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| <title> - INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF COVID-19</title> | |
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| [House Hearing, 118 Congress] | |
| [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] | |
| INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF COVID-19 | |
| ======================================================================= | |
| HEARING | |
| BEFORE THE | |
| SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CORONAVIRUS | |
| PANDEMIC | |
| OF THE | |
| COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY | |
| HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES | |
| ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS | |
| FIRST SESSION | |
| __________ | |
| MARCH 8, 2023 | |
| __________ | |
| Serial No. 118-4 | |
| __________ | |
| Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability | |
| [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABITY IN TIFF FORMAT] | |
| Available on: govinfo.gov, | |
| oversight.house.gov or | |
| docs.house.gov | |
| COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY | |
| JAMES COMER, Kentucky, Chairman | |
| Jim Jordan, Ohio Jamie Raskin, Maryland, Ranking | |
| Mike Turner, Ohio Minority Member | |
| Paul Gosar, Arizona Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of | |
| Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Columbia | |
| Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts | |
| Gary Palmer, Alabama Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia | |
| Clay Higgins, Louisiana Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois | |
| Pete Sessions, Texas Ro Khanna, California | |
| Andy Biggs, Arizona Kweisi Mfume, Maryland | |
| Nancy Mace, South Carolina Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York | |
| Jake LaTurner, Kansas Katie Porter, California | |
| Pat Fallon, Texas Cori Bush, Missouri | |
| Byron Donalds, Florida Shontel Brown, Ohio | |
| Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota Jimmy Gomez, California | |
| Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Melanie Stansbury, New Mexico | |
| William Timmons, South Carolina Robert Garcia, California | |
| Tim Burchett, Tennessee Maxwell Frost, Florida | |
| Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Becca Balint, Vermont | |
| Lisa McClain, Michigan Summer Lee, Pennsylvania | |
| Lauren Boebert, Colorado Greg Casar, Texas | |
| Russell Fry, South Carolina Jasmine Crockett, Texas | |
| Anna Paulina Luna, Florida Dan Goldman, New York | |
| Chuck Edwards, North Carolina Jared Moskowitz, Florida | |
| Nick Langworthy, New York | |
| Eric Burlison, Missouri | |
| Mark Marin, Staff Director | |
| Mitchell Benzine, Subcommittee Staff Director | |
| Marie Policastro, Clerk | |
| Contact Number: 202-225-5074 | |
| Miles Lichtman, Minority Staff Director | |
| Select Subcommittee On The Coronavirus Pandemic | |
| Brad Wenstrup, Ohio, Chairman | |
| Nicole Malliotakis, New York Raul Ruiz, California, Ranking | |
| Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa Minority Member | |
| Debbie Lesko, Arizona Debbie Dingell, Michigan | |
| Michael Cloud, Texas Kweisi Mfume, Maryland | |
| John Joyce, Pennsylvania Deborah Ross, North Carolina | |
| Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Robert Garcia, California | |
| Ronny Jackson, Texas Ami Bera, California | |
| Rich Mccormick, Georgia Jill Tokuda, Hawaii | |
| C O N T E N T S | |
| ---------- | |
| Page | |
| Hearing held on March 8, 2023.................................... 1 | |
| Witnesses | |
| Dr. Jamie Metzl, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, The Atlantic Council | |
| Oral Statement................................................... 6 | |
| Nicholas Wade, Former Science and Health Editor, The New York | |
| Times; Former Editor, Science; and Former Editor, Nature | |
| Oral Statement................................................... 8 | |
| Paul G. Auwaerter, MD, MBA, Clinical Director, Division of | |
| Infectious Diseases; Sherrilyn and Ken Fisher Professor of | |
| Medicine; Johns Hopkins School of Medicine; Past President, | |
| Infectious Diseases | |
| Oral Statement................................................... 10 | |
| Dr. Robert Redfield, M.D., Former Director, U.S. Centers for | |
| Disease Control and Prevention | |
| Oral Statement................................................... 12 | |
| Opening statements and the prepared statements for the witnesses | |
| are available in the U.S. House of Representatives Repository | |
| at: docs.house.gov. | |
| Index of Documents | |
| ---------- | |
| David Duke Statement and article, ``Jews, Race, and Nicholas | |
| Wade: How Jewish Supremacism Attempts to Guard the Gates of | |
| Science''; submitted by Rep. Mfume. | |
| Article, The New York Times, ``Charging Into the Minefield of | |
| Genes and Racial Difference''; submitted by Rep. Mfume. | |
| Article, Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), ``Troublesome | |
| Sources: Nicholas Wade's Embrace of Scientific Racism''; | |
| submitted by Rep. Mfume. | |
| Letter to the Editor, The New York Times, ``Letters: A | |
| Troublesome Inheritance''; submitted by Rep. Tokuda. | |
| Testimony of Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Chair of the Lancet COVID- | |
| 19 Commission; submitted by Chairman Wenstrup. | |
| The documents listed above are available at: docs.house.gov. | |
| INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF COVID-19 | |
| ---------- | |
| Wednesday, March 8, 2023 | |
| House of Representatives | |
| Committee on Oversight and Accountability | |
| Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic | |
| Washington, D.C. | |
| The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:03 a.m., in | |
| room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Brad R. Wenstrup | |
| (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. | |
| Present: Representatives Wenstrup, Malliotakis, Miller- | |
| Meeks, Lesko, Cloud, Joyce, Greene of Georgia, Jackson of | |
| Texas, McCormick, Ruiz, Dingell, Mfume, Ross, Robert Garcia, | |
| Bera, and Tokuda. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Good morning, everyone. The Select | |
| Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic will come to order. I | |
| want to welcome everyone who's here today, as well as our | |
| witnesses. Without objection, the Chair may declare a recess at | |
| any time. Pursuant to rule 7(d) of the Committee on Oversight | |
| and Accountability, and at the discretion of Chairman Comer, | |
| Mr. Jordan, a member of the full committee, may participate in | |
| today's hearing for the purposes of questions. I now recognize | |
| myself for the purpose of making an opening statement. | |
| Welcome to our first of many hearings concerning the | |
| coronavirus pandemic. We are tasked to review all the effects | |
| of the pandemic, as well as decisions made during the pandemic, | |
| not just the origins of COVID-19. However, we are here today at | |
| our first hearing to ask the fundamental question that this | |
| body has failed to ask three years ago: Where did COVID-19 come | |
| from? Did it come from a natural spillover, transferred from a | |
| bat to an intermediate source to human? In other words, did it | |
| come from nature? Or was it the result of a laboratory or | |
| research-related accident? In other words, did it come from a | |
| lab? | |
| This question is fundamental to helping us predict and | |
| prevent future pandemics, protecting our health and national | |
| security, and preparing the United States for the future. This | |
| question is not one that should be dismissed out of hand. It | |
| cannot be taken lightly. It must be investigated thoroughly, | |
| responsibly, and honestly, an investigation based on facts, | |
| expert opinions, and without intentional or unintentional bias. | |
| That is what the Select Subcommittee is tasked to do; | |
| follow the facts, conduct a fair investigation, and seek to | |
| deliver the truth to the American people. Ultimately, we will | |
| strive to produce a product that will serve future generations, | |
| enhancing our capabilities and operating procedures when we are | |
| faced with the threat of another pandemic. That is what is | |
| deserved. That is what Americans should expect from their | |
| government, and this is one more way we can provide for our | |
| defense. | |
| The work has already begun. Thus far, the Select | |
| Subcommittee has sent letters of inquiry to the Department of | |
| Health and Human Services, the White House, and Dr. Francis | |
| Collins of the National Institute of Health, the Office of the | |
| Director of National Intelligence, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the | |
| former Director of National Institutes of Allergy and | |
| Infectious Diseases and Chief Medical Advisor to the President; | |
| EcoHealth Alliance, recipient of NIH funding grants to perform | |
| coronavirus research, the Department of Energy, Department of | |
| State, and the FBI, concerning their intelligence and | |
| investigations surrounding the evolution of COVID-19 and any | |
| forensic findings they may have discovered. | |
| Over the weekend, we released a memo highlighting new | |
| evidence that suggests that Dr. Fauci prompted the drafting of | |
| a publication that would disprove the lab leak theory, that the | |
| author skewed evidence to achieve that goal, and that the | |
| current chief scientist of the World Health Organization was an | |
| uncredited coauthor even though he appears to have contributed | |
| to the piece entitled, ``Proximal Origins.'' | |
| I think we've already established that the Select | |
| Subcommittee will try to leave no stone unturned to try to find | |
| the truth. Unfortunately, the question of the origins has been | |
| politicized. That's no secret. It has driven most people to | |
| their corners rather than driving apolitical scientific debate | |
| or discussion. Some say the virus came from nature that, | |
| according to recent papers discussed in New York Times, the | |
| science is dispositive. | |
| Some say it's too unique, too primed for human | |
| transmission, that there's too much circumstantial evidence | |
| that points to COVID-19 coming from a lab. As well, in three | |
| years, there's been no track found to prove that COVID-19 | |
| evolved naturally from an animal or a mammal or a tick to | |
| become highly infectious to humans. The truth is we don't know | |
| the origins of COVID-19 yet for sure. We don't have a smoking | |
| gun. | |
| First, the science behind COVID-19: the genome of COVID-19 | |
| is inconsistent with expectations, and is unique for its group | |
| of viruses. COVID-19 has both a binding domain optimized for | |
| human cells, and a furin cleavage site, or a small part of the | |
| virus that makes it so infectious. That has never been seen | |
| before in a SARS-related virus. In other words, COVID-19 has | |
| unique characteristics that made it very infectious to humans. | |
| These have never been seen before in any other viruses of its | |
| type. | |
| Most viral outbreaks are slow and small. CDC data shows | |
| SARS infected approximately 8,000 people worldwide, and eight | |
| in the U.S. Similar with MERS, which infected approximately | |
| 2,000 people worldwide. But COVID-19 was primed for human | |
| transmission. It has infected more than 750 million people | |
| worldwide. Dr. Redfield, one of our witnesses here today and a | |
| virologist, has even said that he believes COVID-19 had a | |
| detour from nature to be educated how to infect humans. | |
| Second, the known research occurring in China: We know the | |
| Wuhan Institute of Virology was conducting gain-of-function | |
| research on novel bat coronaviruses by creating chimeric | |
| viruses, combining two viruses together to test infectivity and | |
| infecting mice with these viruses, work that former COVID-19 | |
| task force coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx confirmed was, in | |
| fact, gain-of-function, contrary to statements by Dr. Fauci. We | |
| have learned that the Wuhan Institute has poor biosafety and | |
| was conducting this research at only Biosafety Level 2, | |
| described as the ``Wild West'' by Dr. Jeremy Farrar, a | |
| virologist from the U.K., now Chief Scientist for the WHO. | |
| We have learned through a leaked DARPA grant application | |
| that with U.S. taxpayer backing, the Wuhan Institute proposed | |
| inserting furin cleavage sites into novel coronaviruses, the | |
| same unique genetic aspect of COVID-19. And we know, according | |
| to a State Department fact sheet, the multiple researchers at | |
| the Wuhan Institute were sick with COVID-19-like symptoms in | |
| the fall of 2019, before the Chinese officially announced the | |
| outbreak. | |
| Third, concerning the actions of NIH and EcoHealth | |
| Alliance, records show that the National Institutes of Health | |
| while the U.S. was under a moratorium on gain-of-function | |
| research, exempted EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute | |
| from this very ban. Records show that the National Institutes | |
| of Health allowed EcoHealth to conduct risky research on novel | |
| coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute without going through the | |
| potential pandemic pathogen department level review board. | |
| Records show that EcoHealth violated Federal grant policy, and | |
| failed to file its five-year progress report for more than two | |
| years. | |
| Records show that EcoHealth violated the terms of its grant | |
| and failed to report an experiment that resulted in gain-of- | |
| function of a coronavirus at the Wuhan Institute. | |
| Fourth, for some reason that we do not yet know, leaders in | |
| the scientific community took action to attempt to convince the | |
| world that they should not take the lab leak theory seriously. | |
| Dr. Francis Collins stated he was more concerned with harm to | |
| ``international harmony'' than he was with investigating the | |
| lab leak. Dr. Fauci said the lab leak theory was a ``shiny | |
| object that will go away in time.'' | |
| The president of EcoHealth, Dr. Peter Daszak orchestrated a | |
| letter in The Lancet that called the lab leak a ``conspiracy | |
| theory,'' a statement that directly benefited Dr. Daszak | |
| himself. And four scientists, after a conference call with Dr. | |
| Fauci, completely reversed their position. Dr. Kristian | |
| Andersen said he found ``the genome inconsistent with | |
| evolutionary theory.'' And Dr. Robert Garry said he ``really | |
| can't think of a possible natural scenario.'' But a few days | |
| later, published a paper saying the exact opposite, a paper | |
| based on the new emails we released claim to be prompted by Dr. | |
| Fauci himself. | |
| Fifth, the intelligence: FBI Director, Christopher Wray, | |
| confirmed publicly that the FBI assessed COVID-19 most likely | |
| originated from a lab incident in Wuhan. The Wall Street | |
| Journal reported the Department of Energy now also believes a | |
| lab leak is the most likely origin. These aren't run-of-the- | |
| mill agencies. The FBI used experts in biological threats and | |
| is reportedly supported by the National Bioforensic Analysis | |
| Center and the Department of Energy used its own Z Division, | |
| experts in investigating biological threats. These are some of | |
| the facts as we know them, but there's so much more to do. We | |
| are here today to try and understand what and why. | |
| It's important to conduct this investigation. Discovering | |
| the origins is vital. It matters for the future of the world, | |
| and we aren't finished. We're just beginning. There will be | |
| more hearings and more inquiries and more documents discovered, | |
| and we will follow every lead. I look forward to hearing from | |
| our expert witnesses today, and I thank them for joining us | |
| today. Thank you. | |
| I would now like to recognize Ranking Member Ruiz for the | |
| purpose of making an opening statement. | |
| Dr. Ruiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Today, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic | |
| convenes for its first hearing to discuss the origins of the | |
| COVID-19 pandemic, an issue of vital importance to our Nation's | |
| public health. Since the first outbreak of COVID-19, | |
| researchers in the scientific community have worked tirelessly | |
| to evaluate the virus and advance our understanding of its | |
| origins. Dozens of studies have been conducted, or are | |
| currently underway, to evaluate this question. And under | |
| President Biden's direction and leadership, the intelligence | |
| community initiated a sweeping assessment to get to the bottom | |
| of the virus' origins. | |
| The facts are the evidence remains inconclusive. Therefore, | |
| we must allow our scientists and intelligence communities to | |
| gather evidence without politicization, extreme partisan | |
| rhetoric, or conspiratorial accusations that vilify our | |
| Nation's public health experts. | |
| Instead, we should focus on developing policies that | |
| prevent and reduce the harm of future viruses and pandemics. As | |
| Ranking Member of this select subcommittee, it is my sincere | |
| hope that we can conduct this work in an objective, bipartisan | |
| way, based on evidence to save lives. | |
| However, today's hearing marks a concerning step down the | |
| path of letting extremism get in the way of an inquiry that | |
| should be led by science and facts. When House Republicans | |
| announced this hearing with their slate of handpicked | |
| witnesses, I was alarmed to see someone who wrote a book | |
| applauded by white supremacists. Mr. Nicholas Wade's 2014 book, | |
| ``A Troublesome Inheritance,'' suggests that different racial | |
| and ethnic groups have evolved to possess genetic variations | |
| and traits and behaviors tied to whether they prosper or not. | |
| For example, Mr. Wade speculates that certain populations | |
| have evolved to develop greater innate intelligence. He writes | |
| that quote, ``Intelligence can be more highly rewarded in | |
| modern societies because it is in far greater demand,'' end | |
| quote, and conversely, he claims that certain populations have | |
| been slower to experience an evolutionary change he has | |
| described as quote, ``the transformation of a population's | |
| social traits from the violent, short-term, impulsive behavior | |
| typical of many hunter, gatherer, and Tribal societies into, | |
| quote, `the more disciplined future oriented behavior observed | |
| in other populations.'" | |
| The notion that people of different racial or ethnic groups | |
| are more successful or intellectually superior to another | |
| because of predisposed genetic makeup is grossly inconsistent | |
| with the consensus of scientific and medical scholarship. That | |
| is why I sent a letter to my Republican colleagues this morning | |
| strongly urging them to disinvite Mr. Wade as a witness so as | |
| not to give legitimacy to a man of such discredited, | |
| unscientific, and harmful views. | |
| These views are dangerous and have no place in a hearing | |
| examining the origins of a pandemic that has disproportionally | |
| and overwhelmingly harmed communities of color in the United | |
| States. I'm concerned that Mr. Wade and his views have been | |
| elevated by his participation on today's panel, giving him a | |
| platform reaching millions of Americans. His participation | |
| hurts the credibility of this hearing. Answering the question | |
| of how the novel coronavirus came to be one that should be | |
| driven by the need for thoughtful policy solutions. Whether the | |
| novel coronavirus emerged naturally or as a result of a lab | |
| leak does not change this. | |
| And as our expert communities work to advance our | |
| understanding of the virus' origins, Congress should be focused | |
| on developing commonsense solutions to put people over politics | |
| and protect our Nation from the threat of a future public | |
| health crisis. | |
| There is still time for this select subcommittee to change | |
| course, to reject extreme partisan rhetoric, discard | |
| conspiratorial accusations and work constructively to save | |
| lives. The American people deserve nothing less. | |
| I yield back. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. I thank the Ranking Member. | |
| I would like to remind the Ranking Member, and all those | |
| here, that the Ranking Member was informed of our witnesses | |
| seven days ago yet objected this morning. Now, I understand | |
| that they had some problems getting their witness because of | |
| COVID, but we just received who their witness was today. Also, | |
| I'd like to point out that Mr. Wade is here as he was the | |
| editor of Nature Magazine and Science Magazine. Nature Magazine | |
| is the magazine--not while he was there, but is the magazine | |
| that produced and printed ``Proximal Origins.'' | |
| We will proceed, and I expect that our witnesses will | |
| proceed in sticking to the topic at hand today as opposed to | |
| trying to deviate from it. | |
| Mr. Wade. Mr. Chairman, may I respond? | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. You'll have a chance. You'll have your | |
| opening statement. | |
| Our witnesses today are Dr. Jamie Metzl. Dr. Metzl served | |
| on the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton, | |
| the State Department under Secretary Madeline Albright, and as | |
| Deputy Staff Director for Senator Joe Biden on the Senate | |
| Foreign Relations Committee. He's currently a senior fellow at | |
| the Atlantic Council. Mr. Nicholas Wade. Mr. Wade has worked in | |
| field of health and science journalism for more than 40 years. | |
| He worked for Nature Magazine, Science Magazine, and was then | |
| the science editor for The New York Times. He is now a | |
| freelance journalist and author writing extensively about | |
| COVID-19. | |
| Dr. Paul Auwaerter--did I say that correctly, sir? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. You did. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Dr. Auwaerter was the President of the | |
| Infectious Diseases Society of America, the largest | |
| professional society worldwide related to infectious diseases. | |
| He is currently a Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins | |
| University School of Medicine, serving as the Clinical Director | |
| for the Division of Infectious Diseases. | |
| Dr. Robert Redfield. Dr. Redfield spent more than 45 years | |
| in medicine and is a virologist by training. He served as Chief | |
| of the Department of Retroviral Research at the Walter Reed | |
| Army Institute of Research, co-founded the Institute of Human | |
| Virology at the University of Maryland, and was the Director of | |
| the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2018 | |
| to 2021, serving during the pandemic itself. | |
| Pursuant to Committee on Oversight and Accountability rule | |
| 9(g), the witnesses will please stand and raise their right | |
| hands. | |
| Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony that you | |
| are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing | |
| but the truth, so help you God? | |
| Thank you. Please be seated. Let the record show that the | |
| witnesses all answered in the affirmative. | |
| The Select Subcommittee certainly appreciates you all for | |
| being here today, and we do look forward to your testimonies. | |
| Let me remind the witnesses that we have read your written | |
| statements, and they will appear in full in the hearing record. | |
| Please limit your oral statements to five minutes. | |
| As a reminder, please press the button on the microphone in | |
| front of you so that is on and Members can hear you. When you | |
| begin to speak, the light in front of you will turn green. | |
| After four minutes, the light will turn yellow. When the red | |
| light comes on, your five minutes has expired, and we would ask | |
| that you please wrap up. | |
| I now recognize Dr. Metzl to give an opening statement. | |
| STATEMENT OF DR. JAMIE METZL, PH.D. | |
| SENIOR FELLOW, THE ATLANTIC COUNCIL | |
| Mr. Metzl. Chairman Wenstrup, Ranking Member Ruiz, and | |
| members of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, | |
| it is my great honor to join you today. We are primarily here | |
| because the Chinese government has done everything in its power | |
| to prevent the type of investigation into the origins of the | |
| COVID-19 pandemic that is three years overdue and still | |
| urgently required. We are also here because there is more that | |
| we in the United States can and must do to push forward, even | |
| if China continues to stonewall. This includes establishing a | |
| bipartisan U.S. national COVID-19 commission. | |
| I have waited more than three years for these hearings to | |
| be held. Getting to this point has required a great deal of | |
| effort by a small but tireless, self-motivated, and highly | |
| capable community of experts from around the world who have | |
| refused to be bullied into silence. Because so many of us have | |
| worked so hard for so many years against such ferociously | |
| strong headwinds to help lay the groundwork for these hearings, | |
| I join you today with a deep and sincere request that your | |
| committee honor our work by making these hearings as evidence- | |
| based, probing, and solutions-oriented as possible. | |
| Understanding what went wrong and determining how we can do | |
| better must be the ultimate bipartisan and nonpartisan issue. I | |
| happen to be a Democrat, which is irrelevant to our work | |
| together. Since the start of the pandemic, I have been in close | |
| contact with officials in the Trump and then the Biden | |
| administrations and have worked with Members of Congress of | |
| both parties on the pandemic origins issue. Although my views | |
| are laid out more fully in my written testimony, I'd like to | |
| quickly highlight my key points. | |
| First, and most importantly, approximately 20 million | |
| people, including over 1 million Americans, have died as a | |
| result of COVID-19. These are our parents, partners, children, | |
| relatives, colleagues, and friends. We owe every one of these | |
| victims and ourselves the fullest possible investigation into | |
| how this avoidable tragedy unfolded and our best efforts | |
| ensuring that a catastrophe like this never happens again. | |
| Second, while the question of pandemic origins remains | |
| open, there can be no doubt that a research-related origin | |
| remains a very serious possibility, if not a distinct | |
| probability. There is no smoking gun proving a laboratory | |
| origin hypothesis, but the growing body of circumstantial | |
| evidence suggests a gun that is at very least warm to the | |
| touch. Those feeling otherwise also deserve to have their | |
| perspectives and research carefully considered. We should all | |
| be open to evolving our views as new evidence emerges. Everyone | |
| working in good faith to follow the evidence wherever it leads | |
| is on the same side. Those working to prevent this type of | |
| investigation are not. | |
| Third, it is inconceivable that over three years after this | |
| deadly pandemic began, no comprehensive and unfettered | |
| investigation into pandemic origins has been carried out, nor | |
| is one currently planned. This injustice is an insult to every | |
| victim of this crisis, and a clear threat to future | |
| generations. The primary reason there has been no comprehensive | |
| investigation into COVID-19 origins is the reprehensible | |
| actions of the Chinese government. | |
| Since the early days of the pandemic, China's government | |
| has destroyed samples, hidden records, imprisoned brave Chinese | |
| journalists, gagged Chinese scientists, actively spread | |
| misinformation, and done pretty much everything possible to | |
| prevent the kind of unfettered, evidence-based investigation | |
| that is so urgently required. Every person on Earth must demand | |
| accountability from China. Calling for a full investigation of | |
| pandemic origins in China does not at all mean we shouldn't | |
| carefully examine our own behavior and that of our friends and | |
| allies. In fact, we must. | |
| Fourth, although scientific collaboration, including with | |
| Chinese scientists remains critical to building a safer future, | |
| we cannot purchase these relationships by our silence. We must | |
| at least match the courage of brave Chinese citizens, like | |
| Zhang Zhan who is rotting away in a Chinese prison for asking | |
| the same questions many foreigners seem somehow afraid to ask. | |
| There is no possible way to establish the principle of | |
| transparency and accountability tomorrow without fearlessly and | |
| unequivocally establishing that principle today. | |
| Fifth, even if China continues to stonewall, there are | |
| critical steps we can and must take in the United States and | |
| elsewhere to move this process forward. This includes | |
| establishing a bipartisan U.S. national COVID-19 commission to | |
| examine the origins issue, as well as other failings and | |
| shortcomings on the national and international levels and | |
| develop bold recommendations for next steps. | |
| Sixth, because the pandemic has taught us, at least I hope, | |
| that in our increasingly interconnected world, we are all only | |
| as safe as the most vulnerable among us, making us more secure | |
| here in America requires we do everything possible to help | |
| build a safer world, including by helping upgrade the World | |
| Health Organization. Although some people have criticized the | |
| WHO for how it has dealt with the origins issue, it is my view | |
| as outlined in my written testimony that WHO Chief Doctor | |
| Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has been, in many ways, an unsung | |
| hero of this process. | |
| Chairman Wenstrup, Ranking Member Ruiz, and members of the | |
| subcommittee, our world is entering a new era of globalization, | |
| where risks are increasing across the board, including the risk | |
| of pandemics far deadlier than COVID-19. If we do not get to | |
| the bottom of what went wrong with the COVID-19 pandemic, if we | |
| fail in our efforts to fearlessly understand all shortcomings | |
| and shore up the vulnerabilities this crisis has so clearly | |
| exposed, the victims of the next pandemic, our children and | |
| grandchildren, will ask us why we failed to protect them when | |
| we knew what was at stake and had the chance. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. I now recognize Mr. Wade to give | |
| an opening statement. | |
| STATEMENT OF NICHOLAS WADE | |
| FORMER SCIENCE AND HEALTH EDITOR | |
| THE NEW YORK TIMES | |
| Mr. Wade. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Although it's a gigantic distraction from the work of your | |
| committee, I think I should briefly try to respond to the | |
| attempt by Ranking Member Ruiz to discredit my testimony by | |
| saying a number of untrue things about the book I wrote 10 | |
| years ago on the biology of race. This was a determinately non- | |
| racist book. It has no scientific errors that I am aware of. It | |
| has no racist statements, and it stresses the theme of unity | |
| that we are all variations on the same human genome. My book | |
| was vigorously attacked by obscure academics who want everyone | |
| else to believe that there is no biological basis to race. And | |
| my book was as welcomed to them as pictures of the earth from | |
| space are to flat-earthers. | |
| I have nothing to be ashamed of in my book. It's the only | |
| place you can now read about what the genome says about human | |
| races, and I hope Mr. Ruiz, if he reads it, will be pleasantly | |
| surprised to find it says none of the things he says it said. | |
| With apologies for that digression, Mr. Chairman, I would | |
| like to thank you for inviting me to discuss the origin of the | |
| COVID virus and hope you will allow me a few extra minutes. I | |
| am a science writer, and I worked on two leading research | |
| journals, Nature and Science, and then for 30 years on The New | |
| York Times, where I was an editorial writer and a science | |
| editor. This background has given me some knowledge of how the | |
| scientific community works. | |
| I'd like to touch on two issues of interest to the | |
| committee: Where did the SARS-2 virus come from, and why are we | |
| taking the lab-leak idea seriously only now, instead of three | |
| years ago? When the epidemic first broke out in December 2019, | |
| natural origin and lab leak were two equally reasonable | |
| explanations. But if the virus had emerged naturally, it should | |
| have left many telltale signs in the environment. None has yet | |
| appeared, despite the Chinese government's keen interest in | |
| finding them. | |
| As each month passes without such evidence, the natural | |
| origins idea has grown steadily weaker, it seems to me. For lab | |
| leak on the other hand, the evidence has been building. Here | |
| are two of the three strongest pieces of evidence in favor of | |
| lab leak. First, the epidemic broke out not in some random | |
| Chinese city, but right in Wuhan, home of the Wuhan Institute | |
| of Virology. We know that scientists there were genetically | |
| engineering coronaviruses under seriously inadequate safety | |
| conditions, and we know that viruses escape from labs all the | |
| time. Clearly, lab leak has to be a strong possibility. | |
| Second, that possibility became much more concrete with the | |
| recent surfacing of a grand proposal by the Wuhan researchers | |
| and others. They applied, in 2018, for a $14 million grant from | |
| a Pentagon program called Project DEFUSE. The essential | |
| ingredient of SARS-2, as the Chairman has said, one which makes | |
| the virus so infected is a small genetic element called a furin | |
| cleavage site. Wuhan researchers said in their grant proposal | |
| that they would insert this very element into a group of | |
| coronaviruses. And not only that, they will place the element | |
| at a very specific point on the virus' genome called the S1/S2 | |
| junction. | |
| Now, the DOD turned the proposal down. It was too risky | |
| even for them, but the researchers may have done much of the | |
| basic work already or could have find other ways to finance it. | |
| A year later, the SARS-2 virus appears on the scene, and guess | |
| what? It possesses a furin cleavage site, the only known member | |
| of its large family of viruses to do so. And the cleavage site | |
| is positioned right at the S1/S2 junction. Why should evolution | |
| produce, at that very time and at that very place, a virus of | |
| the exact type described in the DEFUSE proposal? It's surely | |
| much easier to believe that the Wuhan researchers did exactly | |
| what they proposed and generated the SARS-2 virus in their lab. | |
| But if the evidence for lab leak is so strong, why do so | |
| many people still believe the virus came from nature? The | |
| reason is that the natural origin camp got its story out first, | |
| always a big help. It very successfully painted lab leak as a | |
| conspiracy theory before anyone in the public proposed it. The | |
| national media swallowed the natural origin story unskeptically | |
| and once committed to it, failed to report important contrary | |
| evidence such as the DEFUSE Grant. Science journalists in | |
| particular, it seems to me, fell down on their job by failing | |
| to check out the virologists' self-serving claims. | |
| The natural origin theory did not prevail by accident. It | |
| was promoted by science administrators in the United States and | |
| England, including Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci of the | |
| National Institutes of Health. The NIH is a national treasure | |
| and Collins and Fauci's most prominent leaders at the time are | |
| well-known to the public and on Capitol Hill. It's hard to | |
| believe that in the twilight of their long careers, they would | |
| seriously mishandle an issue as important as the origin of the | |
| COVID virus. Yet, that is what the evidence seems point to. | |
| The campaign to discredit lab leak began on the evening of | |
| January 31, 2020, when Fauci received an email from four | |
| virologists led by Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research; they | |
| had all concluded that SARS-2, because of its furin cleavage | |
| site, could not been made in nature. Fauci was probably not too | |
| pleased to hear that the virus might have escaped from research | |
| that his agency had funded. | |
| A strange thing happened to the virologists' conclusion. | |
| Within four days, Andersen, in an email of February 4, | |
| repudiated, deriding lab leak as a crackpot theory. What made | |
| him change his mind? No new scientific evidence about the virus | |
| came to light between January 31 and February 4, but from that | |
| 180-degree reversal, a whole campaign was able to be developed, | |
| including highly influential articles placed in Nature Medicine | |
| and the Lancet. | |
| I have some ideas about how this and other research should | |
| regulated, which I described in my written testimony. I'll stop | |
| there. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. | |
| I now recognize Dr. Auwaerter to give an opening statement. | |
| STATEMENT OF DR. PAUL G. AUWAERTER, MD, MBA | |
| (MINORITY WITNESS), CLINICAL DIRECTOR | |
| DIVISION OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES | |
| SHERRILYN AND KEN FISHER PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE | |
| JOHNS HOPKINS SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, PAST PRESIDENT | |
| INFECTIOUS DISEASES SOCIETY OF AMERICA | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Chairman Wenstrup, Ranking Member Ruiz, and | |
| distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the | |
| opportunity to testify. Though I'm from the Johns Hopkins | |
| University School of Medicine, I speak on behalf of the | |
| Infectious Diseases Society of America, and my statements do | |
| not represent Johns Hopkins. | |
| Over 1 million Americans have died from COVID losses that | |
| magnify the tremendous suffering among countless families in | |
| our country. As a physician caring for patients with COVID for | |
| over three years, we need to deepen our understanding of the | |
| virus' origins and apply experience from the pandemic to | |
| improve our preparedness, prevent disease, and save lives. | |
| Investigations must be objective and driven by appropriate, | |
| scientific, and intelligence experts who present unbiased | |
| findings. Investigations are ongoing. There's no consensus yet | |
| about the virus' origins. The Department of Energy, with low | |
| confidence, determined the virus escaped from a laboratory in | |
| China based on classified information unavailable to the | |
| public. The FBI reached its conclusion with moderate | |
| confidence. | |
| On the other hand, many virologists believe compelling | |
| evidence points to an animal origin. They conclude that | |
| coronavirus most likely jumped from a caged wild animal into | |
| people at a seafood market. We may never know the origin | |
| conclusively. Making claims that cannot be supported | |
| sufficiently by available data only fuels confusion and | |
| mistrust. Regardless, we can learn valuable lessons from these | |
| investigations to prevent outbreaks and pandemics of any | |
| origin. | |
| A robust public health infrastructure and global | |
| coordination are essential for surveillance to identify, track, | |
| and contain potential threats. Pathogens respect no borders. We | |
| must collaborate internationally to foster an unsuspicious | |
| atmosphere where global information, sharing about infectious | |
| diseases is transparent, complete, and rapid. | |
| Twenty years ago, the SARS outbreak provides an instructive | |
| example of what can be achieved through multi-countries, | |
| scientific, and public health collaboration. Within six months, | |
| these collective efforts were successful in staunching the | |
| virus, and it has not reappeared. Greater transparency about | |
| science, decisionmaking, and public health will help improve | |
| health literacy and rebuild trust in science and public health, | |
| including understanding why recommendations evolve as knowledge | |
| grows. | |
| If people are better prepared to understand science, they | |
| will be more comfortable deciding how to protect themselves and | |
| their loved ones best. The U.S. should invest in an expert work | |
| force to leverage preparedness tools to benefit all | |
| communities, meaning recruiting and training. Significant | |
| shortages of public health professionals, laboratory | |
| scientists, researchers, and infectious disease physicians | |
| persist. Federal investments are urgently needed to fill these | |
| gaps. Basic translational and clinical research are crucial for | |
| our pandemic preparedness. | |
| For example, rapidly deploying tests for a new pathogen | |
| will enable quicker scaling of testing capacity when new | |
| threats emerge. Investments should also focus on developing | |
| therapeutics for anticipated pathogens, including viruses and | |
| bacteria, including multidrug resistant ones. Sufficient | |
| infectious diseases research capacity improvements to biosafety | |
| are essential. Access to BSL-4 facilities assists in bio- | |
| security research. Therefore, a new BSL-4 lab should be | |
| strategically placed throughout our Nation. | |
| The Federal Government should support biosafety studies, | |
| including why laboratory accidents happen, their frequency, and | |
| other data needed to create and update evidence-based | |
| mitigation measures. Enhanced potential pandemic pathogens, | |
| ePPP research, a type of gain-of-function research has received | |
| renewed attention. Such efforts can help understand possible | |
| human pathogen interactions, assess the likelihood of emerging | |
| pandemics, and inform preparedness efforts, including | |
| surveillance and medical countermeasure developments. | |
| While such research is inherently risky requiring strict | |
| oversight, there are risks if we don't undertake this type of | |
| research, leaving us unprepared. Unbiased bodies with | |
| appropriate scientific expertise should perform this oversight. | |
| Last year, the U.S. Government charged the National Science | |
| Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) with reviewing policies | |
| regarding ePPP research and dual-use research of concern | |
| (DURC). In January, the NSABB released recommendations to | |
| strengthen the oversight of ePPP and DURC research in the U.S. | |
| and abroad, remove blanket exclusions, expand research types | |
| considered ePPP, strengthen guidelines, and increase | |
| transparency in the research review process. | |
| These guidances can facilitate achievements with improved, | |
| appropriate guardrails. I am grateful for your attention and | |
| for inviting me. The Infectious Diseases of Society also thanks | |
| you for your leadership and stands ready to partner with you to | |
| learn from the pandemic and to improve our readiness. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. | |
| I now recognize Dr. Redfield to give an opening statement. | |
| STATEMENT OF DR. ROBERT REDFIELD, M.D. | |
| FORMER DIRECTOR | |
| U.S. CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION | |
| Dr. Redfield. Chairman Wenstrup, Ranking Member Ruiz, and | |
| members of the committee, I'm pleased to testify today in | |
| support of this subcommittee's important work to investigate | |
| the origin of COVID-19 that has resulted in the deaths of over | |
| 1 million Americans. From 2018 to 2021, I served as the 18th | |
| Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | |
| during the Trump Administration. As CDC Director, I oversaw the | |
| Agency's response to the COVID-19 pandemic from the earliest | |
| days of its spread, and I also served as a member of the White | |
| House Coronavirus Task Force. | |
| But perhaps more relevant for the purpose of this hearing, | |
| my 45 years in medicine have been focused on the study of | |
| viruses. I'm a virologist by training and by practice. Prior to | |
| my time at CDC, I spent more than 20 years as a U.S. Army | |
| physician and medical researcher at the Walter Reed Army | |
| Institute of Research where I served as the Chief of the | |
| Department of Retroviral Research, and I worked in virology, | |
| immunology, clinical research, at the forefront of AIDS | |
| epidemic, and other threats. | |
| In 1996, I cofounded the Institute of Human Virology at the | |
| University of Maryland in partnership with the state of | |
| Maryland, the city of Baltimore, and the University System of | |
| Maryland, where I served as the director of clinical research | |
| and care. And I also served as a tenured professor of medicine, | |
| microbiology, and immunology, chief of infectious disease and | |
| vice chair of medicine at the University. After my time at CDC, | |
| I served as the senior public health advisor to Governor Hogan | |
| in the state of Maryland. | |
| As COVID-19 began to spread across the world, there were | |
| two competing hypotheses about the origin of this virus that | |
| needed to be vigorously explored. The first hypothesis is the | |
| possibility that COVID-19 infections in humans were the result | |
| of a spillover event from nature. This is a situation in which | |
| the virus naturally mutates and becomes more transmissible from | |
| one species to another, in this case from bats to humans via an | |
| intermediate species. This is what happened in previous | |
| outbreaks of SARS and MERS and earlier coronaviruses that | |
| emerged from bats and spread through an intermediate animal. | |
| The second hypothesis is the possibility that the virus | |
| evolved in a laboratory involved in gain-of-function research. | |
| This is a type of research in which scientists seek to increase | |
| the transmissability or pathogenicity of an organism in order | |
| to better understand that organism and inform preparedness | |
| efforts and the development of countermeasures such as | |
| therapeutics and vaccines. | |
| Under this theory, COVID infected the general population | |
| after it was accidentally leaked from a lab in China. From the | |
| earliest days of the pandemic, my view of both theories about | |
| the origin needed to be aggressively and thoroughly examined. | |
| Based on my initial analysis of the data, I came to believe, | |
| and I still believe today, that it indicates that COVID-19 more | |
| likely was the result of an accidental lab leak than a result | |
| of the natural spillover event. | |
| This conclusion is based primarily on the biology of the | |
| virus itself, including the rapid high infectivity for human- | |
| to-human transmission, which would then predict the rapid | |
| evolution of new variants as well as a number other important | |
| factors, which also include the unusual actions in and around | |
| Wuhan in the fall of 2019, all of which I'm happy to discuss | |
| today. | |
| Even given the information that surfaced in the three years | |
| since the COVID-19 pandemic began, some have contended that | |
| there's really no point in investigating the origin of this | |
| virus. I strongly disagree. There is a global need to know what | |
| we are dealing with in COVID virus because its effects how we | |
| approach the problem to try to prevent the next pandemic. The | |
| understanding of the origin of COVID is critical to future | |
| science research, particularly as it affects ongoing ethical | |
| debate around gain-of-function research. | |
| Gain-of-function research has long been controversial | |
| within the scientific community, and in my own opinion, COVID- | |
| 19 pandemic presents a case study on the potential dangers of | |
| such research. While many believe that gain-of-function | |
| research is critical to get ahead of viruses by developing | |
| vaccines, in this case, I believe it was the exact opposite; | |
| unleashing a new virus to the world without any means of | |
| stopping it and resulted in the deaths of millions of people. | |
| Because of this, it's my opinion that we should call for a | |
| moratorium on gain-of-function research until we have a broader | |
| debate, and we come to a consensus as a community about the | |
| value of gain-of-function research. This debate should not be | |
| limited to the scientific community. If the decision is to | |
| continue with gain-of-function research, then it must be | |
| determined how and where to conduct that research in a safe and | |
| responsible and effective way. | |
| I thank you for inviting me here today as we explore this | |
| important topic. I look forward to answering your questions. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. I thank you all. | |
| I now recognize myself for questions. I have said since we | |
| started this that the goal of this committee would be to come | |
| away with some capabilities or at least standard operating | |
| procedures in an effort to be able to predict the next | |
| pandemic, prepare for the next pandemic, protect ourselves from | |
| the next pandemic, and hopefully prevent the next pandemic. | |
| But first, I want to ask each of the witnesses, yes or no: | |
| Does the origin of COVID-19 matter to protect the globe from | |
| future pandemics? We'll go down the line. Dr. Metzl? | |
| Mr. Metzl. One-hundred percent, absolutely and completely | |
| yes. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Mr. Wade? | |
| Mr. Wade. Yes. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Dr. Auwaerter? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Yes. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Dr. Redfield? | |
| Dr. Redfield. Yes. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. So, we're all on the same page there. | |
| Dr. Metzl, I have a question for you. You know we've heard | |
| the testimony, and we know, scientifically fact, that we have | |
| found in the past with these types of viruses, coronaviruses in | |
| particular, SARS, MERS, we found an intermediary. | |
| My question is: Do you feel that we, as a scientific | |
| community around the world, have robust capabilities to do that | |
| type of investigation to find an intermediary? Do we have the | |
| assets we need for that? | |
| Mr. Metzl. Technically, we do, and we know that the Chinese | |
| government has actually been very aggressive in trying to find | |
| that kind of intermediary host animal. They've sequenced about | |
| 100,000 animals. They haven't found anything in SARS and MERS | |
| as you mentioned. Those intermediary hosts were found | |
| relatively quickly. And so, given that the Chinese government | |
| has every incentive to find an intermediate host, I think it's | |
| very significant that that hasn't been found, but we have that | |
| capability, and everybody has a reason to want to find it, | |
| particularly the Chinese government. I think it's very telling | |
| that after three years, we still haven't found it. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Dr. Auwaerter, I ask you the same question | |
| about those capabilities. | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. I would agree that we have the technical | |
| capabilities. What I would say, though, is with coronaviruses, | |
| they are highly mutable, which have--certainly we've seen over | |
| these past three years as the virus has evolved. Regarding | |
| finding intermediaries, there are examples, with the Ebola | |
| virus, where we have not yet found a clear intermediary despite | |
| looking very hard. No one thinks that came about from a lab | |
| accident decades ago. | |
| So, I think it's still an open question. I think everything | |
| does need to be explored, and there's always opposing points of | |
| view here that need to be weighed, and not all hypotheses are | |
| weighed equally. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. I think it's interesting you talked about | |
| them being highly mutable. I assume they can be mutable in a | |
| lab. | |
| Dr. Redfield, are you an advocate for a moratorium on gain- | |
| of-function research, particularly research on potential | |
| pandemic pathogens, and why? | |
| Dr. Redfield. Yes, I am. I think that, again, the people | |
| that are advocates for gain-of-function research do believe | |
| that by doing this research, they somehow get ahead of the | |
| curve. I'm of the point of view that we don't need to make | |
| pathogens more transmissible or more pathogenic in order to get | |
| ahead of the curve. We can begin to deal with those pathogens | |
| as they evolve. I don't think this should be a decision made by | |
| scientists alone. This is a societal decision. There should be | |
| a broad debate about whether this research is really necessary. | |
| And if so, we should decide how to do it safely and | |
| responsibly. | |
| I remind people that when I was CDC director, one of the | |
| most difficult things I had to do as a 20-something year Army | |
| vet was shut down Fort Detrick. It wasn't very popular. These | |
| people were my friends. I knew them. Our inspections showed | |
| that they were cutting corners in their biosecurity | |
| requirements and I felt that we weren't going to take that | |
| chance with the Frederick community and beyond. So, I shut the | |
| lab down for four to six months until they corrected their | |
| biosecurity. | |
| I think this is much more complicated than people think and | |
| if we are to go down that path, I would argue there are a few | |
| labs in the world that should be, with multiple redundancy, in | |
| containment to do this. But I'm not convinced it's to an | |
| advantage and this is why in The Wall Street Journal op-ed I | |
| did, I strongly recommended that we have a moratorium on gain- | |
| of-function research, similar to what we had in the Obama | |
| Administration. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. In one sentence, can you provide a definition | |
| of gain-of-function research? I say that because there becomes | |
| a little semantics sometimes I believe within the scientific | |
| community of what is a chimera and what is gain-of-function? | |
| Dr. Redfield. Yes. I think it's to take a pathogen, and try | |
| to increase one of two things or both, to increase its | |
| transmissability or its pathogenicity. I disagree with some of | |
| my colleagues at NIH to say the definition's restricted to a | |
| pathogen that's already a pathogen. If I make a nonpathogen | |
| pathogenic, that's gain-of-function. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. So, in your expert opinion, was the Wuhan | |
| Institute conducting gain-of-function research on the | |
| coronavirus? | |
| Dr. Redfield. Absolutely. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. So, one other path of questioning | |
| for you, Dr. Redfield. Proponents of this research claim it may | |
| result in vaccines or maybe even stop a pandemic. Dr. Redfield, | |
| has gain-of-function created any lifesaving vaccines or | |
| therapeutics to your knowledge? | |
| Dr. Redfield. Not to my knowledge. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Has gain-of-function stopped a pandemic in | |
| your opinion? | |
| Dr. Redfield. No. On the contrary, I think it probably | |
| caused the great pandemic our world has seen. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Do you find any tangible benefits to gain-of- | |
| function research at this time? | |
| Dr. Redfield. I personally don't. But I do want to stress, | |
| I think the men and women that support it are people of good | |
| faith, because they truly believe it's going to lead to a | |
| potential benefit. I disagree with that assessment. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. | |
| I now recognize the Ranking Member, Dr. Ruiz, from | |
| California for his questions. | |
| Dr. Ruiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| The Select Subcommittee's first hearing should provide an | |
| opportunity for our Members to carry out credible, responsible | |
| oversight to prevent and prepare for future pandemics. Instead, | |
| House Republicans invited a writer whose extreme and dangerous | |
| views have been echoed by white supremacists to testify on the | |
| issue of the novel coronavirus' origins. | |
| In May 2014, David Duke, former grand wizard of the Ku Klux | |
| Klan, hosted a radio show praising Mr. Wade and his book, ``A | |
| Troublesome Inheritance.'' | |
| Mr. Wade, are you aware of David Duke's praise of your | |
| views on his website? | |
| Mr. Wade. When my book first came out, Mr. Ruiz, I think | |
| the extreme right wing thought it would help their cause, but | |
| they very soon dropped referring to it because when they | |
| actually read it, as many people who talk about my book have | |
| not, they found that the book---- | |
| Dr. Ruiz. David Duke did read your book. In fact, he had a | |
| whole radio talk show about it and described it in detail. And | |
| he did endorse your views. On a post, davidduke.com promoting | |
| his radio show, he states, quote, ``Hear Dr. David Duke speak | |
| on the former science editor for The New York Times who has now | |
| essentially embraced the scientific racial truth that Dr. Duke | |
| wrote extensively about in My Awakening, and has written about | |
| for more than 35 years.'' | |
| You see, Mr. Wade's book deploys dangerous tropes and | |
| stereotypes about minority communities under the guise of | |
| science. His assertions define the overwhelming consensus of | |
| scientists and researchers, including those in the fields of | |
| population genetics and evolutionary biology. | |
| Dr. Redfield, as a former CDC director, do these views | |
| trouble you? | |
| Dr. Redfield. I'm sorry. I was distracted. I'm sorry. I was | |
| distracted. | |
| Dr. Ruiz. Would the views that I mentioned and David Duke's | |
| endorsements of Mr. Wade's book trouble you? | |
| Dr. Redfield. I'm not a fan of David Duke at all. I do | |
| think that Nicholas Wade--and I have followed his work over 30 | |
| years--is an outstanding science reporter, and has contributed | |
| substantially, both in Nature, Science and, of course, leading | |
| The New York Times. | |
| Dr. Ruiz. You know, there are 140 faculty members and | |
| experts who strongly disagree with you. In fact, more than 140 | |
| faculty members and experts jointly condemned Mr. Wade's book | |
| in a joint letter to The New York Times Book Review stating, | |
| quote, ``We reject Wade's implication that our findings | |
| substantiate his guess work. They do not. We are in full | |
| agreement that there is no support from the field of population | |
| genetics for Wade's conjectures.'' | |
| Mr. Chairman, I'd like to enter this letter into the | |
| record. | |
| Dr. Redfield. My only comment---- | |
| Dr. Ruiz. So, I'm sorry, Dr. Redfield. | |
| So, the point is inviting someone with discredited and | |
| dangerous views like Mr. Wade to testify on the origins of this | |
| pandemic, which has disproportionately harmed communities of | |
| color, is not responsible and credible oversight. Instead, it | |
| undermines the credibility of this select subcommittee. | |
| Now, let me turn to you, Dr. Auwaerter. | |
| You are a practicing physician, a professor of medicine, | |
| and the former president of the Infectious Disease Society of | |
| America, representing more than 12,000 physicians, scientists, | |
| and public health experts who specialize in infectious diseases | |
| like COVID-19. For the sake of putting people over politics, | |
| what credible steps can be taken to advance our understanding | |
| of the novel coronavirus' origins in order to prevent future | |
| pandemics? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. I think building trust amongst scientists | |
| and public health communities is essential, because pathogens | |
| can emerge from where we least expect it. We need to have the | |
| tools available to rapidly analyze and then develop tests. I | |
| had dealt with patients very early in the pandemic where we | |
| were making educated guesses whether they had COVID-19. We need | |
| to have tests that can be widely dispersed quickly and | |
| treatments. | |
| Dr. Ruiz. Dr. Auwaerter, is it possible that we will never | |
| have the concrete evidence to determine with certainty the | |
| origins of COVID, whether it was a lab leak or animal | |
| transmission? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Well, I think that's entirely possible. And | |
| therefore, we need to focus more on also be forward-looking as | |
| well as looking back. | |
| Dr. Ruiz. So, having said that, and being forward-looking, | |
| would it be responsible to start coming up with solutions to | |
| deal with whether it was a lab leak or animal transmission? For | |
| example, is there an international body that promotes safety | |
| guidelines and has the authority to have inspections and | |
| incentivizes foreign nation labs to have transparency so that | |
| we can be assured that labs are safe in foreign country, | |
| especially in not-so-friendly foreign countries? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Yes. And I think as already been hinted, | |
| that, I think, is essential for general protection. | |
| Dr. Ruiz. In my research, I couldn't find one. Do you know | |
| of any such body that exists? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. No, but I'm saying that's absolutely | |
| necessary. | |
| Dr. Ruiz. And what can we do, if it was an animal | |
| transmission, looking forward, to save lives? What can we do to | |
| better our ability to prevent that--I know it's difficult-- | |
| identify it early, and contain it in other countries before it | |
| spreads? What can we do? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. You know, there were efforts a few years ago | |
| to build surveillance labs under prior administrations in an | |
| effort to anticipate and work with other countries. | |
| Dr. Ruiz. And what happened to those labs? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. I believe they were dropped or discontinued | |
| due to lack of funding. | |
| Dr. Ruiz. OK. Thank you, and I yield back. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. And I thank the Ranking Member for | |
| transitioning to questions germane to the hearing today. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Dr. McCormick from Georgia | |
| for five minutes of questions. | |
| Dr. McCormick. Dr. Auwaerter, you said in your testimony | |
| that investigations into the origins of COVID-19 should be | |
| objective and driven by appropriate scientific and intelligence | |
| experts who present unbiased findings that are not politicized. | |
| According to evidence and previously released emails on | |
| February 8, 2020, Dr. Andersen who authored ``Proximal | |
| Origins'' stated, ``Our main work over the last couple of weeks | |
| has been focused on trying to disprove any type of lab | |
| theory.'' | |
| Would you consider this statement objective and unbiased? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. I really don't have enough of a frame of | |
| reference to really make a comment on a single statement. | |
| Dr. McCormick. All right. Let's switch then. You cited a | |
| couple papers last summer in Science that talked about the | |
| evidence of natural origin. These papers claim to show | |
| dispositive evidence against lab leak. | |
| Now, I went to medical school. I'm an ER doc. I served lots | |
| of patients during this pandemic until just recently and I know | |
| how viruses work. They are specific to species for the most | |
| part, correct? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. They often are, but not always. There are | |
| some that are--coronaviruses are probably one of the most | |
| widely dispersed amongst the animal kingdom. | |
| Dr. McCormick. OK. And if we use the origins of a species | |
| that was in the wild and came to human contact and gave us the | |
| virus in question, wouldn't that virus still exist in that | |
| species in the wild? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Well, I think that it would be likely the | |
| case. | |
| Dr. McCormick. Right. Chances are--that's a good answer. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Right. | |
| Dr. McCormick. So, how many species is in the wild have we | |
| captured that still have this coronavirus in them? Because that | |
| would be a very easy thing to do given its wide dissemination | |
| in human population and its proximity to Chinese wildlife. How | |
| many wild animals have been captured with this coronavirus | |
| present in them currently? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Well, the answer is no. But on the other | |
| hand---- | |
| Dr. McCormick. Thank you. That's OK. I appreciate it. So, | |
| basically, I'm talking about from a scientific standpoint, we | |
| understand as a virologist and as a student of virology, a good | |
| professor taught me just like yourself, who just said that the | |
| evidence is that diseases just don't go away in populations | |
| that are contained in the wild. And yet, we've extensively | |
| tried to capture--the Chinese government would benefit greatly | |
| from showing us that this exists in the wild and came to human | |
| population. Yet, not one evidence of a certain species, whether | |
| it be dog or bat, has ever been shown to have this virus, that | |
| somehow or another transferred to human. | |
| Yet, that is our main evidence and theory to disprove that, | |
| albeit, the Wuhan lab that actually stated what they were going | |
| to do and then had the same problem occur, that's a less likely | |
| chance in your mind. Is that correct? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Well, I think the hypotheses remain very | |
| open at the moment. | |
| Dr. McCormick. So, which one do you think is more | |
| scientifically based, based on what we just discussed? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Well, I'm not privy to intelligence | |
| community information. | |
| Dr. McCormick. So, you don't have an opinion? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Well, I think it is more likely at the | |
| moment just based on my reading of a zoonotic, that is an | |
| animal based---- | |
| Dr. McCormick. So, based on the fact---- | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. But we need to attend to both. | |
| Dr. McCormick. So, you intend to favor the hypothesis even | |
| though it has no proof whatsoever that it actually exists in | |
| the animal genome, that you're going to favor that over the | |
| fact that a Wuhan lab that said they wanted to do this and then | |
| had an outbreak about the same time, that that's less likely. | |
| Got it. | |
| First of all, when you talk about having trust, that's the | |
| most important thing you just stated in answer to Mr. Ruiz's | |
| statement. The most important thing is trust. | |
| How do we build trust when there's no transparency from the | |
| CCP when it comes to investigating the origins of this disease? | |
| How do we build trust based on your statement? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Well, I think amongst scientific | |
| communities, that is probably not as high a barrier, but you | |
| know, for the politics, I'd have to leave to others. | |
| Dr. McCormick. But you just stated that's the most | |
| important thing. | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Correct. | |
| Dr. McCormick. But yet, we don't have transparency on | |
| something that would be pretty easy to investigate if we had | |
| transparency, correct? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Again, I would leave to others foreign | |
| policy corridor. | |
| Dr. McCormick. But scientifically, right? We need to have | |
| transparency to investigate something, correct? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Absolutely. | |
| Dr. McCormick. OK. And we don't, right? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Well, I think this has been brought up and-- | |
| -- | |
| Dr. McCormick. Yes. OK. So, we agree on that. That we have | |
| no transparency on the one thing that we need trust on to | |
| investigate the less likely cause of this disease. So, it's | |
| just totally coincidental. | |
| So, with that, I will state that he pretty much agrees with | |
| me when it comes to the origins, just doesn't want to admit it. | |
| Thank you very much. I yield. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize the ranking member of the | |
| full committee, Mr. Raskin from Maryland for five minutes of | |
| questions. | |
| Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Chairman Wenstrup and Mr. Ruiz, for | |
| this important hearing. | |
| The COVID-19 pandemic came to America in 2020, of course, | |
| when Donald Trump was President. And that President's policy | |
| failures, magical thinking, and total recklessness caused, | |
| according to his own special advisor on COVID, Deborah Birx, | |
| the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. | |
| Now, apart from the urgent question of how to improve our | |
| pandemic response from the debacle that he presided over is the | |
| question how the COVID-19 pandemic began. This, too, is a | |
| critically important question to answer to help us prevent and | |
| prepare for future pandemics. Answers must come from objective, | |
| fact-based investigations, informed by doctors, scientists, and | |
| public health experts. At President Biden's direction, the | |
| intelligence community is also taking sweeping action now to | |
| understand the origins of the virus and to bring all relevant | |
| facts to light. | |
| Whatever the origins of COVID-19, whether it is bats or | |
| bureaucrats, no finding will ever exonerate or rehabilitate | |
| Donald Trump for his lethal recklessness in mismanaging the | |
| crisis in America which cost us more than a million lives. | |
| Indeed, if COVID was actually the product of a lab leak or the | |
| worst bioweapon of mass destruction ever invented as some have | |
| argued--and obviously we don't have the scientific evidence to | |
| say any of this yet--it would not only not remove Donald | |
| Trump's culpability, it would only deepen his culpability in | |
| the most profound way. | |
| Now, why do I say that? Because over the course of the | |
| crisis beginning in January 2020 and lasting through the spring | |
| on more than 42 different occasions that we have identified so | |
| far, President Trump openly praised and defended the | |
| performance of Communist Party Secretary and Chinese President | |
| Xi in his handling of COVID-19 and boasted of how closely they | |
| were working together and boasted of Xi's openness and | |
| transparency. | |
| On January 22, 2020, when the first case of COVID was | |
| identified in the U.S., Trump stated, I quote, ``We have it | |
| totally under control.'' When asked if he believe the U.S. | |
| would, ``know everything we need to know from China,'' he said, | |
| and I quote, ``I do. I do. I have a great relationship with | |
| President Xi.'' January 24, he posted on Twitter, ``China has | |
| been working very hard to contain the coronavirus. The United | |
| States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It | |
| will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the | |
| American people, I want to thank President Xi.'' March 21, in a | |
| briefing, he assured us, ``China has been working very hard to | |
| contain the coronavirus.'' He added, ``The United States | |
| greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all | |
| work out well.'' | |
| March 27, he posted on Twitter, ``just finished a very good | |
| conversation with President Xi of China, discussed in great | |
| detail the coronavirus that is ravaging large parts of the | |
| planet. China has been through much and has developed a strong | |
| understanding of the virus. We are working closely together, | |
| much respect.'' | |
| Because of time, I'm just giving the committee a tiny taste | |
| of Donald Trump's fawning, star-struck, sycophantic embrace of | |
| everything the Chinese government was telling him in 2020, but | |
| I will happily offer a lot more for any colleagues who think | |
| that the hunt for the origins will somehow absolve the last | |
| administration for telling Americans that COVID would magically | |
| disappear at Easter time, or everybody should just take | |
| hydroxychloroquine, or refusing to wear a mask, or never | |
| developing a national plan to defeat the disease. | |
| Whether it was bats or leaks or bureaucrats who caused it, | |
| Donald Trump was the biggest apologist in the United States of | |
| America for President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party. He | |
| could have directed the intelligence community to lead a COVID- | |
| 19 origin investigation back in March 2020. Three years ago. He | |
| did not. He wasted precious time minimizing the risk of the | |
| virus and lavishing his praise on President Xi. He could have | |
| taken the origins of the pandemic seriously and held the CCP | |
| accountable. He could have pushed back against the CCP for | |
| interfering with the WHO's investigation into its origins, and | |
| he could have asked our intelligence community to intervene. He | |
| did none of those things, and everyone should remember that. | |
| Let's take the politics out of it, and let's get to the bottom | |
| of what happened. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Ms. Malliotakis from New York | |
| for five minutes of questions. | |
| Ms. Malliotakis. Thank you, Chairman. | |
| For two years, myself and the other Republicans on this | |
| subcommittee connected the dots, we exposed the evidence | |
| supporting our strong belief that COVID was developed and | |
| leaked from the Wuhan lab. And during those same two years, the | |
| same Democrats that sit on this committee, they only hindered, | |
| they obstructed. They refused to hold hearings and get to the | |
| truth. Now, we see mounting evidence supporting that COVID-19 | |
| originated from the lab in Wuhan, China, run by the Communist | |
| Chinese Party. And this hearing is about getting to the truth. | |
| I thank the Chairman for making this the very first hearing, | |
| because the American people who have seen just as many fellow | |
| Americans die from COVID, as nearly as many died from COVID, | |
| that died in every war since the American Revolution combined | |
| deserve to know the truth. | |
| Dr. Redfield, you pointed to the lab leak theory, even | |
| before we did. In mid-January 2020, you expressed concerns to | |
| Dr. Fauci, to Jeremy Farrar of U.K.'s Wellcome Trust, and to | |
| Dr. Tedros of World Health Organization that, quote, ``We had | |
| to take the lab leak hypothesis with extreme seriousness.'' And | |
| you urged Dr. Fauci to investigate both the lab and the natural | |
| hypotheses. | |
| Shortly thereafter on February 1, Farrar convened a meeting | |
| of a group of 11 top scientists across five time zones, and | |
| asked Dr. Fauci to join. And he wrote, ``My preference is to | |
| keep this group really tight. Obviously, ask everyone to treat | |
| in total confidence.'' | |
| Dr. Redfield, you were excluded from this call, but up | |
| until then, you were included in every other conversation. What | |
| changed? Why do you think that you were excluded from these | |
| conversations? | |
| Dr. Redfield. Thank you very much. I think--just to | |
| emphasize--in early to mid-January, I did have multiple calls | |
| with Fauci, Farrar, and Tedros about how important I thought it | |
| was that science get engaged and aggressive pursuing both | |
| hypotheses. I also expressed, as a clinical virologist, that I | |
| felt it was not scientifically plausible that this virus went | |
| from a bat to humans and became one of the most infectious | |
| viruses that we have in humans. | |
| All viruses are not the same. When you look at | |
| coronaviruses, for SARS and MERS, for example, when they | |
| entered the human species, which they did via an intermediate, | |
| they never learned how to go from human to human. Even to this | |
| day, they don't know how to go human to human. So, you can't | |
| equate Ebola with a coronavirus. | |
| Ms. Malliotakis. Why do you think you were excluded from | |
| those calls? | |
| Dr. Redfield. Because it was told to me that they wanted a | |
| single narrative, and that I obviously had a different point of | |
| view. | |
| Ms. Malliotakis. OK. In emails following the conference | |
| call, four of the 11 scientists told Fauci that they all found | |
| a genetic sequence inconsistent with expectations from | |
| evolutionary theory, basically what you're saying. However, | |
| just three days later, these four scientists had drafted a | |
| paper arguing the exact opposite. And that's now the infamous | |
| ``Proximal Origin of SARS COVID 2.'' Our investigations show | |
| this paper was prompted by Dr. Fauci among others with a goal | |
| to disprove the lab leak theory. | |
| What is the likelihood that these scientists came across | |
| additional information just three days after making these | |
| statements to conclude with such certainty that COVID-19 came | |
| from nature instead of the lab leak that they thought it was | |
| three days earlier? | |
| Dr. Redfield. Yes. I think it's unfortunate. Again, I've | |
| said this before, that this whole approach that was taken on | |
| February 1, and subsequently in the month of February, if you | |
| really want to be truthful, it's antithetical to science. | |
| Ms. Malliotakis. Thank you. | |
| Dr. Redfield. Science has debate, and they squashed any | |
| debate. | |
| Ms. Malliotakis. Thank you. Given what we know now and | |
| looking at all of the conversations in February 2020 and before | |
| the release of the paper, do you think that Dr. Fauci used this | |
| paper to hide that gain-of-function research created this | |
| virus? | |
| Dr. Redfield. I can't talk about Fauci's motivation. | |
| Ms. Malliotakis. Do you think that the paper does hide the | |
| truth? | |
| Dr. Redfield. I think it's an inaccurate paper that | |
| basically was part of a narrative that they were creating. | |
| Remember, this pandemic did not start in January at the seafood | |
| market. We now know there was infections all the way back into | |
| September. This was a narrative that was decided that they were | |
| going to say that this came from the wet market, and they were | |
| going to do everything they could to support it, to negate any | |
| discussion about the possibility that this came from a | |
| laboratory. | |
| Ms. Malliotakis. I've got 20 seconds left. Dr. Fauci was | |
| affirmatively told in an email that NIH had a monetary | |
| relationship with the Wuhan Institute through EcoHealth | |
| Alliance. He was told this on January 27, 2020. | |
| Do you think that Dr. Fauci intentionally lied under oath | |
| to Senator Paul when he vehemently denied NIH's funding of | |
| gain-of-function research? | |
| Dr. Redfield. I think there is no doubt that NIH was | |
| funding gain-of-function research. | |
| Ms. Malliotakis. Is it likely that American tax dollars | |
| funded the gain-of-function research that created this virus? | |
| Dr. Redfield. I think it did. Not only from NIH, but from | |
| the State Department, USAID and from DOD. | |
| Ms. Malliotakis. I'm out of time. Thank you very much. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mrs. Dingell from Michigan | |
| for five minutes of questions. | |
| Mrs. Dingell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I found it very | |
| disheartening to see public health professionals across this | |
| country vilified and attacked for supporting COVID-19 | |
| mitigation measures, basic safety measures and later vaccines. | |
| They were trying to keep people safe and prevent deaths. I want | |
| everyone to know, I take this committee very seriously. I want | |
| the facts. | |
| Dr. Redfield will confirm to you, I was one of the first | |
| people to call him about Wuhan, and had a lot of questions and | |
| never let up. So, I want the facts. But I hope and say to my | |
| colleagues on the other side, we cannot go down a dangerous | |
| path by pushing unfounded conspiracies about Dr. Fauci and | |
| other long-serving career public health officials. Here is the | |
| reality, like many of you, I am reading many articles, not just | |
| over the past weeks. | |
| Dr. Redfield knows I've been on this from the beginning, | |
| talked to researchers, doctors, frontline nurses, public health | |
| officials. They all agree on one fact. After the billions of | |
| dollars on pandemic era upgrades to labs and data and | |
| surveyance, after all the studies and white papers about | |
| emergency preparedness, the U.S. still lacks two things in the | |
| public health arsenal: people and trust. | |
| These continued smears on public health officials are | |
| destroying them. I strongly urge everyone on this committee, | |
| but my Republican colleagues specifically, from rehashing | |
| unfounded theories that Dr. Fauci and other public health | |
| experts have blocked investigations into the pandemic origins. | |
| Let's get the facts. Dr. Fauci has said we need to get to the | |
| bottom of how the novel coronavirus originated, and has said, | |
| and I've heard him say, like I talked to Dr. Redfield, he has | |
| an open mind about the virus' origins. | |
| To all of you and all of us in this room, I say it's | |
| critical to rebuild trust and that continued attacks on public | |
| health officials only serves to further discredit people's | |
| confidence in our public health institutions, makes it almost | |
| impossible and it's challenging to recruit workers in the | |
| field, and it undermines people's trust in science. | |
| We're seeing it. We know the basic things like washing your | |
| hands, covering your mouth when you cough, and immunizations | |
| save lives. And yes, because of all what we're doing, people | |
| aren't getting measles vaccines. They're not getting chicken | |
| pox. We're seeing the return of diseases we haven't seen | |
| before. We have to take seriously that this rhetoric is | |
| perpetuating people's distrust in flu shots and many other | |
| things. So, let's work together, all of my colleagues, to | |
| protect the American people. That's our job. | |
| Dr. Auwaerter, how does misinformation surrounding the | |
| possible origins of COVID-19 and its spread damage the | |
| relationship between doctors and patients? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Well, my sense is it's a very frequent | |
| question that, you know, patients ask me in the office, What do | |
| you think? And I don't have any direct knowledge, but it's | |
| obviously on a lot of people's minds. And I think, if it was | |
| handled objectively, it would be less political. And therefore, | |
| it sort of removes out of the realm of also dovetailing with | |
| other public health mitigation measures, which you so | |
| appropriately put forward. You know, for the first part of the | |
| pandemic, we all wore masks. I can tell you no one on my | |
| faculty got COVID-19 until people started to not wear masks as | |
| well. | |
| I think the efforts of trying to just help the public early | |
| on when we don't know a lot of information, we always tend to | |
| be more conservative. And then as we gain knowledge, | |
| recommendations evolve. | |
| So, I think the origin story is important to help, again, | |
| look forward and put forward measures to try to help anticipate | |
| whether it's a zoonotic infection or was a lab-derived virus. | |
| Mrs. Dingell. I'm going to have more questions for the | |
| record, Mr. Chairman. | |
| But I want to switch subjects. Today, there are a variety | |
| of views within the intelligence community and around the world | |
| on whether the virus originated in an accidental lab leak or | |
| whether it occurred from a leak to animals to humans. And I | |
| want to know that as much as anybody. But Dr. Auwaerter, is it | |
| normal for different agencies within the intelligence community | |
| to make different assessments of the likelihood of one origin | |
| theory over the other? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Well, I don't work in the government, but my | |
| understanding just reading the newspapers are that the CIA has | |
| not made any determination. Others have come to different | |
| levels of conclusions, so it seems to me that there is a | |
| difference of opinion. | |
| Mrs. Dingell. And it's normal for scientists to disagree? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Absolutely. I think debate there is always | |
| the case, very few things we know for certain. | |
| Mrs. Dingell. I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize the Chairman of the full | |
| committee Mr. Comer, from Kentucky, for five minutes of | |
| questions. | |
| Mr. Comer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| One of the prevailing themes of the pandemic has been | |
| scientists' use of the media to downplay the lab leak theory. | |
| Mr. Wade, in your career you worked at Nature Magazine, | |
| Science Magazine, and The New York Times. Would you agree that | |
| the scientific establishment used the media to downplay the lab | |
| leak theory? | |
| Mr. Wade. That's a complicated issue, Mr. Comer. I think | |
| the media was used in this particular campaign to establish | |
| natural origin theory. The scientific community is very afraid | |
| to speak up on political issues. I think the reason is that the | |
| government grants are handed out through the system of peer | |
| review committees. So, you don't want any single scientist on | |
| your peer review committee to vote against you. Therefore-- | |
| because you won't get your grant it's so competitive. So, | |
| therefore, scientists are very reluctant to say anything that | |
| is politically divisive and might turn other scientists against | |
| them. This means that they cannot be relied upon in the way | |
| that I think we would like them to be independent and | |
| forthright and call it as they see it. | |
| Mr. Comer. OK. Well, we saw this first with the ``Proximal | |
| Origin'' paper that said, ``Our analysis clearly showed that | |
| COVID-19 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully | |
| manipulated virus.'' This was first published on February 17 of | |
| 2020. | |
| Each witness, I have a simple question, yes or no, was | |
| there science available to make such an unequivocal statement | |
| against the possibility of a lab leak that early on, February | |
| 2020? | |
| Dr. Metzl? | |
| Mr. Metzl. Absolutely, no. | |
| Mr. Comer. Mr. Wade? | |
| Mr. Wade. No, it was not. | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Yes. I don't have sufficient frame of | |
| reference to give an answer. | |
| Dr. Redfield. No. | |
| Mr. Comer. Next, Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance | |
| orchestrated a letter in the Lancet, a prestigious journal, on | |
| February 19, 2020, that said, ``We strongly condemn conspiracy | |
| theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural | |
| origin.'' | |
| Each witness, yes or no, is the possibility COVID-19 leaked | |
| from a lab a conspiracy theory? | |
| Mr. Metzl. Absolutely not. | |
| Mr. Wade. No. | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. I would say no, but also it has been | |
| approached as such. | |
| Dr. Redfield. No. | |
| Mr. Comer. Dr. Redfield, I want to stick with you. You have | |
| said before that you were locked out of conversations about the | |
| lab leak by Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins. | |
| Do you think they kept you out of the conversations because | |
| you believe COVID-19 may have come from a lab? | |
| Dr. Redfield. Yes. I think I made it very clear in January | |
| to all of them why we had to aggressively pursue this. And I | |
| let them know as a virologist that I didn't see that this was | |
| anything like SARS or MERS because they never learned how to | |
| transmit human to human, that I felt this virus was too | |
| infectious for humans. There was a lot of evidence that lab | |
| actually published in 2014 that they put the H2 receptor into | |
| humanized mice so it can infect human tissue. I think, you | |
| know, we had to really seriously go after the fact it came from | |
| the lab, and they knew that that was how I was thinking. | |
| Although, I thought we had to go after both hypotheses. I was | |
| told later, I didn't know I was excluded. I didn't know there | |
| was a February 1 conference call until the Freedom of | |
| Information came out with the emails, and I was quite upset as | |
| the CDC Director that I was excluded from those discussions. | |
| Mr. Comer. Why would they do this? | |
| Dr. Redfield. Because I had a different point of view and I | |
| was told they made a decision that they would keep this | |
| confidential until they came up with a single narrative, which | |
| I will argue is antithetical to science. Science never selects | |
| a single narrative. We foster, as my colleague here just said, | |
| we foster debate. And we're confident that with debate, science | |
| will eventually get to the truth. This was an a priori decision | |
| that there's one point of view that we're going to put out | |
| there, and anyone who doesn't agree with it is going to be | |
| sidelined. And as I say, I was only the CDC director, and I was | |
| sidelined. | |
| Mr. Comer. Well, I think Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins got caught | |
| with their hand in the cookie jar. They got caught | |
| supercharging viruses in an unsecure Chinese lab. They wanted | |
| push the envelope, and so, they got together to cover | |
| themselves, cover up their story, and wipe their fingerprint of | |
| the virus that has killed more than one million Americans. Now | |
| to quote Jurassic Park, they were, ``so preoccupied with | |
| whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they | |
| should.'' | |
| I look forward to the rest of the testimony today, and I | |
| look forward to the great work of this subcommittee. Mr. Chair, | |
| I yield back. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Mfume from Maryland for | |
| five minutes of questions. | |
| Mr. Mfume. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, I want to | |
| thank you and the Ranking Member for convening us on this very | |
| important and difficult topic. One that all Americans, | |
| regardless of where they live, regardless of what they do are | |
| concerned about. And I had come to this hearing expecting, Mr. | |
| Chairman, that we would find a way to peel off the things that | |
| didn't matter so that we could get to the things that did | |
| matter, whether it was a lab leak, or an infection through | |
| animals. I think we've got to pursue both of those paths if we | |
| are ever to get the truth. | |
| However, I must go back to what my Ranking Member said, | |
| that I am a bit appalled that this hearing now gets layered | |
| over with the issue of race in a very strong way with the | |
| presence of Mr. Wade. Mr. Wade, I have read your book, and I'm | |
| appalled by it. I would hope that giving you this platform does | |
| not paint or taint the issue that we're trying to get to and | |
| deal with here. You're not a physician. You are not a | |
| physician's assistant. You are not a scientist. You have never | |
| done a peer-reviewed paper. And yet, you've got an opinion, | |
| which is fine, except that it's steeped in this conspiracy | |
| theory that somehow or another, minorities are so genetically | |
| different that they are culpable in some sort of way. I just | |
| don't like that at all. | |
| In your book, ``The Troublesome Inheritance,'' you talk | |
| about a number of different things--and David Duke talks about | |
| it--and says that he really endorses your position on Blacks | |
| and Jews. The book was championed by the infamous white | |
| supremacists, Jared Taylor, John Demarchar, and Steve Sailer. | |
| The book has been promoted on a neo-Nazi forum that is linked | |
| to almost 100 racially motivated attempted murders over the | |
| last five years. It troubles me that--and I'm going to ask | |
| unanimous consent, Mr. Chairman, that The New York Times piece | |
| for which you wrote actually said that your theory has come off | |
| at the wheels, particularly, when you talk about east Asians | |
| and their genetic makeup. | |
| I would like to ask that the David Duke statement and the | |
| copy from his website be entered into the record. And I'd like | |
| that the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks these things | |
| annually, and their assessment, which is similar, be added to | |
| the record. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Without objection. | |
| Mr. Mfume. Now, I've got to tell you, I spent five terms in | |
| this body. I was so troubled by what I saw in the streets with | |
| bias and hate crimes that I actually gave up my seat in the | |
| Congress, and I went back to work in community groups. I ended | |
| up being the president of the NAACP so that, nationally, I | |
| could work against this sort of thing. It is repulsive. So, | |
| here I am back again hearing the issues that drove me out of | |
| here to begin with. I don't want to take away from this | |
| hearing. I don't want to take away from what I said earlier is | |
| that we've got to go down both paths. It just burns me that I | |
| would know that I'm doing that on a forum where somebody with | |
| these sort of beliefs is also a part of. | |
| Mr. Auwaerter, I want to go to you for minute. I know you | |
| don't represent Johns Hopkins, you are representing the | |
| Association on Infectious Diseases. I have a lot of---- | |
| Mr. Wade. Excuse me, sir, do I get the chance to respond | |
| briefly. | |
| Mr. Mfume. It's my time. No, you do not. | |
| Mr. Wade. OK. | |
| Mr. Mfume. I have a lot of respect for Hopkins. I spent 10 | |
| years on the board of trustees there. I'm a graduate of the | |
| institution. I know that you speak with a great deal of | |
| background. And even though, in this instance, you're speaking | |
| on the Association of Infectious Diseases, I take all of that | |
| very seriously. And I want to ask you one quick thing here | |
| about going down both of these paths. How much can you say, in | |
| a short period of time, does the information obtained through | |
| this hearing and other hearings and the intelligence community, | |
| how very important is that to bolstering the efforts to prepare | |
| for any future pandemics? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Well, I think, obviously, getting to the | |
| origins is on everyone's mind. But also understanding what | |
| happened should also help prepare us for moving ahead. And I | |
| can't overstate the needs in our public health, which have been | |
| generally less well-funded than other measures and other | |
| diseases to help protect our country. | |
| Mr. Mfume. Thank you. I've got to reclaim the little bit of | |
| time that we have left. And, Mr. Wade, let me just say this, | |
| personally, for a race of people who have suffered, endured, | |
| and survived three centuries of slavery, oppression, | |
| deprivation, degradation, denial, and disprivilege, I'm | |
| absolutely offended that you would have the opportunity to take | |
| this platform and to add anything of significance to it. I | |
| yield back. | |
| Mr. Wade. Well, I don't have anything in common with the | |
| White supremacists. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Mr. Wade, hold on a second. Hold on a second. | |
| I do think that Mr. Wade deserves the opportunity to take two | |
| minutes to respond to accusations made. But I do want to get | |
| back to the topic at hand which is the origins of COVID-19. | |
| Mr. Wade. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm sorry for this | |
| distraction from the work of the committee. I'm sorry, too, | |
| that Mr. Mfume did not like my book. I'm not a racist. I don't | |
| have anything in common with the views of White supremacists-- | |
| -- | |
| Mr. Mfume. They love you, though. | |
| Mr. Wade [continuing]. Just because David Duke likes my | |
| book. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Mr. Mfume, would you please let him respond? | |
| He did not interrupt you. | |
| Mr. Mfume. I didn't know that he got time to respond. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Chairman's decision. | |
| Mr. Wade. It's a not very good argument that David Duke | |
| likes my book. He maybe he likes many things, but that doesn't | |
| mean to say they're all wrong. I did write my book for him. I | |
| also made the clearest possible distinction between writing | |
| about the biology of race, which is a purely scientific issue | |
| and racist statements, which I have absolutely no sympathy. My | |
| book is explicitly antiracist. I stress the fact that we are | |
| all variations on the same human genome, which I think is a | |
| very important and unifying fact. I think the arguments made | |
| against the book were for entirely political reasons. Various | |
| [inaudible] led to the 120 scientists who attacked my book | |
| in Science as well as a nice story about Einstein. Someone told | |
| him 100 scientists had written a book saying he was wrong. And | |
| he replied, ``Well, if I were wrong, one would have been | |
| enough.'' That's how science works, not on the number of people | |
| against it, it works on facts. And those letter writers had no | |
| good point and no mistake in my book. So, I don't think that | |
| their criticism should be taken carefully. I'm sorry for the | |
| disruption and unhappiness this issue has caused and let's get | |
| back to the issue of the hearing, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. I now recognize Dr. Miller-Meeks | |
| from Iowa for five minutes of questions. | |
| Dr. Miller-Meeks. Thank you so much, Chair Wenstrup. And | |
| thank you to all of our witnesses who are here today. I'm both | |
| a doctor and former director of the Iowa Department of Public | |
| Health as well as a military veteran of 24 years. Like Dr. | |
| Metzl said, I have waited three years for this hearing. And I | |
| have, in fact, put people over politics and science over | |
| conspiracy. Our first inquiry on the Select Subcommittee on the | |
| Coronavirus Crisis--this is my third year on this committee-- | |
| was June 29, 2021, on origins of COVID-19, and the only people | |
| that attended were Republicans. | |
| We had a press conference at that hearing, and I was | |
| concerned that the public and the press weren't conveying that | |
| it wasn't partisan in trying to determine origins. It was, in | |
| fact, of utmost importance, and importance not just to | |
| Americans, but to the international community. At that press | |
| conference on June 29, 2021, I said: The reason we with need to | |
| know the origins of COVID-19 is to prevent and prepare for the | |
| next pandemic. We need to know, one, there are immediate | |
| disclosure rules. There was not immediate disclosure of a virus | |
| that would lead to a worldwide pandemic. Immediate disclosure | |
| and WHO has a vested interest in this in making sure there's | |
| compliance. | |
| Laboratory safety: it was known, even in the U.S., there | |
| are labs who have lab leaks, laboratory safety, biosafety lab | |
| for working being done in a biosafety lab too. It was known | |
| that this was occurring at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. So, | |
| lab safety. And, third, and I think Dr. Redfield has mentioned | |
| this--all of you have mentioned this--and that is, the ethics | |
| of gain-of-function research, or types of research. Often, we | |
| as scientists get ahead of the ethics. But the ethics of types | |
| of research, and again, the international community has a | |
| vested interest in discussing and debating these topics. I have | |
| published in journals before, peer-reviewed journals. I know | |
| how the editing and the peer-review process works. I also know | |
| very intimately of the disclosure requirements and conflicts of | |
| interest, including financial. | |
| Over the weekend, we released new emails and documents that | |
| suggested that Dr. Fauci prompted the drafting of a | |
| publication, ultimately, called ``Proximal Origins,'' that | |
| would disprove the lab leak theory. The authors of this paper | |
| skewed available evidence to achieve that goal. And Dr. Jeremy | |
| Farrar, now chief scientist for the World Health Organization, | |
| went uncredited despite significant involvement. | |
| Are you all aware of these documents? And just nod | |
| affirmatively. All of the witnesses except one have nodded yes. | |
| You know, many of you have been in journalism and in science | |
| writing for a long time. Dr. Metzl, can you explain the process | |
| briefly, because I have little time, of drafting, editing, and | |
| reviewing a publication in a science magazine. | |
| Mr. Metzl. Well, Mr. Wade is probably better at this than | |
| me because he was an editor of two science magazines. But what | |
| I will say is different people contribute, and it's normal | |
| practice, to attribute, to list the names of the people who | |
| have participated. | |
| Dr. Miller-Meeks. And, then, Mr. Wade, given that | |
| acknowledgment, so do you think it's important that there is | |
| proper crediting and acknowledging of authors? | |
| Mr. Wade. I think the question of who is or is not an | |
| author of a paper is somewhat loose. So many people interpret | |
| it different ways. I think it's called honorary authorships | |
| where you talk to someone in an elevator and say, well, I'll | |
| add you to my paper. It's not a very--there are no hard-and- | |
| fast rules for who should be author of a paper. | |
| Dr. Miller-Meeks. But if an individual is the genesis of | |
| that paper, do you think they should be acknowledged. | |
| Mr. Wade. Well, if they make some important intellectual | |
| contribution to it, they should. I don't know that Farrar did | |
| or was in a position to. All we know is that he suggested a | |
| minor editing change to the paper. | |
| Dr. Miller-Meeks. And Dr. Auwaerter, you mentioned that we | |
| know the intermediate host for SARS. How long did it take for | |
| us to find the intermediate host for SARS? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. It did take a few years. It was not | |
| immediate. | |
| Dr. Miller-Meeks. And MERS. | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. MERS also took sometime. | |
| Dr. Miller-Meeks. Are any of you aware of a furin cleavage | |
| site occurring naturally? Dr. Metzl, go ahead. | |
| Mr. Metzl. They occurred naturally, but not in SARS-like | |
| viruses, other than SARS-CoV-2. | |
| Dr. Miller-Meeks. So, in other viruses, but not in SARS, | |
| and SARS-CoV-2 very similar to SARS-CoV-2. | |
| Mr. Metzl. Correct. In no SARS-like viruses, and it showed | |
| up for the first time in a SARS-like virus, in the SARS-CoV-2 | |
| virus, which seemed to appear out of nowhere. | |
| Dr. Miller-Meeks. Yes. The endonuclease's fingerprint, how | |
| common does that occur? The repeating cycle CG-GC-GG and---- | |
| Mr. Metzl. The furin cleavage sites. | |
| Mr. Wade. Well---- | |
| Dr. Miller-Meeks. The point in that is that there is, as | |
| you said, Dr. Metzl, extraordinary circumstantial evidence that | |
| this came from a lab. I don't know why the authors didn't want | |
| to state this, they did not want to have the scientific | |
| conversation and dialog; why they wanted to obfuscate and | |
| suppress the truth, or even have a debate about the origins of | |
| COVID-19. Was it for personal financial gain? Was it to hide | |
| U.S. financial interest into the Wuhan Institute of Virology | |
| indirectly? Was it to suppress the revelation that there was, | |
| perhaps, gain-of-function research that had been prohibited in | |
| the United States? Or were they concerned that a conspiracy | |
| would develop that it was bioterrorism? And I would state that | |
| their suppression and obfuscation has led to the exact mistrust | |
| and distrust and conspiracy theories that they may have tried | |
| to avoid. Thank you so much. I'm so delighted to have this | |
| hearing, and I think we will be able to get to the bottom of | |
| this, have an open dialog. What they did is not science, and it | |
| will not prevent you from future pandemics---- | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Your time has expired. I now recognize Ms. | |
| Ross from North Carolina for five minutes of questions. | |
| Ms. Ross. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I just want to | |
| be very clear to our distinguished panelists and to the folks | |
| who are watching this. My Democratic colleagues and I strongly | |
| support the experts' community's effort to determine the | |
| origins of the novel coronavirus. Because doing so is critical | |
| to preventing and preparing for future pandemics, plain and | |
| simple. | |
| And as stated, almost 1.2 million Americans have lost their | |
| lives due to COVID-19, and millions more around the world. It's | |
| very personal to each of us. More than 30,000 people in my home | |
| state have died because of this pandemic. And our goal here | |
| should be to prevent something like this from happening again, | |
| which is why science and facts should guide legitimate | |
| investigations into the pandemic's origins. And as has been | |
| said by my colleague on the other side of the aisle, we must | |
| put people over politics. | |
| So, Dr. Auwaerter, I just want to ask you my first | |
| question. How does promoting our understanding of the novel | |
| coronavirus' origins help us prevent and prepare for future | |
| pandemics? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Well, I think there are two main avenues. | |
| One is if it is of animal origin, we need to anticipate | |
| additional viruses, or even potentially bacteria. And | |
| therefore, having an advance notice, an early notice as | |
| possible, certainly is helpful for containment and also | |
| mitigation measures. This, no doubt, would need to be | |
| cooperation with other countries, public health agencies to | |
| build that infrastructure. | |
| On the other hand, if it's a lab-derived virus, then | |
| guidance in terms of proper research and guardrails is highly | |
| important to make sure, to the best of abilities, this never | |
| happens again. Much as we take great care with airline safety, | |
| nuclear weapons, and so on, all of that needs to be paid | |
| attention to. | |
| Mr. Ross. Thank you. Dozens of scientific research studies | |
| have been completed or are currently underway to promote our | |
| understanding of how the novel coronavirus came to be. | |
| Under President Biden's leadership--and we heard a little | |
| bit from our colleague Mr. Raskin about President Trump's | |
| initial response to this--but under President Biden's | |
| leadership, the intelligence community has taken decisive | |
| action to get to the bottom of the novel coronavirus' origins. | |
| And we have seen some new releases from different departments | |
| about their ongoing findings. | |
| Dr. Auwaerter, can you tell us about the importance of the | |
| objectivity of these investigations? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Well, as a clinician and someone that does | |
| research, I think the objectivity is very important. Obviously, | |
| not all information is available to us that has based the | |
| conclusions. Those are outside of my expertise as to whether | |
| that's the case. But I think the objectivity is highly | |
| important, and also the fact of how it's rated. You know, low | |
| confidence means exactly what I think it means, that there's a | |
| fair amount of uncertainty. | |
| Mr. Ross. OK. Final question, congressional investigations | |
| designed to villainize or discredit public health experts, | |
| undermine our public health institutions and sometimes can | |
| spread dangerous misinformation, which itself can metastasize. | |
| Dr. Auwaerter, instead of launching a partisan | |
| investigation or politicizing the pandemic's origin, what | |
| should Congress be doing to prevent something like this from | |
| happening again? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Well, outside of the political realm, I | |
| would just say an independent body would make the most sense | |
| that is not cueing, essentially, or have the ability to make | |
| much political hay, if that's possible. I'm not sure of the | |
| details of that. But to me, that seems to be the ideal. | |
| Ms. Ross. Thank you very much. I would like yield the | |
| remainder of my time to my colleague, Congressman Mfume. | |
| Mr. Mfume. Oh, thank you very, very much for that. I want | |
| to go back and underscore, if I might, how I began my comments | |
| because I don't want that lost on those who are here or those | |
| who are watching. This is designed--and again, I want to | |
| commend the Chair and the Ranking Member Ruiz for making sure | |
| that we move down a path together. Together, Democrats and | |
| Republicans trying to get answers for the American people, not | |
| just about what happened, but as has been said so that it never | |
| happens again. And if it does, we are prepared. | |
| And I put so much emphasis on science because I spent five | |
| years at the NIH, at the Institute for Minority Health and | |
| Health Disparities. I was the executive director of the | |
| National Medical Association. And up until two years ago, I | |
| have served as Vice President of Research America, the largest | |
| research advocacy organization in the country. This is real to | |
| me. This is very personal. And I just can't even fathom the | |
| thought of people still dying as a result of this until we have | |
| our work completed. Thank you. I yield back. | |
| Mr. Wenstrup. Thank you. I now recognize Ms. Lesko from | |
| Arizona for five minutes of questions. | |
| Mrs. Lesko. Thank you, Mr. Chair. In Rep. Ruiz's opening | |
| statement, he said he doesn't want the COVID-19 investigation | |
| to be political. I couldn't agree more. Yet in the next breath, | |
| he accused one of the witnesses of writing a white supremacist | |
| book, which is a political salvo designed to discredit the | |
| witness. Then his first question wasn't about COVID-19 at all, | |
| it was all about a non-COVID-related book that Dr. Wade wrote | |
| in the past. And a poster board was held over his head designed | |
| for political theatre. Then Rep. Raskin went after President | |
| Trump for five minutes instead of asking a question. | |
| With all due respect, I contend that some of my Democratic | |
| colleagues are the ones making the COVID investigation | |
| political. Why they don't want to investigate the origins of | |
| COVID-19 that killed millions of people, I will never | |
| understand. | |
| My first question is for Dr. Redfield. A witness in our | |
| roundtable last week said that it was a no-brainer that the | |
| virus came from the Wuhan lab. When you were Director of the | |
| CDC, did Dr. Fauci ever explain to you why he didn't believe | |
| the virus came from the Wuhan lab and why he actively worked to | |
| silence that theory? | |
| Dr. Redfield. Dr. Fauci's position as those who thought a | |
| spillover took the position that it was most likely a spillover | |
| event because that's what happened with SARS, and that's what | |
| happened with MERS. Alright. And I think it's important to look | |
| at, prior to 2012, we didn't really have another mechanism | |
| other than nature. We weren't doing gain-of-function research. | |
| I'm a clinical virologist. I tried to explain to Dr. Fauci, | |
| who's an immunologist, that this virus, SARS and MERS, when | |
| they infected man from the intermediate host, civic cat in the | |
| case of SARS and a camel in the case of MERS, they never | |
| learned how to go human to human. So, those original outbreaks | |
| are less than 1,000 people, and the epidemics died. When | |
| everyone thought this was SARS-like, well, it's going to die | |
| too. But this virus was immediately the most infectious virus-- | |
| not the most, I think probably right behind measles--virus that | |
| we've seen infect man. | |
| So, I immediately said, wait a second, this isn't natural. | |
| And then you go back and look at the literature and you find in | |
| 2014 this lab actually published a paper that they put the H2 | |
| receptor into humanized mice so it can infect human tissue. And | |
| then you learn that the new COVID, which came from bats, now | |
| can hardly replicate in bats. | |
| Mrs. Lesko. Yes. | |
| Dr. Redfield. So, how does that happen? So, I had said that | |
| my view as a virologist--again, my hypothesis--and I never | |
| discredit them for their hypothesis, the spillover--was that | |
| this was--most likely come from the lab. And we need to | |
| aggressively investigate both hypotheses. | |
| Mrs. Lesko. Thank you. Thank you very much. I have another | |
| question for you, Dr. Redfield. In a recent Energy and Commerce | |
| Oversight hearing, I asked the NIH acting director about the | |
| NIH's gross negligence in monitoring the EcoHealth Alliance | |
| grant and subgrant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He | |
| admitted that we might not have had all of the information and | |
| research reports from WIV and EcoHealth. He insisted, however, | |
| that he was sure that the coronavirus research at WIV was | |
| completely unrelated to SARS-COVID-2. | |
| With the information we know and the fact that China | |
| deleted data and asked NIH to delete data, do you believe that | |
| we can have certainty that the virus did not come from the | |
| Wuhan lab and that U.S. funding was not used for COVID-19- | |
| related research? | |
| Dr. Redfield. Yes, absolutely, we can't do that. I will say | |
| if you go back and look--it's declassified now, and I'm sure | |
| you all have your classified briefings, but the declassified | |
| information now. In September 2019, three things happened in | |
| that lab: One is they deleted the sequences. That's highly | |
| irregular. Researchers don't usually like to do that. The | |
| second thing they did was they changed the command and control | |
| of the lab from the civilian control to the military control. | |
| Highly unusual. I've been involved in dual use labs when I was | |
| in the military. And the third thing they did, which I think is | |
| really telling, is they let a contractor redo the ventilation | |
| system in that laboratory. | |
| So, I think clearly there was strong evidence that there | |
| was a significant event that happened in that laboratory in | |
| September. It's now been declassified. You can read it. I'm | |
| sure there's more classified information around it. | |
| Mrs. Lesko. Thank you. Dr. Redfield, The New York Post | |
| reported that you stated: I could use the word ``coverup,'' but | |
| I don't know that, so I'm not going to speculate that. Do you | |
| believe there was a coverup? And if so, why would the Federal | |
| agencies work with legacy media to silence scientists and other | |
| Americans asking questions about the origins of SARS-CoV-2? | |
| Dr. Redfield. Yes, and I'm not a big fan of quoting The New | |
| York Post. I don't think I used the word ``coverup.'' OK. I | |
| think there was an attempt to misguide, redirect the debate, | |
| but I wouldn't have used the word ``coverup.'' | |
| Mrs. Lesko. Thank you very much. And I yield back. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Dr. Bera from California for | |
| five minutes of questions. | |
| Dr. Bera. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, from day one | |
| of this pandemic, unfortunately, politics has kind of infused a | |
| lot of this. And I know this--you know, obviously, Dr. | |
| Redfield, you and I had many conversations. In my time in | |
| Congress, you know, one of my focus areas has been global | |
| health security pandemic preparedness. I've sat on national | |
| task forces at CSIS to prepare for global health securities. We | |
| put out a recommendation, but, unfortunately, in the fall of | |
| 2019, and had pushed to put that framework in place. | |
| My colleagues, Congresswoman Dingell and Congressman Ross | |
| have equivocally said, as Democrats, we want to find out what | |
| the origins of COVID were. | |
| Early on in the pandemic, in January 2020, I pushed, | |
| personally, as hard as I could on the Trump Administration to | |
| do everything they could to get our scientists to the hot zone, | |
| to ground zero, to actually get a sense of what was going on. I | |
| am not going to defend how the Chinese Communist Party has | |
| handled this pandemic. They've stonewalled us. They've played | |
| politics. They've--you know, Dr. Metzl, you talked about the | |
| importance of WHO. They played politics with the WHO | |
| recommendations. And until we actually can get to the hot zone, | |
| until we--you know, I don't know that we'll ever get the data. | |
| This is not a partisan issue. In fact, on the Intelligence | |
| Committee, which the Chairman is on, we marked up a COVID-19 | |
| Origins Act in a nonpartisan way. It passed out of markup with | |
| a voice vote. We will all get a chance to vote on that bill on | |
| Friday. I think you will see a strong bipartisan vote | |
| encouraging the intelligence community to declassify as much | |
| information as possible so the public can see the information | |
| that we have. It's not conclusive, but we've got to continue to | |
| try to find the COVID origins. | |
| I think it is reprehensible that we're disparaging some of | |
| our greatest public health individuals. Dr. Fauci, who I have | |
| known for a long time, and Francis Collins, who I've gotten to | |
| know, both are outstanding scientists, and so forth. They may | |
| have had a different hypothesis. We should entertain all | |
| hypothesis, and we should do it in an objective way to find the | |
| answers. I also hope we don't as a body take the wrong lessons | |
| from this. | |
| Dr. Metzl, you talked the importance of the WHO. I would | |
| like your opinion on--international collaboration is extremely | |
| important, not just in pandemic preparedness, but also in | |
| biosecurity work, and so forth. We have to have the systems in | |
| place to identify pandemics fairly quickly, to think about how | |
| we address it, because, you know, whether this was man-made or | |
| naturally occurring, bad actors are out there who just saw what | |
| a virus did to the entire planet. Those technologies are | |
| readily available. You come from a national security | |
| background. How important is it to work with our international | |
| partners here? | |
| Mr. Metzl. It's absolutely essential that we work with our | |
| international partners and with the WHO. And as it's been said | |
| repeatedly, when those international partners, or potential | |
| partners themselves are bad actors, which is absolutely the | |
| case with China, that makes things a lot more difficult. And | |
| then the World Health Organization, which is absolutely | |
| essential, is working with one hand tied behind its back. It | |
| doesn't have the mandate or the authority to do what it needs | |
| to do. It couldn't have its own independent surveillance | |
| capability in the beginning of the pandemic. When China was | |
| preventing the WHO investigators from going to Wuhan, there was | |
| nothing that they could do. And as I had said in my remarks, | |
| Dr. Tedros has actually really been at the forefront of | |
| fighting for the kind of open inquiry that the Chinese | |
| government has so aggressively blocked. | |
| If I can just say, just very quickly, I'm originally from | |
| Kansas City. I'm a Midwestern optimist and so, I hear some | |
| consensus in the room that it's critically important to | |
| understand how the pandemic started; that we have to fully | |
| examine all origin hypotheses. | |
| It's my view, as I have said before, that China must be the | |
| primary focus but we also have to look at everything, including | |
| ourselves. | |
| But if we make this process primarily about Dr. Fauci--even | |
| though we need to look at everything--if we make it primarily | |
| about Dr. Fauci, we would be inappropriately serving the | |
| Chinese government a propaganda coup on a silver platter. | |
| Dr. Bera. I couldn't agree with you more. Let's get to the | |
| facts. Let's discover the origins. Let's do what we can to | |
| prevent the next pandemic. Let's increase our biosafety and | |
| biosecurity. You know, we should debate gain-of-function | |
| research. I think that's totally appropriate. We should make | |
| sure if we are looking at that, that it is done in an absolute | |
| safe way with oversight, et cetera. We should also think about | |
| the private sector that can operate, you know, do this research | |
| on their own. We ought to think about how we also look at that | |
| and make that safer. Thank you. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Now I recognize Mr. Cloud for five minutes of | |
| questions. | |
| Mr. Cloud. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you all for being | |
| here. Thank you for your work in science and for yielding your | |
| wisdom in this effort to us today. | |
| Dr. Metzl, I wanted to ask you, you mentioned that there | |
| were scientists who refused to be silenced, insinuating that | |
| there were efforts to silence. And I was just wondering if you | |
| could kind of brief what some of those efforts were? | |
| Mr. Metzl. Sure. So, when a small handful of us, in the | |
| earliest days of the pandemic, began raising the possibility of | |
| possible lab origin, there was just, as I said, ferociously | |
| strong headwinds. There was this manufactured consensus. And I | |
| kept digging. And like I said before, I'm a lifelong Democrat. | |
| I consider myself a progressive person, but I kept digging. I | |
| couldn't find the justification for these strong arguments, | |
| calling people like me, investigating, looking into pandemic | |
| origins in good faith, conspiracy theorists. And it was very | |
| difficult. So, we had a small group that formed later in 2020 | |
| that is--others have called the Paris Group--all of the members | |
| of that community were aggressively trying to place scientific | |
| papers with journals and had zero success. | |
| So, there was a wall that was extremely difficult to get | |
| over, which is why, what I said to this group is, look, we have | |
| to try to get around that wall. And that's why we published our | |
| four open letters that I believe played significant role in, | |
| along with other things, of starting to shift at this | |
| conversation. But it took more than a year of this kind of | |
| aggressive work to even start to begin that type of change. | |
| Mr. Cloud. And some of that pushback came from our | |
| government, too. Is that correct? | |
| Mr. Metzl. Well, it was mixed--I mean, certainly, from what | |
| we've heard, there were leaders of the U.S. Government who--Dr. | |
| Fauci had said he was open to all possibilities. But then the | |
| next sentence was the preponderance of science suggests a | |
| natural origin. I'm a fan of Dr. Fauci, but I would--I don't | |
| like to scream at the television, but when I heard those words, | |
| I would say, well, no, no, that's not the case. That's not what | |
| the science, at least as I'm reading it, is saying. | |
| Mr. Cloud. And to what you were just saying, Forbes | |
| mentioned you as one of the first as an ex-high official---- | |
| Mr. Metzl. Yes. | |
| Mr. Cloud [continuing]. High-level staffer for Bill Clinton | |
| and then Senator Joe Biden to say that SARS coronavirus was | |
| likely a Wuhan lab escapee. Why did you think that? | |
| Mr. Metzl. So, in the early days of January 2020, like | |
| everybody, I was trying to figure out what was happening. And I | |
| read the news reports, and it said it comes from the market. | |
| And SARS-2 sounded kind of like SARS-1, and that seemed | |
| credible. But I had just been in Wuhan, China. So, I think a | |
| lot of Americans had this vision of Wuhan as some little market | |
| town where a bunch of yokels are eating bats for dinner every | |
| night. But Wuhan is China's Chicago. It's an incredibly | |
| sophisticated, highly educated, wealthy city. I knew that the | |
| Wuhan Institute of Virology was based there. I knew a lot about | |
| that background. I also had an understanding both of the | |
| science and of China. And then on January 24 of 2020, there was | |
| a Lancet paper written by Chinese scientists saying that more | |
| than a third of the earliest cases of infection were of people | |
| who had no connection to the market. So, in my mind, that was a | |
| pretty strong piece of evidence that the market was a super | |
| spreader place, which certainly is what I still believe. And | |
| that was when I started digging. | |
| And then in later February 2020, I had all of these ideas I | |
| was developing. I went to South Africa for the meeting of our | |
| World Health Organization expert advisory committee on human | |
| genome editing. And this is with some of the top scientists and | |
| others in the world. And then privately, I was telling people, | |
| like, here is my private view. Here is what I'm seeing in the | |
| evidence. And there was a part of me that was kind of hoping | |
| that they would say, Oh, no, you're crazy. Here is what you're | |
| missing. Because, you know, this is an uncomfortable hypothesis | |
| for many reasons. That wasn't--now, certainly, nobody was | |
| saying that. And that was why when I came back after those | |
| meetings, I became very, very public, and then I launched my | |
| website and wrote a number of editorials in March and early | |
| April. | |
| Mr. Cloud. I want to try to get another question in here. | |
| Your take on this, was that before or after ``Proximal | |
| Origins'' came out? | |
| Mr. Metzl. So, before---- | |
| Mr. Cloud. And what was your take on that when you, I | |
| guess, read that---- | |
| Mr. Metzl. Yes. | |
| Mr. Cloud [continuing]. And what impact do you think that | |
| had on the scientific community---- | |
| Mr. Metzl. It's a---- | |
| Mr. Cloud [continuing]. And the free discovery, so to speak | |
| of---- | |
| Mr. Metzl. It's a great question. Just, I don't mean to be | |
| overly referenced in my own background, but I'm pro-science, | |
| pro-vaccine. I believe climate change is real. But when I saw | |
| that, I was monumentally--I won't use--I'll say, upset, angry. | |
| Because without the available evidence, these absolute claims | |
| were being made. And I was really digging, and there just | |
| wasn't the evidence to make those assertions. | |
| So, the right position in the beginning was what everybody | |
| is saying now. It could have been natural origin. It could have | |
| been a lab origin. And we need to actively and aggressively | |
| investigate all relevant hypotheses. And it's very unfortunate | |
| that wasn't the case. | |
| Mr. Cloud. And of course, the question we'll have to get to | |
| later is why was this--all the data deleted and everything. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Garcia from California | |
| for five minutes of questions. | |
| Mr. Garcia. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to | |
| thank, of course, all of our witnesses as well for being here. | |
| We all care deeply about the work of this select subcommittee. | |
| I think it's critical. And we all can agree that we learn as | |
| much as about the COVID-19 origins as we can. We know that | |
| preventing future pandemics saves lives. That's what this is | |
| all about. That's what this committee is all about. | |
| We have lost over 1 million American lives in this country, | |
| many more across the world. A lot of folks know I lost both my | |
| mother and my stepfather to the pandemic early on, so that I | |
| understand the human cost and tragedy of this virus. | |
| I'm very grateful that in May 2021, President Biden ordered | |
| the intelligence community to investigate the origins of COVID- | |
| 19. He specifically requested the Department of Energy be | |
| brought into as part of this important assessment. This has | |
| been discussed today. We know that this is critical work that's | |
| been happening. We also know that one way or another, we don't | |
| have clear proof about the origins of COVID-19. And this has | |
| been shared by our witnesses, and of course in the many reports | |
| that have been produced by our agencies. | |
| Now, we can make convincing cases, of course, for both | |
| potential lab leak, or if there was transmission from animals, | |
| but no one can say for certain where exactly the origins are | |
| today. And I think I want to repeat that so that it can be very | |
| clear to the American public as far as where we're actually at | |
| in this process and in these investigations. Multiple Federal | |
| agencies have supported both sides of the question and none | |
| with high confidence. | |
| One of the most important lessons that we can learn from | |
| the origins of COVID-19 is how we can better respond to future | |
| viruses and future pandemics, because there will be future | |
| pandemics. We've seen the mass death, the devastation this has | |
| caused our economy and the American public and the global | |
| public. And we also need to know and understand what mistakes | |
| were made in the past so that we can correct them in the | |
| future. | |
| We know, for example, that President Trump's own advisor on | |
| COVID-19, who we heard a lot from during the pandemic, Dr. | |
| Birx, had said that the previous administration's policies | |
| early in the pandemic possibly cost us hundreds of thousands of | |
| American lives. | |
| And I want to also note something that was said. We know | |
| that on more than 20 separate occasions, President Trump | |
| defended President Xi and his handling of COVID-19. We've been | |
| talking a lot about China and Chinese origins. But it's | |
| important to talk also about what the former President's | |
| comments were. | |
| So, even as we had concerns about China's lack of | |
| transparency early on in the crisis, President Trump would | |
| consistently praise President Xi, in fact, on 20 separate | |
| occasions. | |
| I want to quote something former President Trump said, | |
| ``Last night, I spoke to President Xi. We talked about the | |
| experience that they had in China and of all the things that | |
| have taken place, and we learned a lot. They've had a very | |
| tough experience, and they're doing well, and he is doing well. | |
| President Xi is doing very well. But we learned a lot, and we | |
| have great communication together. We're going to be sent great | |
| data from China.'' | |
| Now, it's very clear that that great data actually never | |
| came, and there was never really the cooperation that the | |
| President--that the former administration said that we were | |
| going to have. And over and over again, President Trump's | |
| Administration coddled the Chinese government and told us that | |
| this was all going to work out just fine, even though his | |
| doctors and scientists disagreed. | |
| If members of this subcommittee are as concerned about role | |
| of the Chinese government in the origins of the pandemic, then | |
| we also need to take a serious look at why the former President | |
| repeatedly praised China and downplayed a virus that has gone | |
| on to kill over a million Americans. That is the work that the | |
| subcommittee should also be focused on. | |
| Dr. Redfield, I know you mentioned in a New York Times | |
| interview that your greatest disappointment was lack of | |
| constant public health messages from civic leaders. And so my | |
| question is, is it fair to say that misinformation was a major | |
| public health threat? | |
| Dr. Redfield. I think that getting accurate information to | |
| the American public was really important. I was extremely | |
| disappointed as CDC Director that I was restricted from being | |
| able to communicate to the American public. I though that was a | |
| disservice. | |
| Mr. Garcia. And do you think that politicians who spread | |
| misinformation make the pandemic worse? And would it be fair to | |
| say that politicians who promote vaccine hesitancy actually | |
| cost lives? | |
| Dr. Redfield. I think there's a number of issues. Clearly, | |
| vaccine hesitancy is one of our greatest threats. As you know, | |
| as CDC Director, I took it on head on when I found out that, | |
| you know, we had over 360,000 people die of flu in the decade | |
| before I was CDC Director and less than 50 percent of American | |
| public takes the flu vaccine. So, I try to get over that. | |
| I do think--and this is different--I think one of the ways | |
| you promoted vaccine hesitancy, though, that wasn't the intent. | |
| I do think when we got into vaccine mandates, that helped | |
| reinforce vaccine hesitancy. So, vaccine hesitancy is a threat. | |
| We need to address it. | |
| Mr. Garcia. Thank you very much, sir. And I think that's | |
| important to also note vaccine hesitancy has been promoted | |
| actually by some members of this committee is actually very | |
| dangerous as has been said by you and many doctors across the | |
| country. | |
| Just quickly, Mr. Redfield, according to your March 17, | |
| 2022, transcribed interview with the Select Subcommittee on the | |
| Coronavirus Crisis, you had a team of CDC investigators prepare | |
| to go to China in early January 2020. Is that correct? | |
| Dr. Redfield. Correct. | |
| Mr. Garcia. But President Trump was not successful in | |
| deploying this team to China. Is that also correct? | |
| Dr. Redfield. Correct. | |
| Mr. Garcia. Well, thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, I | |
| yield back. | |
| Mr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Dr. Joyce from Pennsylvania | |
| for five minutes of questions. | |
| Dr. Joyce. Thank you for yielding. And thank you to our | |
| witness panel for appearing here today. | |
| Dr. Redfield, thank you for appearing and discussing these | |
| important matters. One of the biggest problems for our country | |
| going forward has been the erosion of public trust in our | |
| public health authorities, both at a national and at an | |
| international level. I believe that the work this committee | |
| will do on getting to the bottom of the origins of this virus | |
| will be critical in restoring that trust. And to that end, the | |
| House of Representatives will be voting on legislation, this | |
| week, requiring that the Director of the National Intelligence | |
| Agency to declassify all information relating to the origins of | |
| COVID-19, especially if there is reason to believe that the | |
| Wuhan Institute of Virology is a source of this outbreak. | |
| Dr. Redfield, how important is this level of transparency | |
| to restore trust with the American public? | |
| Dr. Redfield. You know, I thought about this a lot of how | |
| we're going to get to the answer that you're striving to get | |
| to: What is the origin? I don't think that answer's going to | |
| come from the scientific community. I think that answer's going | |
| to come from the intelligence community. And we need to get the | |
| intelligence community--and you all have the way to do that--I | |
| would like to have you have each of them show what data they | |
| have, where they got it, who their informants were, and what | |
| their conclusions were. Because as you know, a number of them | |
| are on the fence. They don't say yes or no. You got the FBI and | |
| the Energy Department, which I have a lot of respect for. | |
| Because when you look at those two departments, the FBI and the | |
| Energy Department have the strongest scientific footprint of | |
| any of our intelligence agencies. And I think the way they got | |
| to the answers of low probability and moderate probability is | |
| their internal scientists did the science. | |
| Dr. Joyce. So, yes or no? Do you support the | |
| declassification of all information relating to the origins of | |
| the COVID virus? | |
| Dr. Redfield. I think declassification is very important. | |
| The only caveat that I would say is there are some method and | |
| sources issues that I think you guys are going to have to | |
| wrestle with to see if they're compromised by some of the | |
| declassification. | |
| Dr. Joyce. And I think that the erosion of the trust of the | |
| American people needs to be reestablished, and part of that is | |
| obtained. | |
| Dr. Redfield. I agree with you. I agree with you. | |
| Dr. Joyce. I also mentioned that there's a loss of trust on | |
| international levels. And I constantly hear that from my | |
| constituents back home in Pennsylvania over the issues, | |
| specifically, regarding the World Health Organization by | |
| kowtowing to the Chinese Community Party who showed, at every | |
| step, an unwillingness to be honest and transparent about the | |
| timing, the severity, and the origins of the outbreak. They | |
| badly damaged their reputation. | |
| Dr. Metzl, Article 6 of the International Health | |
| Regulations requires that the World Health Organization | |
| notifies within 24 hours of all events which may constitute a | |
| public health emergency of international concern. | |
| Do you believe that the Chinese Communist Party complied | |
| with this requirement given the reports that the CCP had | |
| identified COVID cases as early as November 2019? | |
| Mr. Metzl. There can be no doubt, whatsoever, that the | |
| Chinese government violated the IHR. | |
| Dr. Joyce. Do you feel that there's an opportunity from our | |
| group, our work here to reestablish potential trust in the | |
| World Health Organization? | |
| Mr. Metzl. Well, that's a separate issue. Certainly, in the | |
| earliest days of the pandemic, Dr. Tedros, by his own | |
| admission, was saying too many nice things about the--about the | |
| Chinese government, when the Chinese government was very | |
| clearly not providing the WHO the information that the WHO was | |
| privately asking for. But as I said earlier, Dr. Tedros, then | |
| was the essential voice after the deeply flawed Chinese | |
| International Joint Study in February 2021. If Dr. Tedros had | |
| not spoken up, basically condemning this deeply flawed report | |
| and then abolishing the entire--this entire group, we would be | |
| in a very different situation today. | |
| Dr. Joyce. The CCP was given full veto authority over those | |
| included on the investigation team. And coincidentally, the | |
| only American accepted was Peter Daszak who is CEO of | |
| EcoHealth. Sort of like having the fox in the hen house. | |
| With this information, do you believe that the conclusions | |
| of the report can be trusted? And is there a serious conflict | |
| by Daszak's inclusion in the investigation team? | |
| Mr. Metzl. So, as I've said many times, the entire process | |
| was flawed for the joint study. And that was a joint study not | |
| originated by the WHO Secretariat, but by the World Health | |
| Assembly, which is the governing body of states overseeing the | |
| WHO. So, this was forced on the WHO. The report of the Chinese | |
| International Group, in my view, was so deeply and | |
| fundamentally flawed that it's outrageous. But the WHO | |
| Secretariat, they were the ones who then--Dr. Tedros rejected | |
| the findings. And then the WHO Secretariat abolished that group | |
| and established a new group, the Scientific Advisory Group on | |
| the Origin of Novel Pathogens. And that group came out with | |
| this report that was saying that we have to fully investigate a | |
| lab origin, and they've called on China to be more cooperative. | |
| And China is again stonewalling. | |
| Dr. Joyce. I agree that that full investigation of a lab | |
| origin is the responsibility of this committee. I thank all of | |
| the panel members for being here today. And Mr. Chairman, I | |
| yield. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Ms. Tokuda from Hawaii for | |
| five minutes. | |
| Ms. Tokuda. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Following up on the | |
| gentleman from Maryland's comments, as an Asian American woman | |
| representing an ethnically diverse district that would find | |
| offense with Mr. Wade's work and conclusions in regards to | |
| race, I ask that the letter to the editor signed by more than a | |
| hundred geneticists and biologists opposing the use of their | |
| research in Mr. Wade's book be entered officially into the | |
| record. This speaks to his professional credibility and calls | |
| into question his very presence on this panel. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Without objection. | |
| Ms. Tokuda. Thank you. One thing the COVID-19 pandemic made | |
| clear is the need for reliable real-time public health data. | |
| Without it, people of color and the most vulnerable in our | |
| communities are disproportionately impacted. We don't have the | |
| infrastructure to get needed resources to them, and people die. | |
| We, in Congress, must continue to support our Federal | |
| public health agencies, not just in determining the origins of | |
| COVID-19, but in improving data and analytics technology so we | |
| can pinpoint and slow the spread of infectious disease. | |
| At the beginning of the pandemic, we observed difficulty | |
| scaling up the appropriate public health infrastructure to | |
| track and keep pace with COVID-19. This was a catastrophic | |
| wake-up call that we were grossly unprepared to deal with the | |
| pandemic. Coupled with the lack of action, admission, and | |
| leadership by the Trump Administration, people died. | |
| Dr. Auwaerter, let's focus on the facts, and let's put | |
| people first. We need to understand the origins of COVID-19-- | |
| there's no argument about that here--to prevent and prepare for | |
| future pandemics. What do public health agencies and | |
| researchers need to do now learning from this pandemic to | |
| ensure that we can quickly test and trace when faced with new | |
| pathogens of pandemic potential? | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Well, my work as a clinician deals with | |
| public health departments. I'm not a public health department | |
| person, but each state has its own department, and then liaises | |
| with the Centers for Disease Control. And many--I know many of | |
| our state health departments don't have enough funds to | |
| accomplish what they want to. Each state is sort of self- | |
| funding and has other Federal moneys, too. But there's just not | |
| enough resources. There's not enough people. And we have to go | |
| back to work force issues, trainees. | |
| We need to get people excited entering these careers. I'll | |
| mention that for infectious diseases, only 56 percent of our | |
| training programs filled in 2022. There are a number of reasons | |
| for that, including low compensation. I know in public health | |
| officials, clinical laboratories, we have trouble finding | |
| people that want to do that work and getting them into training | |
| programs. So, these are absolutely vital from both clinical | |
| laboratories, public health laboratories. These are sentinel | |
| findings for, you know, trying to see if there's an outbreak, | |
| is there something new impacting the health not only in our | |
| country, but then expand that internationally as well. Because | |
| these same efforts are just as important as keeping peace. | |
| Ms. Tokuda. Thank you. So, clearly the Federal Government | |
| needs to do more in terms of support and resources to support | |
| our state and local public health agencies in order for us to | |
| have a strong infrastructure set up. | |
| Regardless of how the novel coronavirus came to be, it is | |
| important we continue to invest in public health infrastructure | |
| and invest in research on pathogens of pandemic potential with | |
| appropriate guardrails and strict oversight and guidelines. To | |
| do nothing, quite frankly, is to have learned nothing from this | |
| tragedy and set us up for failure and more death in the future. | |
| Dr. Metzl, what would happen if Congress blocked Federal | |
| funding for BSL-3 AND BSL-4 laboratories because of | |
| misinformation and fear-mongering surrounding lab leaks? What | |
| would happen if there a moratorium on gain-of-function | |
| research, which includes developing medical capabilities, | |
| countermeasure and surveillance capacities. | |
| Mr. Metzl. Are you asking me? Are you asking me? I'm sorry? | |
| Ms. Tokuda. Sorry about that. Dr. Auwaerter. | |
| Mr. Metzl. OK. | |
| Dr. Auwaerter. Yes, thank you. So, I think we--you know, if | |
| we have very strict rules and shut down or halt research within | |
| the U.S., there may be others outside our borders carrying this | |
| out. As has already been mentioned that there are countries | |
| that may not participate with standard practices and | |
| agreements. So, this is not an area I labor in, but as a | |
| clinician, and from my infectious diseases perspective within | |
| the society, I think research that does examine these very | |
| carefully, and as you said with guardrails, with oversight, is | |
| important. And, you know, there can be debate about where you | |
| draw the line in terms of doing this research. But I think not | |
| to do it could leave us unprepared. And, of course, there's | |
| different points of view of this. And this has been going back | |
| and forth for a while. But I do think it needs to be vigorously | |
| reexamined. | |
| Ms. Tokuda. Thank you very much. And I know, Dr. Metzl, you | |
| have also concluded these things in your testimony as well, the | |
| support for this research. | |
| Mr. Metzl. Yes. We would be making a grave error if we shut | |
| down virology, if we shut down epidemiology. If we didn't have | |
| high containment virology labs, I think everybody agrees with | |
| that. The only question is, what are the guardrails? And when | |
| we have a situation, such as this, where it appears very likely | |
| that a lab error may have led to this whole pandemic, that | |
| forces us to be very careful and to do the kind of review that | |
| we all need to be working on together. | |
| Ms. Tokuda. Thank you. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Ms. Greene from Georgia for | |
| five minutes of questions. | |
| Ms. Greene. If we're going to look into the origins of | |
| COVID and fully understand where this virus came from, this | |
| virus that has murdered so many people over the world, I think | |
| the most important thing we can do today is look at the | |
| timeline. And if we go back to early 2020 when this was just | |
| starting to kill so many people, we'll see something | |
| interesting. That while Dr. Fauci, Dr. Andersen, Dr. Collins, | |
| Peter Daszak from EcoHealth, who, by the way, had a grant for | |
| gain-of-function research, Dr. Auchincloss and others were | |
| doing everything possible to shut down the Wuhan lab theory, | |
| publicly, even though privately they told each other that | |
| COVID-19 looked engineered and discussed the reason to stop the | |
| theory. | |
| And if they were to, it's really interesting, they wanted | |
| to give reasons for not expressing this opinion to the public | |
| were that it would do great potential harm to science and | |
| international harmony, and do unnecessary harm to science in | |
| general, and science in China, in particular, even though their | |
| paychecks are funded by the American taxpayers. | |
| At the same time this was going on, the CCP was using its | |
| full weight and power to spread a propaganda campaign to | |
| conceal the origins of COVID, numbers of cases and deaths, and | |
| protect their own reputations while stockpiling medical | |
| supplies severely hurting the global supply chain and | |
| definitely hurting America. | |
| In the same way the CCP's silenced, censored and prisoned | |
| dissenters who tried to tell the truth, Dr. Fauci and his | |
| cohorts seemingly were running their own misinformation and, | |
| ultimately, censorship campaign to, in quotes from Dr. Collins | |
| to Dr. Fauci, ``put down this very destructive conspiracy about | |
| the lab leak theory.'' | |
| But it's really interesting. I think we should revisit | |
| January 27, 2020. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the | |
| National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases finds out | |
| that they have a financial relationship with the Wuhan | |
| Institute of Virology through EcoHealth Alliance, and that | |
| they've been working with novel coronaviruses. | |
| January 31, 2020, Dr. Fauci is warned by Dr. Kristian | |
| Andersen that some of COVID-19's features potentially look | |
| engineered and the genome is inconsistent with expectations | |
| from evolutionary theory. | |
| Dr. Redfield, did you agree, in your opinion, with Dr. | |
| Andersen's assessment at the time that this virus did look | |
| engineered? | |
| Dr. Redfield. I was concerned because of the presence of | |
| the furin cleavage site that we've talked about. And I think | |
| it's important to understand what that cleavage site does. That | |
| cleavage site totally changes the orientation of the binding | |
| domain of COVID. So it now, which could not see the H-2 | |
| receptor, which is the human receptor, it totally changes the | |
| orientation now so it has high affinity for human receptors. | |
| So, that furin cleavage site bothered me. It didn't seem that | |
| it belonged there. | |
| And then when you look at the sequences that it uses beyond | |
| this committee, but I know many of you have looked into it, the | |
| sequences that they used in those 12 nucleotides for arginine | |
| were the arginine sequences nucleotide triplet coded for the | |
| human arginine? So, why did this virus have the arginine | |
| sequences for human there, not bat? It was very disconcerting | |
| to me. It looked like this virus was engineered. | |
| Ms. Greene. Was this--what you're observing and speaking | |
| of, is this something that would in line with gain-of-function | |
| research and the capabilities it would provide to the---- | |
| Dr. Redfield. Right---- | |
| Ms. Greene [continuing]. Virus. | |
| Dr. Redfield [continuing]. Yes. I mean, basically this lab | |
| published in 2014 that they accomplished in this--allowing the | |
| coronaviruses that they were working with in the lab to bind to | |
| the H-2 receptor and humanize mice. And the only way they did | |
| that was by reorienting the binding domain. | |
| Ms. Greene. And it was clear to them at this time that that | |
| was likely the issue in their private conversations. Yet, by | |
| February 4, a paper on the origins of COVID is drafted by four | |
| participants of the February 1 conference call. One of those | |
| participants, Dr. Andersen, completely reverses himself in an | |
| email to the President of EcoHealth, Peter Daszak, and says, | |
| ``The main crackpot theories going around at the moment relate | |
| to this virus being somehow engineered, and that is | |
| demonstrably false.'' | |
| My question to you, Mr. Redfield, did you know of any | |
| evidence that they had found within three days from February 1 | |
| to February 4 to be able to confirm that it was not created in | |
| a lab? | |
| Dr. Redfield. As I mentioned earlier, unfortunately, I was | |
| excluded from those conversations, which I found retroactively | |
| very disappointed, since I was, obviously, a virologist and | |
| very engaged. And I actually had asked Jeremy Farrar, Tony | |
| Fauci, and Tedros to have these conversations. And then to be | |
| excluded I found unusual. | |
| I do think it illustrates one point that's worth really | |
| focusing on. When you have a group of people that decide there | |
| could only be one point of view, that's problematic. And I'll | |
| keep going saying it's antithetical to science. And | |
| unfortunately, that's what they did. | |
| Ms. Greene. I can tell you, Dr. Redfield, that is the case. | |
| That's very problematic because how people suffered in this | |
| country from those, what I would call, tyrannical decisions | |
| using their positions of power and shutting down the country in | |
| the way they did. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. The gentlelady's time has expired. | |
| Ms. Greene. I think people definitely do feel that way. | |
| Thank you. I yield back. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Dr. Jackson from Texas for | |
| five minutes of questions. | |
| Dr. Jackson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate it. I | |
| want to thank all of our witnesses for being here. Dr. | |
| Redfield, I want to thank you, in particular, for your service | |
| as CDC Director. You were key in getting some of the | |
| meatpacking plants back up and running during the height of the | |
| pandemic in my district, and I appreciate that. | |
| I just want to say I agree with a few of the things that | |
| have been said on the other side of the aisle from my | |
| colleagues. And one of the things I want to talk about that | |
| hasn't really been addressed here from this side of the aisle | |
| is that, yes, I do believe that public health has been | |
| devastated by this COVID-19 pandemic. But, that is because | |
| public health officials in this country decided that they were | |
| going to consider the politics surrounding this issue when | |
| making statements and recommendations. That's the root of the | |
| problem with the public health here. | |
| And, yes, this must be repaired. We have to get our public | |
| health industry back. The only way that that will change, the | |
| only way that that will change is if we--and that we can regain | |
| the trust and confidence that we have to have in this country | |
| in our public health sector is to look back at what happened, | |
| who made what decisions, and why those decisions were made. | |
| And, most importantly, if public health authorities, such as | |
| Anthony Fauci, betrayed the trust of the American people, they | |
| must be held accountable. Period. Somebody has to be held | |
| accountable. This is a problem we have in government, | |
| throughout government. If there's no accountability, nothing | |
| changes. | |
| We're going to be doomed to repeat this whole disastrous | |
| period in American history again if we don't get the answers | |
| about what happened and why it happened. | |
| So, in addition, I just want to say that this continues to | |
| this very day. The WHO, China, the mainstream media, social | |
| media, they all need to be called out. They need be to held | |
| accountable for their part in this coverup. Millions of people | |
| died, and we need some answers to what's going on. | |
| And I'll say that we still have an issue with this today. | |
| We still have an issue with corrupt, politically driven advice. | |
| And this is evidenced by the misinformation regarding masks, | |
| natural immunity, the need for boosters, and most importantly | |
| and most important to me at this particular time, the | |
| inappropriate efforts to vaccinate our children. | |
| So, I would just say that we have to regain this trust in | |
| public health, and we have to do it quickly before something | |
| like this comes down the pike again, because the American | |
| people right now have zero trust and confidence in the public | |
| health sector in this country. | |
| So, I want to ask you real quickly, Dr. Metzl and Dr. | |
| Redfield, what do you think that we should and could do to | |
| regain that trust of our public health sector? | |
| Mr. Metzl. A number of things. First, we need to look | |
| objectively, honest, directly, fearlessly at the COVID origins | |
| issue. As I had said before, I think the primary culprit, if | |
| that's the right word, is China. But we also need to look at | |
| ourselves. We really need to look at everything. We need to | |
| follow the evidence. We also need to establish a bipartisan | |
| process for evaluating the entirety of our readiness. And | |
| that's why, in my remarks, I recommended establishing a | |
| bipartisan COVID-19 commission, kind of like being built on the | |
| model of the 9/11 Commission, because it's going to be very | |
| difficult to do it piecemeal. We really need comprehensively, | |
| in a bipartisan manner, to develop an action plan. And because | |
| health is international, that means exactly as you've said, we | |
| need to focus on the national and the international level. | |
| Dr. Jackson. Dr. Redfield, real quickly. | |
| Dr. Redfield. Yes, real quick. I think the first and | |
| foremost is we've got to tell the truth. When you don't tell | |
| the truth, you've got a problem. And I think if you go back, | |
| there were many times when public health officials packaged the | |
| message to what they wanted to say, but it wasn't necessarily | |
| truthful. | |
| The second thing, you have to have the courage when you're | |
| a public health official to say, I don't know, when you don't | |
| know. And I think the really fundamental--that's how we begin | |
| to lose it when people say that we're going to be OK once we | |
| get 30 percent immunity, and then later they say 50 percent, | |
| and then later they say 70 percent. And then the press says, | |
| well, why did you say 50 percent before, and now you're saying | |
| 70 percent? And the guy says, well, I didn't think the public | |
| was ready to hear that. | |
| Dr. Jackson. Thank you, sir. | |
| Dr. Redfield. You've got to tell the truth. | |
| Dr. Jackson. I want to get a little bit of time here. I | |
| want to say, I did agree with some of the stuff that was being | |
| said on the opposite side of the aisle. One of the things I | |
| don't agree with, and I think that the way we have to fix this | |
| is we do have to get past the politics now. It's over, and it's | |
| done with. There's been a lot of damage done. We've got to get | |
| past that. | |
| And I'm disturbed that, you know, the people on the left in | |
| this committee can't talk about this at all without bringing up | |
| Trump, racism, or conspiracy theorists. And I just want to | |
| make--clear the record on one particular thing, President Trump | |
| on May 29, 2020, recognizing the failures of WHO, severed the | |
| U.S. relationship with WHO citing the need for serious reforms. | |
| And despite no reforms taking place, on his first day in | |
| office, President Biden rejoined the WHO, which was and | |
| continues to be nothing more than a puppet of the Chinese | |
| Government. | |
| I want to also say that on January 31, 2020, President | |
| Trump came under intense criticism when he banned travel from | |
| China, an order then-Presidential candidate Biden called | |
| xenophobic. A move that even the highly respected Dr. Fauci on | |
| the other side of the aisle praised as saying that Trump's | |
| actions saved thousands and millions of lives. So, thank you. | |
| With that, I yield back. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Jordan from Ohio for five | |
| minutes. | |
| Mr. Jordan. I thank the Chairman. Look forward, the | |
| Democrats tell us. Focus on the future. It might have started | |
| in a lab. It might have happened in nature. But here is the | |
| question I keep coming up with. If it may have been a lab, it | |
| may have been nature we're supposed to look forward, then why | |
| did Dr. Fauci work so hard for just one of those theories? Why | |
| was it so important to push one over the other? | |
| Dr. Bera said, Oh, we should entertain all hypotheses. Dr. | |
| Fauci had his hypothesis, how this started. We should entertain | |
| all of them. But that's not what happened. That is definitely | |
| not what happened. | |
| Three years ago, if you thought it came from a lab, if you | |
| raised that, you were called a nutjob, you got censored on | |
| Twitter, you were blacklisted on Twitter. You were even called | |
| a crackpot by the very scientists who, in late January, sent | |
| emails to Dr. Fauci and said it came from a lab. They called | |
| you crackpot. Is that right, Dr. Redfield? | |
| Dr. Redfield. I think the most upsetting thing to me was | |
| The Baltimore Sun calling me a racist because I said this came | |
| from a Wuhan lab. | |
| Mr. Jordan. Dr. Redfield, you ran the CDC, and you were on | |
| the coronavirus task force. Is that right? | |
| Dr. Redfield. Correct. | |
| Mr. Jordan. That was formed on January 29, 2020. Is that | |
| right? | |
| Dr. Redfield. Correct. | |
| Mr. Jordan. Two days later, Dr. Fauci gets an email from | |
| Dr. Andersen which says what? Virus looks engineered. Virus not | |
| consistent with evolutionary theory. Is that accurate? | |
| Dr. Redfield. That's my understanding if you want to---- | |
| Mr. Jordan. Yes, I know. Did he share that email with you, | |
| by the way, Dr. Redfield? | |
| Dr. Redfield. No. | |
| Mr. Jordan. As a member of the task force, as the head of | |
| CDC, did he share that email with you? | |
| Dr. Redfield. No. | |
| Mr. Jordan. OK. Next day, February 1, Dr. Garry sends Dr. | |
| Fauci another email. That email says: I don't know how this | |
| happens in nature, but it would be easy to do in a lab. Did he | |
| share that email with you, Dr. Redfield? | |
| Dr. Redfield. No, no. | |
| Mr. Jordan. You didn't see either one of those emails, even | |
| though you're head of CDC, even though you're on the | |
| coronavirus task force that had been formed just two days, | |
| three days earlier. | |
| Dr. Redfield. No. | |
| Mr. Jordan. Three days later, Dr. Andersen and Dr. Garry | |
| who told us it came from a lab in emails to Dr. Fauci that Dr. | |
| Fauci wouldn't let Dr. Redfield see, three days later they | |
| changed their position 180 degrees. The question is why? | |
| Mr. Wade, why would they change their position that fast | |
| when the only intervening event is a conference call with Dr. | |
| Fauci, the guy who wouldn't let Dr. Redfield see the very | |
| emails that they had sent him, Dr. Redfield head of CDC on the | |
| coronavirus task force, why would they change their position, | |
| Dr. Wade--or Mr. Wade? | |
| Mr. Wade. Well, this question does lie at the heart of the | |
| issue. What is pertinent seems to me is there's no new | |
| scientific evidence that we can see that became available | |
| between these dates of Jan 31st and Feb 4. | |
| Mr. Jordan. Right, there's no new--I think you're--go | |
| ahead. | |
| Mr. Wade. So, you have to ask if there were other kinds of | |
| influence available. Now it is true that Dr. Fauci and Dr. | |
| Farrar in London were very powerful research officials and | |
| between them they controlled---- | |
| Mr. Jordan. I read your testimony. I saw that. | |
| Mr. Wade. OK. | |
| Mr. Jordan. Yes. | |
| Mr. Wade. So---- | |
| Mr. Jordan. Why don't you cut to the chase and tell them | |
| what you really think was the reason. | |
| Mr. Wade. I don't know what the reason was. I just---- | |
| Mr. Jordan. I know what it was. | |
| Mr. Wade. Go ahead, sir. | |
| Mr. Jordan. No, go ahead. Go ahead. I'll let you say it, | |
| because I read your testimony. I think you said it in your | |
| testimony, too. Maybe you're reluctant to say it here, but go | |
| ahead. | |
| Mr. Wade. Well, if you're looking at the timeline on May | |
| 21, just a few weeks after the the Nature Medicine article had | |
| come out, two of the signatures of the original email to Dr. | |
| Fauci, that's Dr. Andersen and Dr. Garry, were awarded a $9 | |
| million grant. | |
| Mr. Jordan. So, there's 9 million reasons why they changed | |
| their mind. I knew you would get to it. I read that last night. | |
| So, three days after they say it came from a lab, they changed | |
| their position. And the only intervening event, the conference | |
| call with Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins, again, a call that Mr. | |
| Redfield was not allowed to be on, the head of CDC and on the | |
| coronavirus task force. And then three months later, shazam. | |
| They get nine million bucks from Dr. Fauci. | |
| Well, isn't that something? Isn't that something? That's | |
| why we want to talk to these guys. That's why Chairman Wenstrup | |
| wants to bring in Dr. Andersen and Dr. Garry and ask them a | |
| series of questions so we can get to the bottom of this, so we | |
| can move forward and deal with this. | |
| Here is the key question. I'm just a commonsense guy from | |
| Ohio. Well, I majored in wrestling in college. I got a degree | |
| in economics. You're supposed to get a degree when you go to | |
| college. I got one in economics. And one of the things they | |
| tell you about is a thing called opportunity cost. So, when | |
| you're spending your time making sure that the country believes | |
| only one of these theories, you could have been doing what Dr. | |
| Redfield was doing in our government, trying to figure out how | |
| we deal with this virus. And what was Dr. Fauci doing? He was | |
| trying to cover his backside and everybody knows it. And that's | |
| the part that ticks us off, because this is the highest paid | |
| guy in our government, getting all kinds of money to tell us | |
| things that were not accurate. Because we now know U.S. tax | |
| dollars went to a lab in China, a lab that was not up to code, | |
| a lab that was doing gain-of-function research, and that's | |
| where this thing most definitely came from. And Dr. Fauci had | |
| to prove no, no, he can't have that news getting out. And | |
| that's why he did what he did to the exclusion of a brilliant | |
| guy running our CDC; kept him out of the loop. Keeping him out | |
| of the loop, probably potentially could have harmed America. | |
| That's the thing that ticks us all off. | |
| And that's why, Mr. Chairman, this hearing is so darn | |
| important that we get to the bottom of really what happened. I | |
| yield back. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. At this point, I'm going to make a | |
| closing statement before--yes, you will follow me, and then I | |
| will yield to you for a closing statement. | |
| You know, this is very serious business, extremely serious | |
| business, apolitical serious business. And I believe that Dr. | |
| Ruiz, the ranking member on the subcommittee feels exactly the | |
| same way. You know, there's a difference between saying I | |
| disagree with you and here's why, as opposed to labeling | |
| something a conspiracy theory, or someone a conspiracy | |
| theorist. There's a huge difference. That's the politics that | |
| comes in. We need to get it out. No more. For this committee, | |
| and as a general discussion across America, I hope that that | |
| can change. | |
| I'm first a physician. I'm also a soldier, Iraq War | |
| veteran. I've served on the Intelligence Committee here for the | |
| last 10 years. I've had a security clearance since 1998 as a | |
| soldier. | |
| This subcommittee is about an after-action review, lessons | |
| learned through this process, finding truths, and building a | |
| path forward so that we can have readiness in the future. | |
| That's what we need to do. | |
| My life has been about trying to improve other lives to | |
| keep people healthy and also about the security of the United | |
| States of America. I'd love for this thing to be from nature. I | |
| would love that. Because that would be better for all of us. | |
| But I can't help but look at this and say, there's another | |
| possibility here. And when I think of that other possibility, | |
| it leads my mind with my experience in life to so many | |
| nefarious things that can happen to us as a people. This is a | |
| national security issue. This is a national health issue. | |
| Some things might start out as good. I don't think the | |
| Wright brothers ever intended for planes to be flown into | |
| buildings to kill thousands of people. That may be the case. We | |
| need to consider all those possibilities, the lessons learned. | |
| I can give you some lessons learned. You know, we're talking | |
| about trust and building trust. And I will tell you, going back | |
| to Secretary Azar, I made the suggestion, America needs to hear | |
| from doctors that are treating COVID patients. I think that | |
| would be the most helpful. That's who they know. That's who | |
| they trust. Those are the people in the trenches, not from | |
| politicians, and not from someone who's never at bedside who's | |
| just in the lab. | |
| The origins of this is important. Because when we talk to | |
| doctors who are treating patients, for example, though, this is | |
| where I think early on it was most important, because all they | |
| were concerned about, and all Americans were concerned about is | |
| whether they were going to live or die. And will you come up | |
| with a cure or a vaccine? That's all they worried about. But as | |
| we try to move forward, the origins of this is important, so | |
| that we don't have to struggle in the same way that we did | |
| through all of this. And trust is important. | |
| Dr. Redfield, I agree with you on the declassification. | |
| Hopefully, we will get there. It's important for transparency, | |
| for sunlight on all of this. Obviously, there's methods and | |
| other things we have to keep out. I get that. And you'd | |
| commented on another thing that I had written down before you | |
| said it, because to me it's important as a doctor to be honest | |
| about what we don't know. And when we don't know something, and | |
| we hypothesize something, and then we find out we're wrong we | |
| have to say we didn't know, and now we know better. That didn't | |
| happen. | |
| And I'll give you an example. You know, early on, people | |
| were saying, well, in the summer, it may dissipate like other | |
| coronaviruses have in the summer. That made sense, but it | |
| didn't happen. And we should have said, oh my gosh, that didn't | |
| happen. This thing isn't called novel for a reason, and we need | |
| to do a little more digging. | |
| I am open to various opinions, especially from experts in | |
| the arena, including doctors that are treating affected | |
| patients. That's where we have to go. This committee is going | |
| to deal with all aspects of the pandemic, but this is one | |
| that's very important and on the minds of every American. | |
| I want to thank you all for your testimonies today, for | |
| taking the time to be with us. We may have to see you again, | |
| we'll see. But at the same time, I do want to thank all of you | |
| for being here. And with that, I will turn it over to the | |
| ranking member for his final comments. Thank you. | |
| Dr. Ruiz. I, too, want to thank all the witnesses for | |
| coming today and testifying before this committee. | |
| Let me be clear, my Democratic colleagues and I take | |
| seriously the charge of determining the coronavirus' origins. | |
| And that is why we must allow scientists and intelligence | |
| experts to do their research without politicizations, or | |
| politicians politicizing the issue using extreme partisan | |
| rhetoric or making conclusions or accusations without concrete | |
| evidence. It seems like minds on the other side of the aisle | |
| are shut and made up on the origins, and they have chosen their | |
| villain. | |
| If we truly want to follow the evidence, the truth is that | |
| the evidence as we have it now is inconclusive. But | |
| villainizing our public health experts through conspiratorial | |
| accusations based on partisan suspicions and not concrete | |
| evidence does nothing to help us prevent and prepare for future | |
| pandemics. | |
| I, too, am a physician. I, too, have taken care of patients | |
| who have died due to dyspnea; in other words, they couldn't | |
| breath; they didn't get the oxygen. And I have intubated and | |
| kept people alive and resuscitated people over and over in the | |
| emergency department. These are not political ideas for the | |
| individual who's diabetic and lives in a poor neighborhood that | |
| doesn't have access to testing or to healthcare access. | |
| This is not political. They don't give two cents of who | |
| knew what and by when. They want to make sure that they stay | |
| alive, that they can get the medicines, that they can live in a | |
| country that doesn't have to politicize every single damn | |
| thing. And they want to see their government work for them, for | |
| the people, to do the right thing. | |
| And I do agree that we need to evaluate the evidence as it | |
| comes, just like when we had the lack of evidence of this novel | |
| virus, and we made, as Dr. Redfield and Dr. Auwaerter said, | |
| some conservative decisions in order to protect until we knew | |
| more, until we were able to have the resources to put shots in | |
| arms, students responsibly back into schools, people | |
| responsibly back into work. | |
| But villainizing our public health experts undermines our | |
| efforts to do so. You see it hurts the recruitment of public | |
| health servants in a time when we have a public health servant | |
| shortage. And it hurts trust. It hurts trust in basic public | |
| health measures like masks that reduces airborne transmission | |
| and vaccines that save lives. | |
| Congress has an important role in supporting the expert | |
| community's efforts to get to the bottom of the coronavirus' | |
| origins. We also have an important role to be forward looking | |
| in developing the policy solutions necessary to mitigate the | |
| threat of new viruses, no matter where they came from. | |
| You know, I saw each of the witnesses nod in agreement in | |
| my discussion with Dr. Auwaerter regarding constructive policy | |
| solutions like raising the international standards for pathogen | |
| research. | |
| There is still an opportunity for us to correct course. And | |
| this is a message on both sides of the aisle for this select | |
| subcommittee to be a constructive body that focuses on forward | |
| looking solutions; ones that save lives that matter to | |
| individuals who are at risk of dying today from this virus. | |
| So, let's debate gain-of-function research. Let's discuss | |
| what we can do to improve safety guidelines and transparency in | |
| foreign labs. Let's discuss how to increase trust in basic | |
| public health measures to save lives and recruit more public | |
| health workers. Let's put people above politics. We owe it to | |
| the American people to take every action we can to save lives. | |
| And I stand ready to work with the Chairman to do so. | |
| Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you, Dr. Ruiz. In closing, I would like | |
| to thank our panelists once again for their important and | |
| insightful testimony today. With that and without objection, | |
| all members will have five legislative days within which to | |
| submit materials and to submit additional written questions for | |
| the witnesses which will be forwarded to the witnesses for | |
| their response. | |
| If there's no further business, without objection, the | |
| select subcommittee stands adjourned. Thank you. | |
| [Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] | |
| [all] | |
| </pre></body></html> | |