By  Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on Wednesday said he has “no doubt” the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Anthony Fauci funded gain-of-function research that likely resulted in the creation of COVID-19 and its subsequent leak.

Redfield made the statement during the first formal hearing of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

The hearing included testimony related to the lab leak theory as a plausible explanation as the origin of COVID-19 and how the theory was shut down early in the pandemic in favor of narratives that COVID-19 had zoogenic — or natural — origins.

Committee members and witnesses also debated the future of gain-of-function research.

Other witnesses Wednesday included: Jamie Metzl, Ph.D., J.D., senior fellow at the Atlantic Council; Nicholas Wade, former New York Times science editor and former deputy editor of Nature; and Paul G. Auwaerter, M.D., MBA, clinical director in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

The hearing followed the subcommittee’s release of a memo revealing that key NIH figures, including Fauci, helped persuade virologists to write an influential article squelching the theory that COVID-19 may have leaked from a lab and asserting the virus evolved naturally.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) last month determined SARS CoV-2 most likely emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China — a theory later endorsed by FBI Director Christopher Wray. These developments helped lead to a Senate vote to declassify U.S. intelligence documents on the origins of COVID-19.

Redfield also told the committee, “There’s no doubt that NIH was funding gain-of-function research,” and that the research also received funding from the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

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Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/cdc-robert-redfield-covid-origins/