVID-19."

Tagliariol told Corriere della Sera, "When we arrived in Wuhan, almost all of us got sick. But the worst was returning home. After a week I had a very high fever, I felt like I couldn't breathe."

Canadian military sources told the Financial Post in 2021 that one service member reported feeling "very sick 12 days after we arrived, with fever, chills, vomiting, insomnia."

Scores of Canadian athletes were apparently placed in isolation on their 12-hour flight home at the end of October. The athletes' symptoms included coughing and diarrhea.

The Canadian Department of National Defense told Blaze News last year that "some athletes experienced gastrointestinal symptoms on the flight to Wuhan for the Military World Games and during the return flight home to Canada."

"Their symptoms and illness course of one to three days were consistent with gastrointestinal illness, or a 'stomach flu,' and were managed as such," said a spokeswoman for the National Defense Department.

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NPR CEO, Who Called Trump 'Deranged Racist Sociopath,' Tells Congress There's No 'Political Bias' at Taxpayer-Funded Broadcaster

NPR CEO Katherine Maher, who once called President Donald Trump a "deranged racist sociopath," testified Wednesday to Congress that she's "never seen … political bias" at the taxpayer-funded outlet, a comment that provoked laughter.

The post NPR CEO, Who Called Trump 'Deranged Racist Sociopath,' Tells Congress There's No 'Political Bias' at Taxpayer-Funded Broadcaster appeared first on .

After Media’s Covid ‘Oopsie,’ I Don’t Want To Hear The Word ‘Misinformation’ Ever Again

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No Amount Of Crocodile Tears Can Erase Corporate Media’s Complicity In Covid Scandal

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Fauci cabalist, top gain-of-function scientist raise alarm about dangerous new experiments



One the world's most prominent gain-of-function researchers — whose methods were adapted by researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology for work on chimeric viruses — and one of the scientists who helped furnish Anthony Fauci with what he needed to downplay the lab-leak theory are now sounding the alarm about dangerous new coronavirus experiments conducted by the Chinese.

Criticism may have been easier this time around, given that the critics and their friends do not appear to be directly linked to the dangerous research in question.

Ralph Baric and W. Ian Lipkin expressed concern in a March 3 New York Times op-ed that Chinese scientists "are experimenting with viruses in ways that could put all of us in harm's way."

Baric, a professor in the departments of epidemiology and microbiology at the University of North Carolina, is a leading proponent of gain-of-function research who successfully fought for an exemption from the Obama administration's moratorium on the dangerous practice in order to keep manufacturing artificial SARS-like viruses. He became an especially controversial figure during the pandemic, which has claimed the lives of over 7 million people worldwide.

Lipkin, the John Snow professor of epidemiology at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health, was one of the co-authors of the controversial March 2020 paper "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2," which Fauci used on multiple occasions to suggest to the American public that COVID-19 was not a lab leak but rather an animal virus that jumped to a human. Lipkin, who later thanked Fauci for his "efforts in steering and messaging" regarding the virus' origins, has reportedly long had a cozy relationship with Chinese communist authorities.

Baric and Lipkin indicated that they are particularly concerned about experiments conducted by WIV researchers and other Chinese scientists on a deadly coronavirus called HKU5-CoV-2. These experiments are detailed in a recent paper published in the scientific journal Cell.

The duo noted that the virus at the heart of the study "belongs to a subgroup of viruses that are classified alongside the one that causes MERS and that can have fatality rates far higher than that of the virus that caused the Covid pandemic."

While HKU5 can infect humans and has the potential to be far more lethal than SARS-CoV-2, Chinese scientists have apparently been meddling with the fully infectious virus in a lab with "insufficient" containment controls.

There are multiple biosafety level ratings for laboratories ranging from BSL-1 to BSL-4. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "each biosafety level builds on the controls of the level before it."

'Potentially dangerous research should not be done without proper precautions.'

A BSL-4 lab, for instance, is designed to handle microbes that are "dangerous and exotic, posing a high risk of aerosol-transmitted infections" that could prove fatal. Researchers in such a lab must manipulate the infectious agents using a gas-tight sealed container with a double HEPA filtered exhaust while wearing protective gear. Alternatively, they must wear a full-body, air-supplied positive pressure suit. Researchers must also undergo routine medical surveillance for signs of infection.

Such a high-security lab must also be located in a separate building or in a restricted zone of an existing building with double locking doors and provided with a dedicated supply of air along with decontamination systems.

Despite the dangers posed to the researchers and the rest of mankind, the Chinese researchers have instead been experimenting in a lab described as BSL-2 plus. BSL-2 labs are meant to handle only microbes that pose, at worst, moderate hazards to researchers and the environment.

"Decisions about what level of precaution is appropriate for research are typically made by a study's lead scientist and an institutional biosafety committee," wrote Baric and Lipkin.

The lead scientist on this dangerous study was Shi Zhengli, whose track record for safety is less than stellar and with whom Baric has previously collaborated.

According to a 2021 article in the MIT technology review, Baric asked Shi, who is the director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the WIV, for the genome of a new coronavirus Shi found in bat excrement. He apparently wanted to take the "spike" gene from the novel virus and stick it into a copy of a SARS virus he had on hand. Ultimately, Baric's team tested the resultant chimeric virus on humanized mice and in a petri dish of human airway cells and discovered that it could indeed infect humans.

Baric and Lipkin noted in their op-ed that while the relevant authorities in China apparently approved the dangerous new experiments on HKU5, "it is not sufficient for work with a new virus that could have significant risks for people worldwide."

"Work with viruses that have the potential to become threats to public health should be restricted to facilities and scientists committed to the highest level of safety," added the duo.

According to Baric and Lipkin, governmental and nongovernmental agencies that fund research on viruses should require "proof that investigators meet global standards." Additionally, scientific journals should insist on similar standards for the studies they accept.

The duo concluded, "Potentially dangerous research should not be done without proper precautions to prevent deliberate or accidental spread."

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Coalition of state AGs seek to bypass Biden pardon and hold Fauci accountable



Just hours before leaving office, former President Joe Biden issued a pardon for Anthony Fauci, giving the fifth director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases a pass for possible federal crimes going back to Jan. 1, 2014 — around the time the Obama administration supposedly halted funding for dangerous gain-of-function research.

While Biden's stated intention was to spare the 84-year-old immunologist from "being investigated or prosecuted," the geriatric Democrat could not ultimately spare Fauci from being held accountable for possible violations of state laws.

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson and 16 other state attorneys general have launched an investigation into Fauci's role in the COVID-19 pandemic response, "demanding accountability for alleged mismanagement, misleading statements, and suppression of scientific debate."

After referencing damning findings by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic concerning Fauci, the attorneys general urged House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) in a letter Wednesday to "consider using all available tools" at Congress' disposal to "ensure that former President Biden's shameful pardon does not frustrate accountability."

The state attorneys general evidently have one particular "tool" in mind.

Underscoring that Biden's pardon does not "preclude state-level investigations or legal proceedings," they noted that members of Congress can refer pertinent findings to state officials who "possess the authority to address violations of state law or breaches of public trust."

'We are fully prepared to take appropriate action to ensure justice is served.'

"You are uniquely positioned to assist us by providing us with information that could outline potential courses of action under state law, should they exist," said the letter. "If possible, please furnish us with the necessary details so that we may make informed decisions aimed at holding malign actors accountable."

The congressional report cited in the letter found that:

  • Fauci got the ball rolling on the controversial paper "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2" with the apparent aim of discrediting the lab leak theory, which is now widely regarded as the most likely explanation. Fauci may have wanted to push the zoonotic origin theory, not only to avoid blaming China for the pandemic but because his fingerprints were all over the alternative origin. After all, EcoHealth Alliance, whose subcontractor Ben Hu — the Wuhan Institute of Virology's lead on gain-of-function research on coronaviruses — was among the pandemic's suspected patients zero, used NIAID funding to collaborate with the Wuhan lab.
  • Fauci "played semantics with the definition of gain-of-function research" in an apparent effort to deceive federal lawmakers while testifying under oath. The report indicated that whereas Fauci stated on multiple occasions that the National Institutes of Health and NIAID had not funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, his "testimony was, at a minimum, misleading" as such research had been funded through EcoHealth Alliance.
  • The NIAID under Fauci "fostered an environment that promoted evading the Freedom of Information Act."
  • The NIAID failed to adequately oversee EcoHealth Alliance, with Fauci admitting that he signed off on grants without reviewing them.

The state attorneys general noted further that it is clear that Fauci also "led a deliberate campaign to stifle the voices of premier health scholars regarding the lack of adequate testing of vaccines" and engaged in a propaganda campaign that "contributed to serious vaccine injuries — and in some cases, death."

Federal lawmakers may soon get their hands on evidence of other possible causes for state action.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced on Jan. 27 that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee subpoenaed 14 agencies in connection with the origins of COVID-19 and taxpayer-funded gain-of-function research.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) revealed the following day that he had "issued his first subpoena as chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to the Department of Health and Human Services for records relating to COVID-19 vaccine safety data and communications about the COVID-19 pandemic, including a subset of Dr. Anthony Fauci's emails."

"President Biden's blanket pardon of Dr. Fauci is a shameful attempt to prevent accountability," Wilson said in a statement. "If any of these findings indicate violations of state laws, we are fully prepared to take appropriate action to ensure justice is served."

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Elon Musk’s Claim Linking USAID To Bioweapons Isn’t As Far-Fetched As The Deep State Wants You To Think

'Where it went wrong is when the virologists got the idea to manipulate the viruses'

Prognosis Negative

Anthony Fauci was due to turn 80 in 2020. If the good doctor had hung up his white coat as the calendar ticked over into that fateful year, he would have spent the rest of his days basking in a well-earned reputation for virtuous public service. He wouldn't be as famous as he is today. His name wouldn't be a household one. But it wouldn't be a curse either, a name loathed by those on one side of our hyper-partisan political and cultural divide. This is Dr. Fauci's tragedy—and unfortunately his legacy—an accomplished doctor and public servant who will be remembered by half his compatriots as a modern hero and by the other half as a megalomaniac villain. For many, his name has become synonymous with that arrogant insistence by elites that only they knew what was best for us and then made decisions rooted in uncertain science that had devastating consequences.

The post Prognosis Negative appeared first on .

Prominent scientists demand retractions from journals that published 'unsound' articles downplaying possible COVID-19 lab origins



Former National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci, EcoHealth Alliance boss Peter Daszak, and elements of their inner circle were far from the only people in the Western medical establishment who actively downplayed the possibility that COVID-19 leaked from a lab where the likely patients zero executed dangerous experiments on coronaviruses with American taxpayer dollars.

Early in the pandemic, multiple scientific publications ran articles decrying "conspiracy theories" that suggested the virus may have originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Various authors argued, instead, that it was more likely that the virus made a cross-species leap into humans, possibly at a Chinese wet market.

Now that it's abundantly clear that the lab origin theory was all along the most likely explanation, molecular biologist Dr. Richard H. Ebright of Rutgers University and dozens of other scientists are seeking accountability for perceived efforts to cure the origins narrative. They have sent open letters to the editors of the journals Science, Emerging Microbes & Infections, and Nature Medicine, requesting the retraction of "scientifically unsound papers" concerning the origins of the virus.

"Scientists have a responsibility to science and the public to point out scientific misconduct, particularly scientific fraud, when they discover it," Dr. Ebright told Blaze News. "This is especially true for scientific misconduct on matters of high public importance, like the origin of COVID-19."

Emerging Microbes & Infections

The first of the four papers of interest was published online in Emerging Microbes & Infections on Feb. 26, 2020, and authored by Shan-Lu Liu and Linda Saif of Ohio State University; Susan Weiss of the University of Pennsylvania; and Lishan Su of the University of Maryland.

The paper, entitled, "No credible evidence supporting claims of the laboratory engineering of SARS-CoV-2," stated, "There are speculations, rumours and conspiracy theories that SARS-CoV-2 is of laboratory origin. Some people have alleged that the human SARS-CoV-2 was leaked directly from a laboratory in Wuhan where a bat CoV (RaTG13) was recently reported, which shared ∼96% homology with the SARS-CoV-2."

After downplaying a number of possible lab-made culprits, including a chimeric coronavirus that could replicate in human airway cells and possibly transmit to humans, the authors concluded, "There is currently no credible evidence to support the claim that SARS-CoV-2 originated from a laboratory-engineered CoV."

The June 14 open letter to the editors of the journal stated, "The authors' and editor's private email communications, obtained through an Ohio Public Records Act request, provide compelling evidence that there is clear basis to infer the paper may be the product of scientific misconduct, up to and including fraud."

When Weiss, for instance, expressed uncertainty about how the furin cleavage site could possibly end up in the virus naturally, her colleague Liu "completely agree[d]" but signaled a greater eagerness to dispel the notion that the "furin site may be engineered."

Despite publicly suggesting there was no credible evidence of a lab origin, Weiss noted days before the publication of her paper:

Henry and I have been speculating- how can that site have appeared at S1/S2 border- I hate to think it was engineered- among the MHV strains, the cleavage site does not increaser (sic) pathogenicity while it does effect entry route (surface vs endosome). so for me the only significance of this furin site is as a marker for where the virus came from- frightening to think it may have been engineered.

Concealed doubts and persuasive counterpoints were not the only things said to have compromised the integrity of the paper.

University of North Carolina virus expert Ralph Baric has long toyed with coronaviruses. Years ahead of the pandemic, he expressed an interest in continuing to experiment with a chimeric virus that could infect human lung cells. He even shared transgenic mice with the Wuhan lab where Chinese virologist Zhengli Shi was executing radical experiments.

In violation of publisher Taylor and Francis' authorship policies, "Ralph Baric and Shi Zhengli, despite clear conflicts of interest, made substantial contributions to the manuscript but were not credited as authors or acknowledged," said the letter.

Besides secretly involving people with potential conflicts, Su, Liu and the journal's editor-in-chief Shan Lu reportedly also had "privileged information about a SARS-CoV-2 infection in a Beijing lab in 2020," but decided to keep this under wraps.

Su wrote to Lieu on Feb. 14, 2020: "Your former colleague was infected with sars2 in the lab?"

"Yes," responded Liu. "He was infected in the lab!"

"I actually am very concerned for the possibility of SARS-2 infection by lab people. It is much more contagious than SARS-1. Now every lab is interested in get a vial of virus to do drug discovery. This can potentially [be] a big issue. I don’t think most people have a clue," wrote Shan Lu.

Despite weighing in heavily on the paper, Lu elected not to be included in the coauthorship, stating in a Feb. 12, 2020, message, "I definitely will not be an author as you guys did everything. It can also keep things somewhat independent as the editor."

Extra to collapsing the distance between author and editor, Lu subsequently admitted he accepted the paper with "basically no review."

— (@)

"Taken together, the authors' and editor's private communications indicate the paper is a product of scientific misconduct, up to and including fraud, by the authors and by the Editor-in-Chief of Emerging Microbes & Infections, Shan Lu," said the open letter. "Now that these documents have come to light, we urge Emerging Microbes & Infections to issue an Expression of Editorial Concern for this paper and to initiate a retraction process."

Taylor and Francis, the publisher of the journal, said in a statement to Blaze News, "We can confirm that the Editor of the journal forwarded the open letter to Taylor & Francis on 14th June and that our Publishing Ethics & Integrity team are investigating the concerns raised, in accordance with the Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines and our Editorial Policies."

Nature Medicine

The journal Nature Medicine published the controversial paper "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2" on March 17, 2020, which Fauci used on multiple occasions to suggest to the American public that COVID-19 was not a lab leak but rather an animal virus that jumped to a human.

Blaze News previously reported that despite privately discussing the prospect that the natural-origins theory was rubbish, the paper's four official authors — Kristian Andersen, W. Ian Lipkin, Edward Holmes, and Robert Garry — concluded, "We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible."

Andersen, a Danish evolutionary biologist and Scripps Research Institute immunology professor, was especially doubtful in private about the conclusion he gave his name to.

On Jan. 31, 2020, Andersen wrote to Fauci, "You have to look very closely at the genome to see features that are potentially engineered. ... I should mention that after discussions earlier today, Eddie [Holmes], Bob [Garry], Mike [Farzan], and myself all find the genome to be inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory."

On Feb. 8, Andersen stated, "Passage of SARS-like CoVs have been ongoing for several years, and more specifically in Wuhan under BSL-2 conditions. ... The fact that Wuhan became the epicenter of the ongoing epidemic caused by nCoV is likely an unfortunate coincidence, but it raises questions that would be wrong to dismiss out of hand. Our main work over the last couple of weeks has been focused on trying to disprove any type of lab theory, but we are at a crossroad where the scientific evidence isn't conclusive enough to say that we have high confidence in any of the three main theories considered."

Andersen also expressed concern about a paper penned by Ralph Baric and Zhengli Shi concerning the apparent insertion of furin cleavage sites into SARS, which he and his colleagues figured for a "how-to-manual for building the Wuhan coronavirus in a laboratory."

Last month, Ebright and five others wrote to Joao Montiero, the chief editor of Nature Medicine, requesting a retraction. They noted that documentation obtained through public records requests along with congressional testimony from Andersen and Garry "provide conclusive evidence of misconduct."

The letter does not mention Fauci's alleged involvement in the development of the paper but instead World Health Organization scientist Jeremy Farrar's unacknowledged role in the "paper's development, including its prompting, organizing, editing, and approval."

'It is imperative that this misleading and damaging product of scientific misconduct be removed from the scientific literature.'

"This omission of a significant role played by the head of a funding agency, allegedly to maintain his 'independence,' represents a serious breach of publishing ethics that completely undermines the credibility of the journal and calls into question the motivation behind the paper," said the letter. "The classification of the paper as an 'opinion' rather than a 'research article' further exacerbates the issue, as the authors' intentional withholding of Farrar's involvement damages public trust in the editorial process."

Ebright and scores of other scientists pressed Nature Medicine last year for a retraction as well, noting in an open letter dated July 26, 2023, "It is imperative that this misleading and damaging product of scientific misconduct be removed from the scientific literature. We, as STEM and STEM-policy professionals, call upon Nature Medicine to publish an expression of editorial concern for the paper and to begin a process of withdrawal or retraction of the paper."

Blaze News reached out to Montiero for comment, but he did not respond by deadline.

Science

Ebright, Stanford University epidemiologist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and dozens of other scientists signed another open letter on June 14 to the editors of the journal Science with regards to two papers: "The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic," and "The molecular epidemiology of multiple zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2," both of which named Jonathan Pekar of the University of California, San Diego, as an author along with Andersen, Holmes, Garry, evolutionary biologist Andrew Rambaut, and Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona.

Blurbs leading into the papers, which were both largely funded by Fauci's NIAID — whose parent agency supported and financed research at the Wuhan lab — and published on July 26, 2022, stated, "The precise events surrounding virus spillover will always be clouded, but all of the circumstantial evidence so far points to more than one zoonotic event occurring in Huanan market in Wuhan, China, likely during November–December 2019."

According to the scientists seeking retractions, the analyses and the premises of "Worobey et al. 2022 and Pekar et al. 2022 are unsound," and the papers may be "products of scientific misconduct, up to and including scientific fraud."

"Phylogenomic evidence, epidemiological evidence, and documentary evidence all indicate that SARS-CoV-2 entered humans in July-November 2019," says the letter. "Arguments based on data for the Huanan Seafood Market on or after mid- to late December 2019 — as in Worobey et al. 2022 and Pekar et al. 2022 — cannot, even in principle, shed light on spillover into humans that occurred one to five months earlier, in July-November, 2019."

— (@)

The open letter noted that Andersen, Garry, Holmes, and others knew full well that the "premises and conclusions of their paper were invalid at the time the paper was drafted."

A spokesman for American Association for the Advancement of Science, the publisher of the Science family of journals, confirmed to Blaze News that it had received the letter.

"We follow COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) processes to address any concerns raised on published papers and are doing so here," said the spokesman.

The AAAS spokesman noted in a subsequent email, "We will follow up when we make a final decision."

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