On Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is set to testify in front of the Senate Homeland Security Committee about damning new evidence made public by Committee Chairman Sen. Rand Paul about the COVID pandemic, including what the former head of the National Institutes of Health knew about the origin of the novel coronavirus.
Senator Paul has alleged that Dr. Fauci knew early in the outbreak that there was a possibility the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, despite Fauci repeatedly claiming that what has come to be known as the lab leak origin hypothesis was a “conspiracy theory.” Paul has also accused Fauci of providing a grant from the NIH to conduct “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The recent release by Sen. Paul of Fauci’s personal journal during COVID appears to confirm this information.
What is gain-of-function research? Put simply, it includes any efforts by scientists to make a virus or other pathogen more deadly or more transmissable, to better understand ways said virus could mutate to become more dangerous. Doing so, proponents say, helps better inform efforts to develop vaccines and other defenses in the future. But even proponents admit that doing so carries with it serious risks. A virus made more dangerous to study it is still a more dangerous virus; its exposure to humans no less a threat because it was turbocharged for “good” reasons; its likelihood of escaping containment not mitigated by “good” intentions.
In May 2025, President Trump decided such research was too risky, pausing it in the U.S., and making funding of foreign gain-of-function research illegal. Such research had previously been paused under President Obama as part of a new risk assessment in 2014 but resumed in 2017. Dr. Fauci has long been a vocal advocate of gain-of-function research, despite these considerable risks.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member