Tipsheet

Here's What the Former CDC Director Says Is Likely the Cause of 'Greatest Pandemic the World Has Seen'

Testifying on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning, former Centers for Disease Control Director Robert Redfield was asked about the benefits of dangerous gain-of-function research -- the frankensteining of viruses to make them more lethal or infectious to humans. 

When asked if he could point to a single pandemic gain-of-function research had prevented, Redfield couldn't give an example and instead pinned the latest pandemic on the practice. 

Back in early 2020 in the first stages of the pandemic, Redfield publicly stated he believed the virus escaped from a lab. Despite his assertion being correct and now backed by the FBI and Department of Energy, he received death threats. He was also cut out of meetings with then National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and former Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute Francis Collins. 

Given the Wuhan Institute of Virology had received NIH grants to perform gain-of-function research, Fauci and Collins worked together to quash the lab leak theory and destroy the careers of scientists who dared to publicly entertain it.

Fauci is known as the "Godfather" of gain-of-function research and had a strong interest in eliminating a lab leak from discussion. 

"I often talk to scientists who say the same thing, that say, ‘Listen, we really want to speak out about this, but we can’t do it. Why can’t we do it? Well, we get all of our funding from NIH, or NIAID… which is run by Dr. Fauci,'" he said on Kelly’s podcast. "And so we can’t say anything like ‘Oh, gain-of-function research might be dangerous, or it might have come from a lab, because we’re going to lose our careers, we’re going to lose our funding, we’re not going to be able to do the work.'"

"The head of the funding, the head of the entire field, really, is Anthony Fauci," he said. "He’s the godfather of gain-of-function research as we know it. That, again, just what I said right there, is too hot for TV because people don’t want to think about the fact that our hero of the pandemic… might also have been connected to this research, which might also have been connected to the outbreak."