Sen. Paul Blasts Gates, Fauci For Supporting Gain-Of-Function Research
Few lawmakers, if any, have been more outspoken in expressing outrage over the behavior of bureaucrats and other leaders — most notably, former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci — both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
One consistent theme of his statements on the matter has been a blanket denunciation of gain-of-function research meant to increase the transmissibility and lethality of naturally occurring diseases.
Such research at a lab in Wuhan, China, has been widely linked to the outbreak of COVID-19.
In remarks during a recent Fox News Channel interview, Paul once again took aim at Fauci while widening his target to include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
“The blame equally should go not only to Chinese authorities, but to Anthony Fauci and all those who advocated for this,” the Kentucky Republican said. “Look, Bill Gates has been over there recently. Bill Gates is the largest funder of trying to find these viruses in remote caves and bring them to big cities. What happened in China is they went 8 to 10 hours south of Wuhan, [200] to 300 feet deep into a cave, found viruses and took them back to a city of 15 million.”
Although he acknowledged that Gates’ advocacy might be “well-intentioned,” Paul said that such support helped advance what could very well be “the greatest danger to mankind.”
He cited experts who believe humans should not actively seek out viruses that pose no real threat to humanity, adding that what happened in Wuhan appears to be even worse than that.
“They bring viruses that we may never interact with,” Paul said. “They bring them back to the lab, but then they manipulate them by combining them with other viruses to create viruses that don’t exist in nature.”
The senator noted that Gates “funds the [World Health Organization] more than most countries do,” suggesting that the money trail proves that the billionaire is culpable. Of course, Paul saved his harshest critique for Fauci.
“He knew from the very beginning not only was he funding the Wuhan research, but he was going around the regulatory apparatus to let it happen, even though the rules said it shouldn’t have happened without more scrutiny,” Paul concluded. “This is a man, Anthony Fauci, who said in 2012 that this kind of research to create new viruses was so important that even if a pandemic should take place, that it’d be worth the knowledge. I think there’s several million people, particularly a million Americans, who would question whether that was good judgment or not.”
In response, the senator recommends uniting an “international consortium of countries” dedicated to limiting the use of gain-of-function research in the future.
