Mo Brooks calls for Anthony Fauci’s termination in midst of controversial email release
Dr. Anthony Fauci, arguably America’s most well-recognized health official in the battle against COVID-19, assumed a central role in political controversy following a newly released slough of last year’s emails, giving rise to concerns about COVID-19’s origin and the controversial scientific research U.S taxpayers have funded. Yesterday, Congressman Mo Brooks (AL-05) joined several of his colleagues in a news conference to discuss auditing the correspondence and financial statements of Dr. Fauci. Fauci is no stranger to the spotlight, as the immunologist was one of the world’s most frequently-cited scientists across all scientific journals from 1983 to 2002, in addition to the world’s 10th most-cited HIV/AIDS researcher from 1996-2006. He has advised seven Presidents and was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George H.W. Bush in 2008 for his efforts on an AIDS relief program. Serving as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, Fauci is perhaps more widely recognized for leading the nation’s COVID-19 response as a White House coronavirus advisor during the Trump Administration. He continues to lead the nation’s pandemic response during his current role as chief medical advisor in the Biden Administration. However, Fauci’s consistently shifting narratives throughout the pandemic, in addition to frequent opposition towards President Donald Trump’s leadership, resulted in a sizable number of public critics, many of which included Trump White House officials. Peter Navarro, a Harvard-trained economist and China hawk who served as a top trade and economic policy advisor to President Trump, publicly criticized Dr. Fauci in a USA Today op-ed, outlining the many instances Fauci was mistaken during the pandemic. USA Today promptly attached a remorseful precursor to the article; an apologetic note addressed to readers for publishing any criticism of Fauci. One of the most notable examples Navarro specifies is the predictive memos he sent in January and February 2020, which grimly anticipated COVID-19 to be a deadly and impactful global pandemic. Senior officials shrugged off these warnings, including Fauci, due to Navarro’s hawkish views on China. “The lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would leave Americans defenseless in the case of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak on US soil,” Navarro’s January 29 memo to the National Security Council states. “The lack of protection elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans.” Weeks after Navarro’s warning was sent out, Fauci assured the media just how worried the American people should be about the pandemic when he expressed, “The danger of getting coronavirus now is just minusculely low,” Fauci stated. “As of today, on the 17th of February, the risk is really relatively low.” Since then, public criticism of Fauci continues to escalate as 3,000 pages of his emails from March and April 2020 were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) following a lawsuit filed by taxpayer watchdog group, the White Coast Waste Project. “Taxpayers have a right to know what the NIH knew about how its money was being spent at the Wuhan animal lab, and what NIH knew about a potential lab leak in late 2019 and early 2020,” stated Justin Goodman, vice president of advocacy and public policy at the White Coat Waste Project. “Transparency and accountability at home and abroad are critical in the quest to identify the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to prevent another outbreak.” Fauci’s obtained emails point to the fact that he was indeed warned of the possibility that COVID-19 was engineered, a theory he remained adamantly opposed to throughout the pandemic. Kristian Andersen, the head of a viral genomics lab at Scripps Research in La Jolla, CA, emailed Fauci in February 2020 entertaining the possibility of COVID-19’s lab-based origin, “The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered.” This week, Anderson addressed his involvement in these recently released emails, assuring that his newfound research discourages any lab-based scenarios while also claiming it is scientifically impossible to determine the origins of the pandemic, “As we stated in our article last March, it is currently impossible to prove or disprove specific hypotheses of SARS-CoV-2 origin.” Additionally, these emails raise questions surrounding the type of research U.S. taxpayers are funding. Under Fauci’s four-decade-long leadership, the NAIAD resides within the National Institute of Health (NIH), which allocates 80% of its federal funds to scientific research, including grants to foreign organizations. Fauci swore under oath that no taxpayer funds were used to fund research in Wuhan. However, in a later congressional hearing, he stated that the NIH earmarked $600,000 to study coronaviruses in Wuhan. NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins confirmed that $3.7 million in federal funds were sent to EcoHealth Alliance, a global nonprofit, of which $600,000 went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Fauci’s emails show a message received from the President of EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak, thanking him for rejecting any lab-leak theories in April 2020. Daszak wrote to Fauci, “I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” Daszak adds, “Your comments are brave, and coming from your trusted voice, will help dispel the myths being spun around the virus’ origins.” These concerns have led Congressional Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), to call for Fauci’s dismissal from his role as NIAID director. Yesterday, Congressman Mo Brooks joined GOP lawmakers in a press conference to announce his support of the Fire Fauci Act. The bill would bring Dr. Fauci’s taxpayer salary to $0 and will require the Senate to confirm another individual to fill his position. “Dr. Fauci is consistent in just one thing and that is inconsistency,” Brooks said. “Why
UAB stroke study receives $20 million grant
The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s stroke study received a $20 million grant to help look into strokes in the South and among African-Americans. UAB’s Regions for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke will receive funds through 2023, Al.com reported. The study has gotten almost $100 million in grant funding in the past 15 years. More than 30,000 people have participated in the REGARDS study. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke is funding the grant. University officials say study participants have taken part in the program for 14 years. The study is based in UAB’s School of Public Health. It includes collaborators from the University of Vermont, University of Cincinnati, Indiana University, Drexel University and Columbia University. UAB professor of biostatistics George Howard said the stroke mortality rate between the ages of 45 and 65 is 200 to 300 percent higher for African-Americans. He also said 11 percent of deaths from strokes in white people happen before age 65, but the number rises to 28 percent for African-Americans. Experts found that living in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee early in life increases the risk of stroke, the newspaper reported. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Bill Miller: The critical ingredient to the success of vaccination programs
Only a few weeks into a new administration and with it comes unwelcome medical news. The age-old debate about the safety and appropriateness of vaccination has been renewed and a vocal stage has been delivered to a small group of anti-vaccination zealots. Reports have circulated that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, a highly visible critic of vaccination, has been invited to chair a commission on vaccination safety by the new administration. If it comes to pass, one result can be accurately predicted. It will become a confused platform of ideological rhetoric that will diminish trust in those scientific bodies charged with making sound judgments for the public welfare. This inevitable outcome is particularly unfortunate since there has never been any advance in medical history that has had a more positive impact on our lives than vaccination. Humanity has been in eternal conflict with infectious disease throughout history. Perhaps no disease better illustrates the vast range of impacts of epidemic disease than smallpox.In 18th Century Europe, at least 400,000 people died annually from smallpox. One-third of the survivors went blind. Mortality rates were as high as 60% in some communities. Infant mortality was even more frightening, approaching 80%. The ultimate success of smallpox vaccination is credited to Sir Edward Jenner in England. In 1796, he successfully introduced the technique of cowpox vaccination demonstrating its subsequent protective effect against smallpox. Today, due to the effectiveness of worldwide smallpox vaccination programs, that disease has been effectively eradicated from the planet. However, this is not the case for other consequential infectious diseases. Two years ago, a whooping cough epidemic swept through California where vaccination rates are steadily lagging. Contrary to any ordinary expectation, it is often the most affluent parents who are shunning immunization. Some of these anti-vaccine proponents are highly educated people being misled by social media. The trend appears to have originated with a fraudulent report in a British medical journal linking vaccination with autism. This report was subsequently revealed to have been based on fraudulent research and was retracted by that scientific journal. Similar rumors that vaccine stabilizers, such as thimerosol, contribute to autism have also been refuted. Nonetheless, damage has been done by ill-informed repetition. There is no doubt that those parents that refuse to vaccinate their children are well meaning. However, their actions are ill advised on two levels. The first is that refusing to appropriately vaccinate themselves or their child exposes both of them to the risks of deadly infections that can be entirely avoided. Yet, although vaccination is safe and highly effective it does have its limits. This links to the other critical factor that makes universal vaccination so crucial. No vaccination ever devised provides 100% protection and some individuals in any population cannot be vaccinated. This includes very young infants whose immune systems are not yet mature enough for vaccination and members of our community that are immunosuppressed due to diseases that weaken their immune system from a variety of illnesses including cancer. Their protection is through our actions. When there are high levels of vaccination within any community, the infectious agent is unable to find enough hosts to reproduce and sustain itself within that population. This level of community-wide protection is termed herd immunity. It is our joint responsibility, all of us together, to be part of the process of achieving this level of immunity both in our own interests and for the protection of the other members of our community. The next outbreak of a preventable infectious disease with its incumbent tragedies is always lurking. A political committee to examine the evidence based on ideological biases is not needed. Instead, our policies should rely on the expertise of already existing scientific organizations such as the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS), an independent expert clinical and scientific advisory body, as well as our own Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. The critical ingredient to the success of vaccination programs is education. Therefore, there needs to be a concerted program to recover our eroded memories of the consequences of now distant epidemic diseases that have been conquered or reduced through vaccination. The success of vaccination programs depends on being familiar with the bitter lessons of our continuous struggle with epidemic disease. Such an educational process must be ever ongoing. ••• Dr. Bill Miller has been a physician in academic and private practice for over 30 years. He is the author of The Microcosm Within: Evolution and Extinction in the Hologenome. He currently serves as a scientific advisor to OmniBiome Therapeutics, a pioneering company in discovering and developing solutions to problems in human fertility and health through management of the human microbiome. For more information, www.themicrocosmwithin.com.
