Politico reports that Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, is stepping down. The 12-year NIH boss is resigning amid the Wuhan Animal Lab funding scandal, first exposed by the White Coat Waste Project.
All we can say is: it’s about time.
Collins has been on the wrong side of taxpayer-funded animal experimentation for a very, very long time.
In a 2011 op-ed, co-authored by Dr. Fauci, Collins called gain-of-function research a “risk worth taking.”
We disagree with that.
On April 11, 2020, WCW shocked the world when our investigators first revealed to the UK’s Daily Mail that the NIH was funding dangerous and wasteful experiments on bats and animals in Wuhan.
Our Daily Mail investigation proved that NIH awarded the grant to a then-little-known nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance. In turn, EcoHealth subcontracted the tax money to the Wuhan lab.
Our blockbuster exposé went…well it went…there’s just no other word for it: viral.
As Sharri Markson writes in her landmark new book, What Really Happened in Wuhan:
Apparently, Dr. Collins thought that sending money to the Wuhan Animal Lab for dangerous gain-of-function experiments was a good use of taxpayer money.
We disagree with that, too.
Of course, Dr. Collins vehemently denied ever funding gain-of-function research — but we know that’s not true.
WCW spoke out early and often about the need to defund the Wuhan labs (there are more than one!).
We know Francis Collins was listening, too. Here’s the proof.
These documents, released via FOIA, show staff at NIH and NIAID in a panicked meltdown, after our team pushed the WCW investigation and media coverage to Congressman Matt Gaetz and Senator Marco Rubio.
Email after email shows NIH brass trying to do ‘damage control’ after we exposed their misuse of taxpayer money.
This internal NIH email to Dr. Collins and Dr. Fauci complains that “The WH [White House] has strongly embraced concerns raised by Congressman Gaetz who is publicly criticizing HHS/NIH for funding the Wuhan laboratory’s bat research. ”
For years, the US government has been funding cruel animal experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which may have contributed to the global spread of COVID-19, and research at other labs in China with virtually no US oversight.
It has to end now.https://t.co/Bjxs89GPgw
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) April 13, 2020
On Tuesday, April 14, Rep. Gaetz took our little investigation on Tucker Carlson’s show:
Turns out, someone in the Oval Office was watching TV that night.
On April 17 — just six days after we launched the investigation — in front of the entire nation, President Trump canceled the grant during his daily coronavirus briefing. He called it “tremendous WASTE in the government.”
This is why we fight the War on Waste. And this is why we keep winning.
So long, Dr. Collins. Let’s hope the new NIH Director will be more responsible with our money.