\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
![\"FILE](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/6a69c20b9a517b5e5787cc35jpeg.jpg\")
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFILE – Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testifies during a House Select Subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic on Capitol Hill, June 3, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo\/Mariam Zuhaib, File)<\/p>\n
Some of the diary entries \u2014 including his uncertainty in the pandemic\u2019s earliest days as scientists around the world raced to understand the new virus and how best to curb it before vaccines could be created \u2014 already were reflected in Fauci\u2019s 2024 memoir and in interviews at the time.<\/p>\n
But they\u2019re likely to further inflame a partisan divide that, years after the pandemic, still makes Fauci a target of vitriol from people who blame him for mask mandates and other policies they believe infringed on their rights as hundreds of thousands of people were dying.<\/p>\n
In an earlier letter to Paul, Fauci\u2019s attorneys called his allegations \u201cabsolutely baseless\u201d and part of an \u201cobsessive and groundless vendetta.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scientists scrambled to Fauci\u2019s defense ahead of the unusual hearing \u2014 the second time the longtime National Institutes of Health scientist has been back before Congress to discuss pandemic origins since leaving the government in 2022. While the COVID-19 pandemic introduced him to millions of Americans, he talked the nation through numerous outbreaks over decades, including HIV, Ebola and the 2001 anthrax attacks, while advising seven presidents.<\/p>\n
In a public letter, more than 150 infectious disease experts and other scientists wrote that \u201cno credible evidence has been produced to support these absurd charges\u201d and that they are \u201curging our elected representatives in Congress stop these witch-hunts.\u201d<\/p>\n
The expected crux of Wednesday\u2019s hearing: whether NIH-funded research in China may have played any role in how the pandemic started.<\/p>\n
Many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people, coming to light when it spread at a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan. There\u2019s no new scientific information supporting that the virus might instead have leaked from a laboratory, a theory Paul champions. A GOP-led subcommittee that studied the question in 2024 did not find any evidence linking Fauci to wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
Fauci has long said publicly that he was open to both theories, but that there\u2019s more evidence supporting COVID-19\u2019s natural origins, the way other deadly viruses including coronavirus cousins SARS and MERS jumped into people.<\/p>\n
Republicans also have accused Fauci of lying about whether his agency funded \u201cgain of function\u201d research \u2014 the practice of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential real-world impact \u2014 at a lab in Wuhan.<\/p>\n
NIH for years gave grants to a New York nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance that used some of the funds to work with a Chinese lab studying coronaviruses commonly carried by bats. But the definition of \u201cgain of function\u201d covers both general research and especially risky experiments to \u201cenhance\u201d the ability of potentially pandemic pathogens to spread or cause severe disease in humans. Fauci has previously stressed he was using the risky experiment definition and that \u201cit would be molecularly impossible\u201d for those bat virus experiments to have turned into the pandemic virus.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration last year paused some federally funded gain-of-function research and on Tuesday announced new rules to tighten oversight.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute\u2019s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. scientist who helped lead the nation\u2019s COVID-19 pandemic response, is set to face…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":833502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-833501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}