Dr. Anthony Fauci – who has denied collaboration between his federal agency and the Wuhan Institute of Virology – spoke at an event alongside the researcher advising the controversial lab on “gain of function” research, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal. 

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director spoke at the American Association of Immunologist’s May 2021 event, Virtual Immunology, alongside Professor Linda Saif. Despite Fauci’s attempts to distance NIAID funds from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, his affiliation with Saif adds to a long list of evidence proving otherwise.

Saif was invited as a special guest to speak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2017 at the “2nd China-U.S. Workshop on the Challenges of Emerging Infections, Laboratory Safety and Global Health Security.” According to the Wuhan lab’s summary of the conference, it hosted five academic sessions, the first of which was “gain of function research, gene editing, targeting and delivery and other novel biotechnology.”

Saif and Fauci’s panel – COVID-19 and the Science of Pandemics—Lessons Learned – also follows a long history of NIAID funding Saif’s research since 1985. She has received a total of 56 grants from the National Institutes of Health, 43 of which came from Fauci’s NIAID.

The unearthing of the panel follows a heated exchange between Senator Rand Paul and Fauci, who attempted to distance NIAID from the Wuhan lab.

Beyond establishing a working relationship between the NIH and the Wuhan Institue of Virology, now-deleted posts from the site also detail studies bearing the hallmarks of gain-of-function research conducted with the Wuhan-based lab. Fauci, however, asserted to Senator Paul that “the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”