In a congressional hearing on May 11, 2021 about
Anthony Fauci's role as the
Chief Medical Advisor to the United States Office of the President, senator
Rand Paul stated that "the U.S. has been collaborating with Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Virology Institute, sharing discoveries about how to create super viruses. This gain-of-function research has been funded by the NIH." Fauci responded "with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect...the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research [conducted at] the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
[80] The Washington Post fact-checking team later rated Paul's statements as containing "significant omissions and/or exaggerations".
[80][81] NIH funding to the
EcoHealth Alliance and later sub-contracted to the
Wuhan Institute of Virology was not to support gain-of-function experiments, but instead to enable the collection of bat samples in the wild.
[80][82] EcoHealth Alliance spokesperson Robert Kessler has also categorically denied the accusation.
[80]
The Washington Post also quoted
Rutgers University biosecurity expert
Richard Ebright's dissenting opinion about Fauci’s testimony, demonstrating that there is disagreement about what qualifies as "gain of function" research. Ebright asserted that experiments conducted under the EcoHealth grant "met the definition for gain-of-function research of concern under the
2014 Pause."
[80] MIT molecular biologist Alina Chan has argued that these experiments would not have been affected by the 2014 moratorium, because the experiments involved "naturally-occurring viruses" and could not be "reasonably anticipated to increase transmissibility and/or pathogenicity", adding that the moratorium had "no teeth."
[83]