'I've Never Seen Anything Like This': Rand Paul Calls Out Scientist's Correspondence With Fauci

last year

At today's Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) grilled witness about the lab-leak theory and how the government approached it.

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Transcript

00:00Dr. Gary indicated that the intelligence community was somewhat unified or a lot

00:06of them believe this came from animals and that's just not true. The ones that

00:09have been vocal about this and talked a lot about have been the DOE which has

00:13more scientists than any other agency in Washington probably other than NIH.

00:17They've concluded that it did come from the lab. FBI concluded it came from the

00:22lab and we have a whistleblower from the CIA that says the scientists that were

00:25convened to study this voted six to one to say it came from the lab and then

00:29they were overruled by superiors for political reasons. So there's a lot of

00:33evidence that people within the intel agencies actually do believe that there

00:37is evidence that it came from the lab. In addition to people getting sick there's

00:40also about a week in October where they do imagery of who's using a cell phone

00:45and nobody's using a cell phone in the lab for about a week so the whole the

00:48labs completely empty for about a week and some people think that was during a

00:51cleanup period. But if you're sitting at home and you're sort of an independent

00:56you hear scientists over here saying gain of functions the best thing since

00:59sliced bread and over here you're saying well we really haven't developed any

01:02meaningful vaccines or technology from this you're like who do I believe and

01:07who you believe does go to character and so we have to look at some of the

01:12statements like I say I've never seen anything like this between public and

01:15private statements. So Christian Anderson early on in this sends an email to

01:20Fauci and as Fauci says Bob, Bob Gary and a couple of the other virologists we

01:26think it's inconsistent this virus this genetic sequence of COVID is inconsistent

01:31with the expectations of evolutionary theory. So they believed it didn't come

01:36from nature they had looked at this these are smart people that when they

01:39were not looking at it when they were trying to look at it through an

01:42objective lens concluded one thing until they came to another conclusion that it

01:46might hurt the business of science and the arrangements they had going on with

01:50China and concluded opposite. But with Christian Anderson it's stark it's

01:54stark because he says oh Bob and all these all we all believe it's

01:56inconsistent with the expectations of evolutionary theory. A week later

02:01Christian Anderson is saying what I like to use when I talk to the public is I

02:05like to tell them it's consistent with the expectations of evolutionary theory.

02:09So he goes from inconsistent to consistent complete opposite approach

02:13within days maybe even simultaneously as these papers are being written. So really

02:18the hypocrisy of those involved and those who are saying not a laboratory

02:22construct if you want to know who to believe look at their private statements

02:25versus their public statements. So we have gain of functions the best thing

02:28since sliced bread or gain of functions a real problem. Now Senator Romney's like

02:33well why does it matter if there's a chance we should do something I think

02:36he's right if you believe there's a 1% chance we should do something. But if you

02:40think there's a 1% chance or you want to sort of glad hand people at the end and

02:43say well we should do something their argument for the people who think it's

02:47not likely to happen is going to be oh the administration's already fixed this

02:51it's already done and all we need is a few little regulatory things we don't

02:54need legislation we don't need independent oversight we don't need

02:58people looking at this who aren't on the receiving end of the money this is the

03:01whole problem of NIH the people regulating themselves are getting the

03:04money. So the administration has put in place some regulations to try to you

03:09know help with the buying of select agents and Dr. Quay if you could explain

03:13to us what a few MIT scientists did recently and how well the administrative

03:17regulations are working without actual congressional legislation. Sure so three

03:22scientists at MIT said they were going to be a red team and they contacted the

03:25FBI because what they were going to do is about to be potentially illegal and

03:29they put together ricin and the 1918 influenza. Those two are select

03:36agents and they're you know highly lethal and they broke up they broke the

03:41genes up in a particular way they added some benign genes and then they put

03:46out test orders following roughly following the the White House guidelines

03:51test order to see if laboratories would send them the pieces they needed to

03:56build these viruses or ricin you know or they would stop them and in fact in 94

04:02percent of the time they sent the pieces right to them. They purposely didn't make

04:06the active strain of the RNA they made the the inactive strain to show that

04:10they could do it but they proved they could make rice and they proved they

04:13could make the 1918 influenza under the guidance that have just come out of the

04:17White House in a way that this gets out where we go forward our next hearing or

04:21one of our next hearings is going to be what do we do for gain-of-function

04:24reform what kind of committee do we set up to look at this and if the answer is

04:28from the other side oh it's already done the White House did it this is showing

04:31you what the White House did even if it was well-intentioned didn't work these

04:35scientists got the material off the internet to create the Spanish flu that

04:39killed 50 a hundred million people so this is not something we should scoff

04:45at and say oh it's not a laboratory construct don't do anything here let the

04:48administration do this and I would say this if it were a Republican

04:51administration I don't care which party it's in I agree with scientists like

04:55Kevin Esvelt who equate this with nuclear weapons this is incredibly

04:59important and needs congressional oversight on the select agents but also

05:04on the gain-of-function now some people think that's just started it's

05:07incredibly partisan now it's just for a quick answer than a more extensive

05:11answer dr. Ebright are you part of the right-wing conspiracy are you somehow

05:16some kind of crazy Republican partisan I'm a registered Democrat I voted for

05:20Biden I had a Biden sign on my lawn and had a Biden but the the main the main

05:27point I wanted to make is this isn't a partisan thing in fact when I've talked

05:31to dr. Ebright he says he got involved with this after 9-11 when the

05:35anthrax anthrax attacks came but then more involved in 2010 as it heated up

05:41and everybody was talking about in the scientific community when scientists

05:45took the avian flu which is very very deadly in humans but like most animal

05:50virus not very transmissible in humans and they mutated it fuchia and others in

05:55in Netherlands to make it spread through the air and to spread to mammals that's

06:00a crazy thing and if people think that's a benign use of gain-of-function we

06:04should never ever listen to people like that who else thinks it was benign and

06:08we didn't need to do anything Anthony Fauci there have been these two

06:12camps there has been this debate going on for a decade I think this a very good

06:18debate it should be an intellectual debate but realize these are the people

06:23Collins and and Fauci who were saying take these people down take down the

06:28people we disagree with this is not scientific debate they were taking us

06:32off the internet these are people are not playing under the American rules not

06:37playing under the scientific method and they should be discounted but we have to

06:41have a real debate over this so as we move forward and I'd like to ask you

06:46dr. Ebright on this how important is it that we actually have a law passed and

06:54that we actually have regulators that are scientists but that are outside of

06:59the supply of money outside of the exchange of grant money I think it's a

07:04matter of survival it's that important there needs to be an entity that is

07:10independent of agencies that fund research and perform research to

07:15eliminate the structural conflict of interest that has existed with current

07:19self-regulation by agencies that perform and fund research thank you thank you

07:25senator

'I've Never Seen Anything Like This': Rand Paul Calls Out Scientist's Correspondence With Fauci

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