Fauci Defends NIH Funding Wuhan Lab: ‘Only Regret’ Is That It’s Caused ‘Such a Degree of Distraction’
7,159
Ian Hanchett23 Sep 20214,133
3:04
During an interview with CBS’ “The Takeout” podcast recorded on Wednesday and released on Thursday, White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci defended the NIH funding research at the Wuhan Institute Virology and said that “the only regret is that what it has caused right now is such a degree of distraction” from combating the pandemic.
Host Major Garrett asked, [relevant exchange begins around 7:35] “There were two grants from the National Institutes of Health into investigatory work in the field in the Wuhan Institute of Virology and another institution there. Have you run to ground what those did or didn’t do in terms of creating any atmosphere in which a leak could have occurred or might have occurred?”
Fauci responded, “Well, the grants that [were] funded were to do surveillance in the environment to ask and answer questions that I just mentioned, when you go out, do you see any viruses out there that could potentially evolve to infect humans and do you do surveillance among people in those areas in China to see if there’s any inkling that, under the radar screen, such viruses may have been circulating. In fact, one of the papers that came out from studies from that grant was extremely important in putting a definitive stamp of understanding of how the original SARS-CoV-1 was able to evolve. So, those were questions that got a high priority in peer review to do the research to try and understand that.”
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/09/23/fauci-defends-nih-funding-wuhan-lab-only-regret-is-that-its-caused-such-a-degree-of-distraction/
