Fauci's agency backed an experiment aerosolizing lethal Ebola — then he panicked about what it exposed about vaccination



The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under Anthony Fauci funded deadly gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at the likely Chinese epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, SARS-COV-2 was apparently not the first deadly virus that created panic in the former NIAID director's office.

'I believe all of this is important for bio defense.'

According to a journal entry obtained by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and published by Just the News, Fauci privately expressed terror upon learning that his agency had supported a U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases experiment that took Ebola — a deadly virus with a case fatality rate ranging from 25% to 90% in recent outbreaks — and aerosolized it, thereby making it airborne.

Fauci appeared to be more concerned about what damning insights the killer form of Ebola provided into a relevant vaccine than about his agency's role in the production of an airborne plague.

In a journal entry dated March 7, 2016, Fauci wrote that he was informed "about a crazy situation where USAMRIID did an aerosolized challenge of Zika in NHPs and showed that the VSV vaccine did not protect (no surprise). However, they showed that although the 2 control animals died and 16 of 20 vaccinated animals died, there was more inflammation in the lungs of the vaccinated animals – implying that vaccination is bad."

Fauci accused "those guys at USAMRIID" of being "idiots."

RELATED: First domino to fall? Fauci's 'consigliere' pleads GUILTY to role in COVID cover-up

A doctor administers a serum to a patient with the Ebola virus disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. BENEDICTION MURHABAZI/AFP/Getty Images

Two days later, Fauci wrote that he had a teleconference with officials from the White House, the CIA, the National Intelligence Authority, the Pentagon, and the Department of Health and Human services "regarding an experiment that the USAMRIID did that challenged [nonhuman primates] with aerosolized Ebola to see if the [vesicular stomatitis virus] vaccine protected. Obviously, it did not. Stupid experiment."

The two unvaccinated primates in the experiment's control group did not have inflammation in the lung, but Fauci noted that the "vaccinated animals had necrosis, inflammation and fibrin in the lungs."

After highlighting the finding that Ebola vaccination was apparently a liability in this case, Fauci stated, "This should have been a classified experiment. The foolish DOD people send the data to the FDA and then circulated as FYI to various embassies including to those in West Africa where we are about to engage on a much larger DSD vaccine trial for Ebola."

"The embassies in West Africa (Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone) as you might expect went bonkers since it looks like we're going to vaccinated [sic] people with the dangers [sic] vaccine," added Fauci.

The Obama administration announced plans in early 2015 to begin testing Ebola vaccines in Africa and conducted Ebola vaccine trials in Africa well into 2016. Fauci publicly stated at the time, "A safe and effective vaccine will undoubtedly be a critical tool."

In his journal, Fauci bemoaned the lack of secrecy about the Pentagon's "bioterror related experiments using a variety of Ebola vaccines to determine their efficacy against aerosolized challenge with people," then suggested that government researchers should refrain from publishing such experiments "since they could indicate a vulnerability."

Fauci concluded the March 9, 2016, entry by writing, "I believe all of this is important for bio defense, but has little to do with naturally emerging Ebola outbreaks. Nonetheless, the idea that the vaccine can do harm is now causing people a great deal of concern."

According to NIAID documents released by Sen. Paul, Fauci's agency funded at least one of the Ebola aerosol experiments.

Paul noted, "The study was conducted at the Army's infectious disease institute at Fort Detrick under a NIAID task order, an engineered exposure that drove the virus deep into the lung in a way natural infection would not. NIAID helped craft the study design. Its own internal report later confirmed: 'NIAID provided funds.'"

Screenshot of NIAID documents

That "internal report" was attached to an email sent to Fauci by Michael Kurilla on March 18, 2016, in response to a request from Fauci. "This originated with concerns that NIAID undertook studies that should have been classified (or perhaps even never conducted)," Kurilla wrote.

In a March 10, 2016, email to an underling at NIAID, Fauci noted that he "almost fell off [his] chair" when the Pentagon admitted at the multi-agency that it funded the experiment with NIAID.

Fauci subsequently demanded more information about his agency's involvement with the experiments, telling subordinates in a March 11 email, "No one will get hurt if they made a mistake, but then they told me the truth. If someone does not tell me the truth and I find out they did not, then they are gone."

Last month, Fauci's former senior adviser and longtime acolyte David Morens pleaded guilty to his role in the attempted cover-up of federal records pertaining to the origin of the COVID-19 virus and to a clandestine initiative to restore U.S. funding to the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The NIAID, USAMRIID, and a legal representative for Fauci did not respond to Blaze News' requests for comment. Kurilla could not be reached for comment.

Sen. Paul told Just the News, "Americans deserve to know what kind of risky research their taxpayer dollars are funding. It is clear additional oversight is needed into what Dr. Fauci's institute was paying for long before COVID."

Dr. Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, told Blaze News that the Ebola aerosol experiments were unjustified:

Ferret models of Ebola virus infection by the intramuscular route and the intranasal route already had been performed and published. There was no legitimate justification for performing an animal study — especially an extremely costly primate study — of Ebola virus infection by aerosols in an aerosol chamber. The fact that the NIAID funded and DOD performed this redundant, pointless, and extremely costly study underscores the over-funding, excess capacity, and waste in U.S. bioweapons-agents research and the opportunities for reductions in over-funding, excess capacity, and waste in U.S. bioweapons-agents research.

Ebright added that Fauci's "main reaction to the study was that its existence and its results needed to be classified, in order to prevent policymakers and the public from learning about its existence and drawing conclusions from its results."

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First domino to fall? Fauci's 'consigliere' pleads GUILTY to role in COVID cover-up



David Morens, a longtime acolyte of Anthony Fauci, has pleaded guilty to his role in the attempted cover-up of federal records pertaining to the origin of the COVID-19 virus and to a clandestine initiative to restore U.S. funding to the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology via disgraced British zoologist Peter Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance, according to the Department of Justice.

"This is potentially the watershed moment in seeking long overdue and morally required accountability for perhaps the biggest travesty ever foisted upon the American people," stated BlazeTV host Steve Deace.

'The race now is on for Fauci's felons to rat each other out.'

Morens served as senior adviser to Fauci in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' Office of the Director from 2006 through 2022. In April, he was indicted and charged with conspiracy, destruction of records in federal investigation, and concealment of records.

Under the deal he ultimately struck with federal prosecutors, Morens pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy to commit offenses and to defraud the United States. He now faces up to five years in prison.

"Morens obstructed the Oversight Project's investigation and pled guilty to it today," Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, told Blaze News. "I hope this serves as a lesson to other bureaucrats that it is our government and we pay them to work there and for us. It's our information, and they should never hide it from us."

Morens' attorney, Tim Belevetz, said in a statement to Blaze News, "By pleading guilty today, Dr. Morens has taken responsibility for what he did, and he will continue to do so."

RELATED: Fauci was apparently warned to save '

David Morens. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

While speculation abounds, it remains unclear whether Morens has agreed to testify against the unnamed co-conspirators in his case.

FBI Director Kash Patel noted, however, that "this FBI investigation remains ongoing."

Over concerns that COVID had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where dangerous gain-of-function experiments were conducted on coronaviruses, the National Institutes of Health terminated in 2020 a grant to EcoHealth Alliance titled "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence," which EcoHealth Alliance had subawarded to the WIV.

'There will be no "there" there.'

The Justice Department noted on the basis of Morens' guilty plea that after the grant was terminated, Morens and "Co-Conspirator 2" helped "Co-Conspirator 1" restore the grant "and counter the narrative that COVID-19 leaked from a lab."

Context appears to indicate that "Co-Conspirator 1" in this case is Daszak.

For starters, the DOJ noted that the NIH terminated "Co-Conspirator 1's" grant and named the grant, which documents show was received by Daszak's now-defunct company, EcoHealth Alliance. The DOJ noted further that Co-Conspirator 1 made the subaward to the WIV, which his company had done. Furthermore, Daszak's name repeatedly comes up in the Morens emails previously released by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which show them discussing ways to hide their communications from public view.

Politico identified "Co-Conspirator 2" as Gerald Keusch, a former director of NIH's Fogarty International Center who now works with the NIAD lab at Boston University.

Neither Daszak nor Keusch has been charged with a crime in this case, and neither responded to Blaze News' request for comment.

"In anticipation that their communications would be requested through FOIA Requests, Morens, Co-Conspirator 1, and Co-Conspirator 2 agreed in writing to intentionally hide their communications from public view by corresponding using Morens’s personal Gmail account, rather than his official NIH email account," said the DOJ.

Emails previously published by the subcommittee highlight the intentional nature of Morens' evasiveness.

In an April 21, 2021, email to Daszak, Morens wrote, for instance: "I forgot to say there is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony [Fauci] on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble."

In a May 13, 2021, email to Keusch with Daszak CC-ed, Morens referred to "our 'secret' back channel."

In another email to Keusch dated Nov. 19, 2021, Morens wrote, "BOTH my gmail and phone calls are now safe. Text is NOT, as it can be FOIA'd, as can my govt email. So you and Peter and others should be able to email me on gmail only."

Morens allegedly even sought the help of the NIH FOIA office for instruction on how to delete federal records.

"I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia'd but before the search starts, so I think we are all safe," he wrote in a Feb. 24, 2021, email. "Plus i deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail."

RELATED: Days after Biden inauguration, FBI shielded Wuhan lab collaborator from investigation after China trip

Disgraced zoologist Peter Daszak. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The Justice Department noted that "the co-conspirators used Morens’s personal Gmail account to exchange non-public NIH information; correspond about their efforts to influence NIH to fund Company 1; exchange edits to drafts of letters addressed to NIH leadership for Company 1 and Co-Conspirator 1; and 'back-channel' information to Senior NIAID Official 1."

In addition to admitting to his efforts to keep Americans in the dark about federal employees' damning discussions, Morens admitted to conspiring with "Co-Conspirator 1" to pay illegal gratuities.

"Co-Conspirator 1" is alleged to have said that he would treat Morens to meals at Michelin-starred restaurants around the world and gifted him wine for his "behind-the-scenes shenanigans" and even arranged for its delivery.

'Fauci and Morens were on a radical mission to remake America.'

Morens' guilty plea has inspired hope that Fauci might soon similarly be visited by consequence.

"Despite Anthony Fauci’s attempts to distance himself, David Morens was Fauci’s trusted consigliere and fixer for some 30 years," Matt Kibbe, the host of BlazeTV's docuseries "The Coverup," told Blaze News. "They had coauthored over 40 articles together, including this Orwellian nugget from November 2020 in the academic journal Cell: 'Living in greater harmony with nature will require changes in human behavior as well as other radical changes that may take decades to achieve: rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence.'"

"Fauci and Morens were on a radical mission to remake America, mad scientists who viewed the rest of us all as caged beagles in their laboratory," continued Kibbe. "But then they got caught, and Morens’ guilty plea gives me new hope that justice will find Fauci as well. Much more receipts on Morens and Fauci in my series 'The Coverup,' particularly Episode 2 featuring Rand Paul."

Dr. Richard H. Ebright of Rutgers University told Blaze News, "Morens' guilty plea is an important first step in holding accountable the malfeasant U.S. officials who funded the reckless gain-of-function research in Wuhan that caused COVID and who then defrauded the global public about the origin of COVID."

"It seems possible, even likely, that Morens was 'flipped' and that Morens' guilty plea is the product of a plea bargain in which Morens has agreed to testify against Fauci, Daszak, Keusch, and others," continued Ebright.

Justin Goodman, the senior vice president of the White Coat Waste Project, told Blaze News that Morens' guilty plea, Fauci's recent contempt vote, and other recent steps toward accountability "are signs that knives are finally out for the conniving animal experimenters who caused and covered up a likely lab leak in Wuhan. Hopefully more heads will roll."

Fauci's legal representative and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland did not respond to Blaze News' requests for comment.

"The COVID cartel has one less member," wrote Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson (R). "Accountability has begun, and much more needs to follow."

Editor's note: Mike Howell is a contributor to Blaze News.

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Fauci was apparently warned to save '$$' to tackle vaccine fallout: 'Will come back to bite you'



Anthony Fauci and other health officials who told Americans the COVID-19 vaccines were "safe and effective" had suspicions to the contrary, a new document drop from Republican Sens. Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Rand Paul (Ky.) appears to show.

A newly released email from May 2021 seemingly reveals that the head of the Food and Drug Administration was so concerned about the novel mRNA vaccines that she advised Fauci and then-National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins to create a contingency fund to deal with the fallout from them.

'We cannot ignore her.'

During the pandemic, Fauci was the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases director and the face of America's mass vaccination campaign. He routinely emphasized the safety and efficacy of the vaccines and made a point of expressing his "extreme confidence" in the science behind them.

"I want to encourage everyone who has the opportunity to get vaccinated so that we can have a veil of protection over this country that would end this pandemic," he said during his televised vaccination ceremony in December 2020.

Behind closed doors, however, he had his doubts.

The immunologist privately highlighted, for instance, a potential association between vaccination and miscarriage in a Jan. 25, 2021, text exchange with the surgeon general and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP/Getty Images

"I asked around a bit more and another issue came up that you need to be aware of," Fauci told Vivek Murthy and then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. "Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester."

Fauci — who was made aware later that day that initial pregnancy studies avoided "vaccination in first trimester due to possible fever and higher rates of miscarriage in first trimester" — stated publicly just days later that the data pertaining to vaccination among pregnant women "so far has no red flags."

Private concerns were not limited to the vaccine's impact on pregnant mothers and their unborn babies.

On Sunday, Sen. Johnson, chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, published a May 27, 2021, email sent by then-acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock to Fauci and then-NIH Director Collins regarding the perceived need to begin squirreling away scientific research funds to later investigate vaccine side effects.

"I have been contacted by a number of people who have experienced adverse events post COVID-19 vaccination (from all three of the current vaccines)," wrote Woodcock. "Many are healthcare professionals, some of whom I know. The symptoms do not fit together into a distinctive syndrome and most are not easily quantifiable or evaluated with standard laboratory testing."

While cognizant that "during mass vaccination you will get a lot pf psychological reactions," Woodcock was nevertheless sensitive to complaints among apparent vaccine casualties that "no one takes them seriously, no one knows how to treat them" and that there had been "no effort to study this."

By the time the FDA commissioner sent this email, VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, had already received reports of 8,650 deaths associated with the COVID injection, with 39% of those deaths taking place within two days of injection, noted Johnson's office.

After casting doubt on the ability of VAERS to detect the full spectrum of side-effect cases, Woodcock stated in the email: "I think it would be worthwhile to do a study and evaluate a cohort of these individuals" who allegedly experienced "adverse events" after receiving the vaccine.

"But of course $$ need to be made available, and you would need an investigator who is interested in 'medical mysteries,'" wrote Woodcock. "I doubt the industry would support, for obvious reasons. But my experience is, that if you let a problem fester, then it will come back to bite you later and you are not prepared."

Fauci subsequently told Collins, "We cannot ignore her. We should probably bring in CDC and see what Rochelle thinks."

Johnson's office noted that based on the information reviewed to date, it's unclear whether Walensky was ever consulted.

Blaze News did not immediately receive a response from the CDC, the FDA, or an attorney representing Fauci. Woodcock could not be reached for comment.

Roughly three months after Woodcock echoed the complaints of apparent vaccine casualties, she celebrated the FDA's first approval of a COVID-19 vaccine, which had previously been made available as a result of the agency's Emergency Use Authorization authority.

"While this and other vaccines have met the FDA’s rigorous, scientific standards for emergency use authorization, as the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine, the public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product," Woodcock stated at the time.

Johnson expressed outrage over the newly released email, writing, "Why wasn’t the public alerted to their concerns? Why did they continue to push and mandate the COVID shot? Why weren’t Americans allowed fully informed consent?"

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Texts: Fauci And Friends Covered Up Concerns About The Covid Vax And Miscarriages

The latest communications from the Covid czar, obtained by the committees investigating him, note concerns about 'mutations.'

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Researchers tied to Fauci’s COVID cover-up still scoring big NIH grants



The Trump administration's National Institutes of Health is still funding some medical researchers who suppressed debate about the possibility of a lab leak as the origin of COVID-19.

Following the outbreak, then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and then-NIH Director Francis Collins strongly condemned allegations that the virus was the result of a lab leak, primarily citing a March 2020 peer-reviewed article from National Medicine titled "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2."

'How do you put all this together, whether you believe in this series of coincidences, what you know of the lab in Wuhan, how much could be in nature — accidental release or natural event?'

However, released emails revealed that the scientists involved in drafting the Proximal Origin initially had concerns that the virus had leaked from a lab.

Kristian G. Andersen, who would go on to be listed as the primary author of the article, wrote in an email to Fauci on January 31, "The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered."

Andersen further noted that he, Edward Holmes, Robert Garry, and Michael Farzan "all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory."

"But we have to look at this much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could still change," he added.

Holmes and Garry also helped draft the Proximal Origin.

RELATED: BlazeTV's 'The Coverup' exposes how the censorship industrial complex silenced Americans during COVID

Photo by Jane Barlow - WPA Pool/Getty Images

In an email to Fauci and Collins on February 2, 2020, Farzan was quoted as saying, "Nothing seems to specifically suggest whether this virus was most likely to be 'adapted,' 'evolved,' or maybe even 'engineered.' So I think it becomes a question of how do you put all this together, whether you believe in this series of coincidences, what you know of the lab in Wuhan, how much could be in nature — accidental release or natural event?"

"I am 70:30 or 60:40," he concluded. Farzan later backtracked, claiming those numbers were "inverted."

A House subcommittee found that the report was created after Fauci and Collins held a conference call in February with roughly a dozen scientists, four of whom drafted the paper days later. That draft was reportedly sent to Fauci and Collins "for editing and approval" before it was published.

During a 2023 congressional hearing, Andersen denied allegations that Fauci prompted researchers to write the Proximal Origin report and rejected claims that grants were used to persuade scientists to dismiss the lab-leak theory.

Despite early suspicions about the virus' origins, the final published version of the paper stated that the scientists' "analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus."

The report sparked allegations that the once-skeptical authors were now complicit in the cover-up of the virus' origins.

Yet grant records show that Andersen, Garry, and Ian Lipkin are still receiving taxpayer-funded grants, several of which are being used to conduct COVID-related research.

Andersen is receiving a few grants from the NIAID: one worth over $2.5 million, another for $319,000, and a third for $602,000.

The first grant provides funding to the Center for Viral Systems Biology. Andersen is the director and principal investigator of CViSB, while Garry is the co-director.

The project's summary states, "The COVID-19 pandemic is a stark reminder of the threat posed by infectious diseases, but other priority pathogens, such as Lassa and Ebola viruses, continue to pose significant challenges in endemic areas."

"Our central hypothesis remains that complex networks of viral and human factors, including distinct clinical, immunological, genetic, virological, and physiological attributes play key roles in determining the outcome and spread of Lassa, Ebola, and COVID-19," it continues. "Our overall goal is to identify these molecular networks and provide a deep system-level understanding of the virus, host, and environmental drivers of disease severity and spread to discover predictive markers of human disease."

RELATED: Despite Biden's pardon, Anthony Fauci still faces legal perils. Here they are.

Anthony Fauci. Photo by J. Scott Applewhite-Pool/Getty Images

The second grant provides funding for the CViSB's Administrative Core, led by Andersen, which includes support for all of the center's research projects to ensure its goals are successfully met.

The third grant funds "Project 2," which aims to "investigate the complex interplay of virus genetics and host immunity in determining epidemiology and outcome of infection with Lassa virus, Ebola virus, and SARS-CoV-2."

Garry was listed as the project leader on a separate grant for "Project 1," totaling nearly $515,000. The project's goal is "to generate an integrated, systems-level dataset that will enable development of models that predict disease severity or long-term sequelae in individuals infected with Lassa virus, Ebola virus or SARS-CoV-2, and protective responses to vaccines."

Another separate grant, totaling over $1.9 million, went to Columbia University's Center for Infection and Immunity for a project to study "gene-environment interactions between the immune system and infectious agents." The project lead and investigator was listed as Ian W. Lipkin, another co-author of the Proximal Origin.

Lipkin informed Blaze News that he is not pursuing SARS-CoV-2 research.

"Unless new data are uncovered that unequivocally demonstrate a point source, I don’t see how there will be resolution of this contentious and destructive debate," Lipkin said. "What is unequivocal is that wild animal markets and unregulated research with known or potential pandemic pathogens pose unacceptable risks to public health."

According to the NIH RePORTER, Holmes and Andrew Rambaut, also a Proximal Origin co-author, do not appear to have any active projects that are receiving grants at this time.

Dr. Richard H. Ebright of Rutgers University told Blaze News that there is "compelling evidence" that the authors of the Proximal Origin knew the paper's conclusions were "invalid at the time it was submitted for publication, at the time it was accepted for publication, and at the time it was published."

He accused the authors of committing "science fraud by publishing conclusions they knew to be invalid" and then "compound[ing] that science fraud by publishing patently unsound follow-up papers purporting to support the invalid conclusions."

Ebright called for the NIH Office of Research Integrity and the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate and "pursue retraction of their fraudulent paper and unsound follow-up papers, termination and clawback of their federal funding, and debarment from eligibility for future federal funding."

An NIH spokesperson told Blaze News, "NIH does not discuss grants compliance reviews on specific funded awards, recipient institutions, or supported investigators, whether or not such reviews occurred or are under way."

Andersen and Garry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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COVID lab leak denial lingers on NIH’s website: 'Misleading and false'



Allegations that COVID-19 was the result of a lab leak were strongly and swiftly denied by the former Biden administration and some prominent health officials, despite dissenting opinions within the medical field, including from Jay Bhattacharya, who now serves as President Donald Trump's National Institutes of Health director.

'I'm convinced that research agenda led to this pandemic through a lab leak in China, in Wuhan.'

A page on the NIH's website, last reviewed by the agency on March 16, 2022, has not yet been updated by the new administration, still claiming that the leak theory is "misleading and false."

The NIH webpage reads:

Unfortunately, because the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 have not yet been identified, misleading and false allegations have been made about NIAID-supported research on naturally occurring bat coronaviruses. Specifically, these allegations have targeted research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, funded through a subaward from NIAID grantee EcoHealth Alliance. The naturally occurring bat coronaviruses studied through this subaward were significantly, genetically different from SARS-CoV-2 and, therefore, could not have caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bhattacharya was one of the voices amid the COVID-era insisting that there was a cover-up of the virus' origins.

In a May interview with Politico, Bhattacharya stated that he believes the U.S. should do more to reveal the origins of the virus, but noted that China has not been cooperating with those investigations.

"There's enough evidence that I've seen from the outside that suggests that there was at the very least a cover-up of dangerous experiments that were done in China with — by the way — the help of the U.S. and also Germany and the U.K.," Bhattacharya told the news outlet.

RELATED: NIH staffers storm out as Bhattacharya delivers reality bombshell about COVID origin

Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images

He referred to the experiments as "a very, very dangerous kind of utopian research agenda."

"I'm convinced that research agenda led to this pandemic through a lab leak in China, in Wuhan," Bhattacharya continued. "But that was a global effort."

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Photo by ALLISON BAILEY/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

He called it "absolutely striking" that then-Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci and other leaders would invest so much effort into suppressing the theory and "denigrating scientists who very legitimately raised this possibility."

Blaze News contacted the NIH to determine whether it is aware of the webpage dismissing lab leak claims and if it plans to update its website. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Fauci's wife, vax-peddling buddies get the boot at NIH



Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. indicated last week that his department would downsize its workforce from 82,000 to 62,000 employees as part of a broader overhaul intended to maximize efficiency and save taxpayers money. Senior officials at the National Institutes of Health, a subordinate agency, were evidently not immune to this shake-up.

Insiders told Politico that Christine Grady, the wife of former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, was ousted Tuesday from her role as senior investigator at the NIH Clinical Center's Department of Bioethics. Kennedy allegedly signed off on the termination of Grady, who spearheaded research into the ethics of the U.S. pandemic response.

Fauci allies Clifford Lane, deputy director for clinical research and special projects at NIAID, and Emily Erbelding, director of the NIAID division of microbiology and infectious diseases, were reportedly also given the boot.

Several institute directors, including Fauci ally Jeanne Marrazzo — the NIAID director who claimed during the pandemic that "wearing a mask is very effective" and told people not to gather in groups, including at "gyms, bars and churches" — were among the officials linked to the government's development and rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines who were offered reassignments.

'What we've been doing isn't working.'

A copy of the agency's email to directors obtained by Nature states, "HHS proposes to reassign you as part of a broader effort to strengthen the Department and more effectively promote the health of the American people."

The letter offered the Washington, D.C., and Atlanta area-based directors the option of working in Alaska, Montana, and Oklahoma — supposedly an inducement to quit — noting, "This underserved community deserves the highest quality of service, and HHS needs individuals like you to deliver that service."

Whether they were fired or effectively resigned rather than transfer to distant outposts is unclear.

As the old guard were marched out of the NIH on what coincidentally was Dr. Jay Bhattacharya's first day in office as the director of the agency, Kennedy noted on X, "This is a difficult moment for all of us at HHS. Our hearts go out to those who have lost their jobs."

Despite characterizing the terminations as difficult, Kennedy underscored that they were necessary.

"The reality is clear: What we've been doing isn't working. Despite spending $1.9 trillion in annual costs, Americans are getting sicker every year. In the past four years alone, the agency’s budget has grown by 38% — yet outcomes continue to decline," wrote the health secretary. "We must shift course. HHS needs to be recalibrated to emphasize prevention, not just sick care. These changes will not affect Medicare, Medicaid, or other essential health services.

'This will go down as one of the darkest days in modern scientific history.'

Bhattacharya said in an email to staff that the terminations would "have a profound impact on key N.I.H. administrative functions, including communications, legislative affairs, procurement and human resources" and thanked the "scientists and staff whose work has contributed to lifesaving breakthroughs in biology and medicine."

Although a long time coming, the layoffs caught some workers off guard and enraged certain health establishmentarians.

Jessica Henry, formerly a digital communications specialist at the NIH's National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, told the New York Times that she learned after showing up to at work in Maryland on Tuesday that she had been canned with her entire team of communications and health education specialists.

"I also just feel so confused, and honestly kind of angry, because we hear a lot about how the administration wants to increase transparency," said the former theater teacher. "They want accountability to the American people for how their tax dollars are being spent. And from what I can tell, they just fired all of us who do that."

Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, bemoaned the layoffs, telling Nature, "This will go down as one of the darkest days in modern scientific history in my 50 years in the business. These are going to be huge losses to the research and public health community."

"These are going to be huge losses to the research community," added Osterholm.

Monica Bertagnolli, former NIH director under Joe Biden, told Nature the treatment of the directors was "frankly unconscionable," adding, "These are all outstanding leaders, who were let go without accounting for the harm that could be done with the loss of research productivity and the loss of programs delivering lifesaving treatments."

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