05/07/2021 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 05/07/2021 09:46
Dear Director Fauci,
Over the past year, nearly 600,000 Americans and more than 3 million people worldwide have died from COVID-19. Across the globe, there have been more than 150 million confirmed cases of this disease, costing trillions in economic damage. Daily life has been upended and countless businesses destroyed. Understanding the cause of this pandemic-and ensuring that something like it never happens again-is the most important question facing the world today.
Given the stakes, we cannot afford to settle for a limited, blinkered, or politicized understanding of the origin of this terrible disease. While many in the scientific community were quick to dismiss the possibility that the COVID-19 outbreak originated with a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China, information initially released by the Trump State Department and later confirmed by the Biden administration suggests much closer examination is needed.[1]The State Department has detailed several concerning revelations, including that the U.S. government has reason to believe several researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) became sick in autumn 2019 with symptoms consistent with COVID-19, before the first public cases emerged in that community. Viruses have frequently leaked from labs over the years in China and elsewhere, including from accidentally infected researchers.
In fact, after World Health Organization (WHO) investigators were stymied as part of their joint report alongside Chinese officials, WHO Chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for further investigation of the lab leak theory, stating that it 'requires further investigation, potentially with additional missions involving specialist experts' and, 'as far as WHO is concerned all hypotheses remain on the table.'[2]
Through National Institutes of Health grants to the New York-based organization EcoHealth Alliance, the U.S. government helped fund research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).[3]While this funding was no doubt well-intentioned, taxpayers deserve a detailed understanding of whether federal resources supported dangerous 'gain-of-function' research, and whether this might have played a role in the outbreak of the pandemic. As the world seeks to recover from this pandemic, Americans deserve to understand not only how this catastrophe came about, but that their government is learning and internalizing lessons to ensure it does not happen again.
With that in mind, I respectfully ask for answers to the following questions:
Thank you for your consideration in this important matter. I look forward to your response and to working with you to help ensure the health and safety of the American public, now and in the future.
Sincerely,
Rep. Mike Gallagher
948272/why-the-u-s-government-stopped-funding-a-research-project-on-bats-and-coronaviru.