America doesn’t have a science problem. It has a trust problem.

The collapse of trust didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened because the people running our institutions — government agencies, public health bureaucracies, and elite media — chose fear over facts, power over principle, and silence over accountability.

Truth alone won’t restore trust. We need courage. We need accountability. And above all, we need to stop pretending that silence keeps the peace.

I’ve spent more than three decades in life sciences, investing in innovation and funding companies that bring real cures to market. Bureaucracy can slow progress. But during COVID-19, the damage went farther. It wasn’t just red tape. It was arrogance, censorship, and the collapse of debate inside institutions once devoted to transparency and truth.

We told Americans to “trust the experts,” then changed the story every few weeks. We locked down playgrounds while allowing political protests. We shut down small businesses while rewarding massive platforms. We punished skepticism, not misinformation. We arrested surfers, fired nurses, and drove policemen and military personnel out of their jobs for refusing a vaccine. Where were the “my body, my choice” voices then?

Now Americans don’t just question mandates — they question everything: the data, the motives, the science itself.

Who can blame them? Childhood vaccination rates are falling because public health failed. An entire generation lost precious developmental time in isolation. Families grieved alone. And the same bureaucrats behind those mandates persuaded us to blame COVID, when in fact it was their decisions that did much of the damage. No one has been questioned. No one has been punished. Not one county health official has been held accountable.

A recent Gallup poll showed trust in institutions like the CDC and FDA has collapsed by more than 30 points in just a few years. That trust won’t be restored by press conferences or new slogans. It will only be restored when real leaders tell the truth about what went wrong and take responsibility to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Dr. Scott Atlas put it plainly: The lockdowns weren’t the result of the virus. They were the result of decisions — decisions made by people who ignored known data, silenced dissent, and wielded authority like a weapon. And they got it wrong. Pretending otherwise only guarantees the disaster repeats.

So where do we start if we want to rebuild trust?

End the illusion of absolute authority. The CDC, NIH, and FDA must return to their proper role: advisory. They don’t make laws. They don’t issue mandates. They provide information — period.

Impose term limits on public health leadership. No more 30-year bureaucratic dynasties. Power without turnover hardens into ideology.

Ban conflicts of interest. No royalty payments to government scientists from the very companies they regulate. No revolving door between regulators and pharma.

Demand transparency. Every agency meeting, vote, and decision should be public and immediate. If they work for us, we should know what they’re saying.

These aren’t partisan talking points. They’re common-sense reforms. The stakes are too high to shrug and “move on.” Parents who lost a year of their children’s development, the elderly who died alone, the small business owners who lost everything — they deserve accountability. This isn’t about public policy. It’s about principle.

RELATED: No perp walks, no peace

Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images

And here’s the deeper truth: Fixing this mess isn’t just government’s job. It’s up to us — the entrepreneurs, innovators, parents, doctors, investors, and voters — to become stewards of truth. Not because we crave power, but because we believe in clarity. Because we still believe in the ideals America was built on.

I came to the United States at 15 after fleeing war in Beirut. I’ve seen what happens when fear and control override freedom and reason. I’ve spent my life betting on better — on ideas, on people, and on this country.

Truth alone won’t restore trust. We need courage. We need accountability. And above all, we need to stop pretending that silence keeps the peace.

It doesn’t. It only postpones the next disaster.

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.

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."

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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NIH scrubs Biden-era COVID origin narrative from website following Blaze News reporting

The National Institutes of Health told Blaze News on Friday that it updated its website to remove claims from the previous administration that dismissed the COVID-19 lab leak theory.

'The NIH has removed these factually incorrect positions from the last administration.'

As of Thursday, an NIH webpage stated:

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.

Blaze News contacted the NIH, inquiring whether it was aware of the webpage — which was last reviewed in March 2022 — and if it had plans to update its website to remove statements that the lab leak theory was a hoax.

The NIH responded on Friday, stating that it had recently updated the website.

Department of Health and Human Services communications director Andrew Nixon stated, "The Biden era NIH position on origin of the COVID pandemic — that the lab leak theory is a 'conspiracy theory' — is out of line with the considerable scientific and forensic evidence to the contrary. The NIH has removed these factually incorrect positions from the last administration."

Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images

Blaze News confirmed that as of Friday afternoon, the NIH had taken down the webpage. It now reads, "You are not authorized to access this page."

Nixon added that the "true origin" of the virus could be found on the White House's website, which states that COVID-19 "possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature" and that the data supports that cases stemmed from "a single introduction into humans." The website further notes the Wuhan lab's "history of conducting gain-of-function research ... at inadequate biosafety levels."

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The Trump administration's National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya was one of the prominent voices during the COVID era insisting that there was a cover-up regarding the origins of the virus.

Bhattacharya told Politico in May that he is "convinced" the research experiments in Wuhan, China, "led to this pandemic through a lab leak."

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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.

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."

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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Here’s What The Corporate Media Won’t Tell You About Rising Measles Cases

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 1,309 confirmed cases of measles in the U.S. as of July 15 — the highest number of cases in three decades. The fearmongering corporate media have rushed to blame decreasing vaccine rates and “unvaccinated” populations. But largely missing from or downplayed in these outlets’ coverage are […]

HHS scraps COVID vaccine schedule for children and pregnant women: 'It's common sense, and it's good science'

The Health and Human Services Department announced Tuesday that the COVID vaccine will be dropped from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's recommended vaccine schedule for healthy pregnant women and children.

By amending the vaccine schedule, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is combatting the residual COVID hysteria from former President Joe Biden's administration. Kennedy made the highly anticipated announcement alongside Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Martin Makary, who serves as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

"I couldn't be more pleased to announce that as of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule," Kennedy said.

'We're now one step closer to realizing President Trump's promise to make America healthy again.'

RFK JR: “As of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule. We’re now one step closer to realizing President Trump’s promise to Make America Healthy Again.”

HUGE! pic.twitter.com/Zq5eRhdQkf
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) May 27, 2025

"Last year, the Biden administration urged healthy children to get yet another COVID shot, despite the lack of any clinical data, to support the repeat booster strategy in children," Kennedy said.

"That ends today," Bhattacharya added. "It's common sense, and it's good science."

Prior to the announcement, the CDC recommended the COVID vaccine to any person over 6 months old, particularly people over the age of 65, pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers, and women planning to conceive.

Despite the CDC's previous recommendations, several studies and medical professionals have indicated that the COVID vaccines are not as effective or as necessary as they were originally made out to be. Some even noted a range of adverse effects on children and pregnant women.

"There's no evidence healthy kids need it today, and most countries have stopped recommending it for children," Makary said.

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

This is just the latest effort from President Donald Trump's administration to restore faith in American institutions, especially when it comes to health. Just last week, Kennedy released his highly anticipated MAHA report, which shed light on potential root causes for chronic health issues like chemical exposure, ultra-processed foods, and over-medicalization of children.

"We're now one step closer to realizing President Trump's promise to make America healthy again," Kennedy said.

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DOJ Can Dig Up Even More Evidence U.S. Taxpayers Funded Lab Creation Of Covid-19

The closest point of access that we have to the Wuhan lab is Dr. Peter Daszak. DOJ needs to start asking him questions.

Biden admin covered up potentially deadly COVID vaccine side effects for months: Senate report

A Senate report claims that President Joe Biden's administration was aware for months about heart issues stemming from COVID-19 vaccines and purposely withheld the information from the public.

A report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said government officials knew as early as February 2021 about the harmful side effects but waited until June to inform the public of the inherent dangers.

'The federal government was very well aware of the myocarditis signal, particularly in young men.'

The report revealed that U.S. health officials "knew about the risks" the vaccines carried related to myocarditis, inflammation of heart muscle, and pericarditis, inflammation of the fibrous sac surrounding the heart, but "downplayed the health concern" and "delayed informing the public about the risk."

The report, first obtained by the Daily Wire, showed that the U.S. government ignored warnings from several sources.

In February 2021, U.S. entities were notified of adverse effects by the Israeli Ministry of Health, as the country rolled out vaccines faster than America did. Still, CDC officials declined to make public the "large reports of myocarditis, particularly in young people, following the administration of the Pfizer vaccine."

It is unclear whether the Israeli government made an effort to notify the public, either.

That same month, a CDC official who co-led the Vaccine Safety Technical Work Group emailed her colleagues about 19,536 vaccine adverse event reports (through the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) that included 980 deaths after vaccination.

"Where known, the cause of death was often cardiovascular," the report read.

Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told the Daily Wire that the Biden administration did not want to increase "vaccine hesitancy" by reporting the side effects openly.

"But in being concerned about that, they violated the inviolable principle of informed consent," Johnson told the outlet. “The federal government was very well aware of the myocarditis signal, particularly in young men, as early as February [2021]."

In May 2021, the CDC omitted information from its "clinical considerations" on its website that advised doctors to restrict patients with myocarditis from "rigorous activity like competitive sports for at least 3 months."

The report also said that in June 2021, the White House distributed talking points to U.S. health officials "downplaying the risk of myocarditis."

"The depths of depravity of this cover-up keep getting deeper. They knew about vaccine side effects early on but withheld that information as they continued to push emergency use authorization even as young people were dying," BlazeTV's Matt Kibbe said about the report.

Kibbe added, "This scandal is ultimately about self-dealing between government bureaucrats and pharmaceutical companies, who all had financial incentives to bury the truth and keep pushing the vaccines."

Blaze News reached out to the National Institutes of Health and Health and Human Services for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

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

National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya hosted his first staff town hall on Monday.

The event, held on the NIH's main campus in Bethesda, Maryland, was packed with nearly 500 attendees and even more individuals tuning in online to watch Bhattacharya answer some of the 1,200 submitted questions, Science reported.

'If it's true that we sponsored research that caused the pandemic, and if you look at polls of the American people, that's what most people believe.'

Yet when Bhattacharya attempted to answer a question about the origin of the COVID-19 outbreak, many staffers fled the room in apparent protest.

Ahead of his response, Bhattacharya noted that some of those attending the event would likely disagree with his perspective.

"It's possible that the pandemic was caused by research conducted by human beings. And it's also possible that the NIH partly sponsored that research," Bhattacharya told the crowd.

He appeared to pause as dozens of NIH staffers stood up and left the room.

"It's nice to have free speech. You're welcome, you guys," he said, apparently addressing the protesters.

Some attendees who remained responded with applause.

Bhattacharya continued, "If it's true that we sponsored research that caused the pandemic, and if you look at polls of the American people, that's what most people believe. And I've looked at the scientific evidence I believe in."

"What we have to do is make sure that we do not engage in research that's posing any risk to any human populations," he added.

National Institutes of Health Director Jayanta Bhattacharya, U.S. President Donald Trump, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Anything else?

A Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee's minority staff report drafted by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) claimed that President Donald Trump's administration had "effectively" slashed the NIH's budget by $2.7 billion in the first three months of the year.

"Trump's war on science is an attack against anyone who has ever loved someone with cancer," Sanders said. "The American people do not want us to slash cancer research in order to give more tax breaks for billionaires."

The Department of Health and Human Services has labeled Sanders' claims as "unequivocally false."

"The report released by his office today is a politically motivated distortion that undermines the thousands of dedicated public health professionals across HHS, who remain steadfast in their commitment to delivering results for the American people," HHS stated.

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COVID wasn’t the only virus. Arrogance infected public health.

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

NIH scrubs Biden-era COVID origin narrative from website following Blaze News reporting

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

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Here’s What The Corporate Media Won’t Tell You About Rising Measles Cases

HHS scraps COVID vaccine schedule for children and pregnant women: 'It's common sense, and it's good science'

DOJ Can Dig Up Even More Evidence U.S. Taxpayers Funded Lab Creation Of Covid-19

Biden admin covered up potentially deadly COVID vaccine side effects for months: Senate report

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

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