'Conspiracy At Its Height': Fauci Responds To Message Saying He 'Prompted' Anti-Lab Leak Paper

Dr. Anthony Fauci responded on March 15 to a newly released email that said he was among those who “prompted” work on analyzing how COVID-19 came about, which resulted in a paper that claimed the laboratory origin theory was not credible.

A special U.S. House of Representatives panel on March 5 released the email, sent by scientist Kristian Andersen in February 2020 to the journal Nature.

“There has been a lot of speculation, fear mongering, and conspiracies put forward in this space and we thought that bringing some clarity to this discussion might be of interest to Nature,” Andersen wrote at the time. “Prompted by Jeremy Farra[r], Tony Fauci, and Francis Collins, Eddie Holmes, Andrew Rambaut, Bob Garry, Ian Lipkin, and myself have been working through much of the (primarily) genetic data to provide agnostic and scientifically informed hypothesis around the origins of the virus,” Andersen added.

In another message that had previously been made public, Andersen said the work was “focused on trying to disprove any type of lab theory.”

Anderson was one of the co-authors of a paper published without peer review in February 2020. Both that version and one later published by Nature Medicine said the analysis shows that “SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct nor a purposefully manipulated virus.” SARS-CoV-2 causes COVID-19.

Fauci was asked about the emails on Wednesday during an appearance on NewsNation.

“Absolutely not,” he said when host Chris Cuomo inquired whether the paper was drafted to disprove the lab origin theory.

Fauci referenced the secret phone call involving himself, Andersen, and others that took place on Feb. 1, 2020, and involved several experts—including Andersen—saying characteristics of COVID-19 pointed to it being engineered.

“During the phone call on Feb. 1, where very competent evolutionary biologists were going back and forth, and they decided on the phone call, listen, let’s take a little time and go back and really carefully examine those sequences and see if, in fact, there’s anything to that,” Fauci said.

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/conspiracy-its-height-fauci-responds-message-saying-he-prompted-anti-lab-leak-paper