Staff Reports
Anthony Fauci, a prominent scientist, was part of a group of experts who were working to disprove the lab-leak theory during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the time, Anthony Fauci was the director of the NIH. He worked with other prominent scientists such as Jeremy Farrar, the head of the Wellcome Trust, and Ron Fouchier, a Dutch virologist. In an email sent on February 8, 2020, Andersen noted that the group's goal was to disprove the lab theory regarding the origins of the pandemic.
As a result, Andersen became the first author to be listed on the paper "The Proximal Origin Of SARS-CoV-2." The paper was widely cited by media outlets and was viewed millions of times online.
Unredacted NIH records detail early efforts to rule out lab origin of Covid — my latest for @theintercept and @thenation. It took more than a year of #FOIA litigation to obtain the documents featured in this story: https://t.co/U1Lqq4ZgHS
— Jimmy Tobias (@JamesCTobias) January 19, 2023
The group was known as the Proximal Origin team, and it was composed of scientists who were in regular communication with Fauci prior to its publication. Some of the members of the group initially supported the lab-leak theory, but they then changed their minds. Andersen then claimed that the group had already debunked the idea.
In his email, Andersen noted that the team's main goal was to disprove various lab-based theories. However, due to the lack of conclusive evidence, they were at a crossroads.
Initially, Andersen did not support the publication of a paper on the subject. However, after he informed Fauci about the Nature Medicine's decision to accept the paper, he praised the work of the team.
According to some scientists, the messages in the emails exhibited the scientific process at its best. Others, however, were not able to explain why some of the scientists suddenly changed their minds. Some of them, such as Andersen and Robert Garry, had received a lot of grants from the NIH. Fouchier, on the other hand, was always critical of the laboratory-leak theory.
The exchanges between the scientists were obtained by the researcher Andrew Tobias in November after a year-long legal battle with the NIH. The agency had initially redacted various portions of the documents.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on Daily Caller.
