LIVE: Dr. Fauci testifies on COVID-19 pandemic before House subcommittee
YouTube video by House Oversight Committee (YouTube) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCsEbq9SpsM). Committee-livestream captions of Fauci's 3 June 2024 public testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Auto-caption ASR — the certified transcript is CHRG-118hhrg55830 (also archived).

e the select subcommittee on the Corona virus pandemic will come to order I want to welcome everyone this morning pursuant to committee on oversight and accountability rule 7D members of the committee May particip ipate in today's select subcommittee hearing for purposes of questions at the discretion of the chair and pursuant to an agreement with the committee on Energy and Commerce the chairman and ranking member of the committee on Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight investigations Mr Morgan Griffith and Miss Kathy Caster are permitted to participate in today's hearings for the purposes of questions and give three minute opening statements without objection pursuant to Clause 4 a3a of house resolution 5 and Clause 2 j2c of house rule 11 the chair May recognize staff of the select subcommittee for questions for equal periods of time not to exceed 30 minutes pursuant to rule 7D of the committee on oversight and accountability Mr Jordan and Mr moscowitz members of the full committee May participate in today's hearing for the purposes of questions I would like to remind members that the issues we are debating today are important ones and members feel deeply about while vigorous disagreement is part of the legislative process members are reminded that we must adhere to established standards of decorum in debate there is a reminder that it is a violation of house rules and the rules of this committee to engage in personalities regarding other members or to question the motives of a colleague remarks on that remarks of that type are not permitted by the rules and are not in keeping with the best traditions of our committee the chair will enforced these rules of decorum at all times and urges all members to be mindful of their remarks finally without objection the chair May declare a recess at any time I now recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening statement good morning and welcome Dr C first I want to thank you for your Decades of Public Service you served your country through multiple epidemics pandemics and health crises I do want to say I'm sorry about the threats that you have received as someone who's been shot at and received threats as well my heart goes out to you this should never happen in America regardless of any disagreements we may have you chose to serve and I want to extend our appreciation and gratitude I want to thank you publicly for working with our doctor scotus during operation warps speed and the time you spent with us and Dr Collins I also want to thank you for your willing cooperation with the select subcommittee you have voluntarily sat for more than 14 hours of testimony and are appearing voluntarily today this is more than we can say about other Witnesses we have called and we appreciate it Dr fouchy we're here to investigate the covid-19 pandemic and to explore Lessons Learned positive or negative and to better prepare for future pandemics simply put America cannot move forward though without looking back we must know what went right and what went wrong in order to best ingrain proficiencies and remedy deficiencies in 15 months the select subcommittee has sent more than a 115 investigative letters conducted 30 transcribed interviews resulted in hundreds of hours of testimony held including today 27 hearings or briefings and reviewed more than one and a half million pages of documents we aren't here to throw the baby out with the bath water that's not the intent We are following the facts holding wrongdoers accountable and planning for a better more prepared future beginning early in 2020 you became the figure head of Public Health there were drinks named after you you got bobbleheads made in your likeness you were on the cover of Vogue throughout the first pitch at a Washington Nationals game almost overnight you became a celebrity in a household name in addition to being a public health official Americans from coast to coast and Beyond listen to your words and this is where I think we could have done better and this goes to both both sides of the aisle we should have been more precise we should have used words and phrases that are accurate and not misleading and we should have been honest especially about what we didn't know Dr fouchy I'm not a virologist but I am a physician and like most Physicians we are constantly learning which is why we do continuing Med medical education and we always seek new information we learn new things based on new data and we we want to give our patients the best possible care based on new findings and improvements in science at a time when you were prompting the proximal origin paper whose Focus was to quote disprove the lab leak Theory end quote I was in lockdown researching with another physician in Ohio to try and understand the pathology the affected physiology and What treatments worked and even how to diagnose Co before we had specific covid tests my friend even made a phone call to an infectious disease doctor in China looking for help as well during that time we discovered the baric shei 2015 article on creating a chimera using gain of function type technology while policy decisions should have been based on scientific data some frankly were not the burdensome six-foot social distancing rule did not have sufficient scientific report in your words it just sort of appeared distancing made sense but the six feet was arbitrary even Dr Collins said he still hasn't seen any empirical evidence to support the six-foot rule a rule that shut down schools and businesses a rule that will have negative Ram ramifications for decades as the pandemic wore on more mandates also just sort of appeared but the America American public didn't get to see the scientific data to support these mandates Americans were aggressively bullied shamed and silenced for merely questioning or debating issues such as social distancing masks vaccines or the origins of covid many Americans were willing to comply with the 15 days to slow the spread and understood the necessity of banning travel from certain countries in an attempt to slow down the virus but many Americans became very frustrated when components of those 15 days stretched into years and it should not have been the case that Americans were forced to comply with oppressive mandates when those who chose to illegally cross our Southern border or not or when Governor Nome or Governor Whitmer were throwing parties at nice restaurants not a good look Americans do not hate science but Americans know hypocrisy when they see it Dr fouchy under your leadership the United States Health agencies adopted specific policy aims as a single dogmatic truth without the benefit of debate out of a desire for a single narrative Dr fouchy you want said if you disagree with me you disagree with science science doesn't belong to any one person I was never taught that science turns a blind eye to hypothesis they serve to be proven or disproven and done so with irrefutable facts if able it was interesting that you chose not to pursue an aggressive and transparent scientific investigation of both natural spillover and lab leak we have been investigating ating both hypotheses you testified before the select subcommittee in your transcribed interview that the lab Lake theory was not a conspiracy theory you embrac the proximal origin letter it wasn't necessarily a full peer-reviewed research paper but you embraced proximal origin letter and you shared it with the public from the White House lawn you stated during your transcribed interview that you did not review published articles that considered a potential lab leak of covid-19 this is especially concerning if the works in question were conducted at a more risky and less safe bsl2 lab nevertheless any descent from your chosen scientific position was immediately labeled as anti-science anything less than complete submission to the mandates could cost you your livelihood your ability to go into into public your child's ability to attend school families were thrown off planes and shamed when their 2-year-olds struggled to wear a mask children with disabilities lost access to therapy that day and their families depended on students were out of the classroom and told to attend school remotely even when the science clearly demonstrated it was safe for them to go back in the classroom this harmed low-income students the most and how were single parent households supposed to teach their own children and work at the same time Dr Fouch you oversaw one of the most invasive regimes of domestic policy the US has ever seen including mask mandates school closures coer vaccination social distancing of 6 feet and more we've learned many lessons our early fear and confusion was understandable covid-19 was clearly a novel virus under your leadership niid allowed disgraced characters like Dr Peter daik to use millions in taxpayer dollars to conduct risky gain of function experiments in Wuhan China the actions of Ecco health and Dr daic call into question the Integrity of ni ni these policies and procedures as a whole as well as your role Dr fouchy as ni Aid's director you did sign off on his research Grant we need to know why Dr David Moren your direct report for more than two decades assisted Dr daik in avoiding oversight and scrutiny and said that you were involved your senior advisor and seemingly your Chief of Staff repeatedly L attempted to evade transparency laws to Shield information from public scrutiny we have senior officials from your office in their own writing discussing breaking federal law deleting official records and sharing private government information with Grant recipients the office you directed and those serving under your leadership chose to flout the law and bragged about it why did you allow your office to be unaccountable to the American people you were the highest paid person in the government this makes you more accountable to the people not less Dr fouchy whether intentional or not you became so powerful that any disagreements the public had with you were forbidden and censored on social and most Legacy Media time and time again this is why so many Americans became so angry because this was fundamentally an American if I make a mistake I answer to the people of Ohio who elected me and to my own conscience when you and your agency made mistakes Dr fouchy what happened we all need to be held accountable sometimes it's a simple as saying we were wrong you took the position that you presented to science your words came across so many people as final final and as infallible in matters particular paining to the pandemic but such rigid demands of an ideologically diverse people like Americans shattered public trust and American Health institutions because I said so has never been good enough for Americans and it never will be it's built into the American Spirit we have a thirst for information a drive for advancement Americans were First in Flight we landed on the moon we've cured diseases you've been part of that and we made innumerable discoveries and Explorations that forever changed Humanity Americans do not want to be indoctrinated they want to be educated and they preferred to make their health decisions in conjunction with the doctor that they know and trust to be successful our federal Public Health institutions must be accountable to the people again to be successful our health organizations must must do what they are supposed to do protect Americans I look forward to a robust and on-topic discussion I thank you I would now like to recognize ranking member Ruiz for the purpose of making an opening statement thank you Mr chairman hello Dr foui and thank you for being here um when I was named ranking member of the select subcommittee last February I made made a commitment to follow the facts and objectively analyzing the origins of the covid-19 pandemic I made a promise to keep an open mind about how the pandemic started because understanding whether the novel Corona virus emerged from a lab or from nature is essential to better preventing and preparing for future Public Health threats and to better protecting the American people and as the origins of the novel Corona virus still remain inconclusive I stand by these commitments to this day but nearly a year year and a half into House Republicans extreme and chaotic majority I believe we need to take stock of what the select subcommittee has accomplished and whether it has meaningfully improved our preparedness for the next public health threat in our nation under the guise of investigating the pandemic's origins House Republicans have abdicated their responsibility to objectively examine how covid-19 came to be and instead weaponized concerned about a lab related origin to fuel sentiment against our nation scientists and public health officials for partisan gain they have done so with one particular Public Health official in mind Dr Anthony fouchi and they have done so in an effort to deflect blame and anguish for the damage the pandemic inflicted on our society away from the former president whose stumbling pandemic response by some estimates led to 400,000 unnecessary covid-19 deaths and on to Dr fouchi Who worked tirelessly to stem the crisis over the past 15 months the select subcommittee has poured over more than 425,000 pages of documents provided to us by government agencies universities and private citizens we have conducted more than 100 hours of closed door interviews with 20 current and former Federal officials and scientists and what we have found is the following Dr fouchi did not fund research through the Echo Health Alliance grant that caused the co 19 pandemic Dr foui did not lie about gain and function research in Wuhan China and Dr foui did not orchestrate a campaign to suppress the lab leak Theory after 15 months the select subcommittee still does not possess a shred of evidence to substantiate these extreme allegations that Republicans have levied against Dr now I want to make something very clear in the past month the select subcommittee has held hearings where we have examined various serious issues of misconduct in the in following the facts select subcommittee Democrats uncovered troubling misconduct by Dr Peter daak and Echo Health Alliance including potential efforts to mislead the federal government about the nature of its work through the evasion of reporting and transparency requirements and less than two weeks ago we heard from Dr David Ms about his flagrant violation of the Freedom of Information acts transparency requirements and the potential destruction of federal records both drors Z daak and Dr morren deserve to be held accountable for betraying The public's trust to hold them accountable is not anti-science it is the defense of our federal scientific and research institution's decades long Legacy of advancing the scientific Enterprise to safeguard human health but baselessly suggesting without evidence that these discreet instances of misconduct are equivalent to our nation scientists and public health officials causing the covid-19 pandemic which has killed more than 1 million Americans and inflicted an immeasurable toll on our society is also a betrayal of the Public's trust which each of us are stewards of body today hearing comes at a pivotal moment for our nation's Public Health with the darkest days of the covid uh 19 pandemic behind us thanks to the Biden administration's leadership we are now faced with a crisis of declining confidence in the very science and public health interventions that lifted our society from one of the most challenging periods in our nation's history and as we look to the future we find ourselves at a fork in the road we can go down the path of fueling mistrust in and the interventions that saved us like vaccines masking and social distancing and the public health officials like Dr fouchy Who worked tirelessly and with extremely limited and evolving information about a novel virus to save lives during one of the greatest crisis of our time or we can work constructively on the forward-looking policies and solutions that we know are necessary to prevent and better prepare us for the public health threats that are yet to come since my first day as ranking member I set out to take the latter path the path of putting people over politics and prioritizing solutions to better prepare us for the next pandemic and it has been my hope that Republicans would join Democrats in the forward-looking work that will better protect our constituents strengthening oversight of potentially risky research domestically and abroad is an essential part of this conversation and so is closing Pathways for zoonatic transfers of viruses in nature and investing in our Public Health infrastructure to ensure that when future viruses arrive we are ready when Democrats were in the majority we made important strides in these objectives by passing the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 which strengthen the protections against undue influence in our biomedical research improve training and transparency for the handling of Select agents pave the way for the inter agency collaboration to fortify zoonotic disease prevention invested in our infectious disease Workforce and enhanced our supply chain preparedness and ability to rapidly develop and deploy medical counter measures and ahead of today's hearing more than 90 health and medical organizations including the American Public Health Association the American College of Physicians the American Academy of family physicians the Infectious Disease Society of America the associate ation of state and territorial Health officials and the National Association of County and City Health officials wrote to the select subcommittee urging us to quote stand against efforts to weaken the ability of the nation's Public Health agencies to protect the nation's health and to take additional action to fortify uh of n our nation's Public Health Workforce and infrastructure I seek unanimous consent to enter this letter into the hearing record without objection as we sit here today I have not lost hope that in the remaining months of the select subcommittee we can work together to build on this Legacy and make objectively examining the origins of the novel Corona virus a part of this forward-looking work I stand by my commitments I mentioned earlier to take a serious balanced look at all possibilities for the origins of covid-19 pandemic and I stand ready to work with every member of this select subcommittee on this critically important Mission so that we can save future lives and I believe I still have some time left uh so at that I'd like to recognize uh uh Mr Rasin with the remaining time thank you Dr Ruiz public health is a matter of urgent um and comprehensive public concern under Donald Trump when the covid-19 pandemic began and spun out of control we came close to becoming a failed state which the political scientists Define as a state that cannot deliver the basic Goods of existence to its people according to Dr Deborah Burks Donald Trump's own co9 adviser America unnecessarily lost hundreds of thousands of people because of the recklessness and indifference of Donald Trump and his administration now the people who brought you the political big lie claiming absurdly that Trump won the 2020 election which he lost by more than million votes now bring you the medical big lie making the outlandish claim that Dr fouchy was responsible for causing covid-19 using the select subcommittee as a platform for This disinformation House Republicans Now find themselves in the familiar position where their own investigation debunks their runaway political rhetoric just like the broader committee's impeachment Drive proved only that there were no uh presidential crimes much less High crimes and misdemeanors attributable Joe Biden the investigation of Dr fouchy shows he is an honorable public servant who has devoted his entire career to the public health in the public interest and he is not a comic book super villain he did not fund research to create the covid-19 pandemic he did not lie to Congress about gain of function research in Wuhan and he did not organize a lab leak suppression campaign today Dr F's testimony along with the thousands of pages of documents and dozens of closed door testimony provided to House Republicans as part of the covid origins investigation will dispel these hysterical claims and reveal that the people bowing down to a twice impeached convicted felon who told Americans to inject themselves with bleach now want you to believe not only a big political a big political lie but a big medical lie too I hope that this committee will be able to correct all of the propaganda and disinformation today and we will be able to actually return to uh what the good ranking member has said which is an authentic investigation of the origins of the pandemic and I will yield back to the gentleman and I yield back I now recognize Mr Griffith for three minute statement good morning I want to again thank the leadership of this committee for including the Energy and Commerce Committee in this hearing Dr fouchy the recent Revelations that that Dr moren's a senior adviser and your Chief of Staff Greg fulkers routinely evaded Federal records laws including the Freedom of Information Act or Foya and those were a shock that was a shock I've been doing oversight now for over 14 years or right at 14 years and the scale of the effort to evade Foya by some at the National Institute of allergy and infectious diseases or niad has surprised even me these men were among your most senior and trusted staff at an agency you led for nearly 40 years they worked for you for decades your calendars show that you met with them multiple times a week during the pandemic you co-author dozens of papers with Dr morens he directly implicates you even the head of the niad Foya office was apparently in on some of this conspiracy and I know my colleagues on the other side love to say we're always talking conspiracy but when the facts lead you there whether you knew about it or not when the facts lead you that your agency was involved in some form of a conspiracy related to co Origins we have to follow those facts it is hard to believe that all this occurred without your knowledge Andor approval in civil law when one party has destroyed or refuses to produce evidence that's within its possession a jury is allowed to draw an adverse inference that the information destroyed or not produced was unfavorable therefore until we get a full accounting of all of the communications among nad's leadership it's reasonable for us to assume that missing information would mirror the private doubts expressed by so many virologists and other scientists related to your public positions while telling the public the media and Congress that covid-19 almost certainly emerged from nature experts you convene convened as a team PR ly worried that a research related incident was a possible if not the probable origin of the virus Dr Christian Anderson even said in February of 2020 quote I think the main thing still in my mind is that the Lab Escape version of this is so freaking likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario further while you and other niad officials were assuring us that the virus could not have come from the Wuhan Institute of orology Ni didn't actually have an idea as to what the full scope of wuhan's coronav virus research was or even the trajectory of its gain of function research now that may be because Eco Health wasn't giv you the reports I grant that but this joint investigation has shown just how little oversight niad does of risky experiments involving potential pandemic pathogens niad set up a system designed to Greenlight potentially risky experiments while avoiding HHS Department level review the same program officers who act as advocates for their scientific area are responsible for assessing whether experiment is too dangerous that creates a conflict of interest I think that means that when we're taking when an agency's taking the final approval we ought to take that final approval away from the agencies like niad that fund it thank you Mr chairman I yield back I now recognize Miss caster for a three minute statement and I will oblig you an extra 30 seconds as well well uh thank you Dr fouchy for your appearance today and for your Decades of service to our country during your 39 years at the helm of America's leading health research institute the National Institute of allergy and infectious diseases you tackled some of the most serious health threats including AIDS zika Ebola SARS K1 and covid-19 your leadership and service to Republican and Democratic administrations and all Americans save countless lives and resources we owe you a debt of gratitude while the evidence to date points to covid-19 having originated from an animal Market in China the Chinese Communist party has blocked access to important information that could help confirm the origin of the virus this committee should be doing more to fight for those answers but instead has wasted significant time and taxpayer money fueling conspiracy theories and ignoring the importance of preparing for the next deadly pandemic some GOP members falsely claimed you secretly broke into CIA headquarters and cohered analysts others claim that you committed crimes America's adversaries like China Russia and Iran love it when Americans are divided and distracted it provided fertile ground for the spread of misinformation about covid-19 by our adversaries and unfortunately con Fringe far-right conspiracy theories have permeated even mainstream media outlets and some Republican members of Congress have played along I regret that many of the conspiracies have smeared you Dr fouchy as you and our top scientists did everything to keep Americans safe during the deadly days of covid-19 over 1.1 million Americans lost their lives to covid-19 and today it's still more deadly than the flu as we learned from zika and Ebola the ways viruses are transmitted are not obvious at first and the development of treatments and vaccines takes time what you and your team did to speed the development of the safe and affected covid-19 vaccine was remarkable that fast timeline was only possible due to years of federal investment in the National Institute of Health and support for medical research in the United States so one of the lessons learned from the pandemic is the need to continue to invest in medical health research in the US for cancer for heart disease for diabetes but also to prepare for the next pandemic we must learn from the past so that we can keep Americans safe that's why Democrats have worked hard to update American pandemic preparedness law the pandemic and all hazards preparedness act to short public health and make us more prepared to tackle the tackle the next pandemic threat it's not too late for Republicans to join us and turn the least productive Congress in modern history into one where we are all focused on solutions for the American people to make our country safer and stronger Democrats were able to prevent harmful roll backs in medical resarch last year and I urge my GOP colleagues to join us and move away from threatening and undermining American Medical Research at every turn Public Health threats are constantly emerging in the past month alone we have been tracking new strains and variants of h5n1 andox and SARS K2 Dr fouchy I'm sorry for the personal attacks you have received and may have to deal with today but while you are here I want you to know that the vast majority of Americans appreciate your work over the years I look forward to continuing to learn from you to learn everything possible how we can take the ne can take the pandemic Lessons Learned uh and put them to use to help keep our community safe and healthy thank you and time thank you our witness today is Dr Anthony fouchy Dr fouchy was the director of The National Institute of allergy and infectious diseases from 1984 to 2022 and chief medical advisor 2022 pursuant to committee on oversight and accountabil rule 9g the witness will hand do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony that you are about to give is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you gu thank you let the record show that the witness answered in the affirmative the select subcommittee certainly appreciates you for being here today and we look forward to your testimony let me remind the witness that we have read your written statement and it will appear in full in the hearing record as requested please limit your oral statement to 6 minutes as a reminder please press the button on the microphone in front of you so so that it is on and the members can hear you when you begin to speak the light in front of you will turn green after 5 minutes the light will turn yellow and when the red light comes on your six minutes has expired and we would ask that you please wrap up I now recognize Dr fouchy to give an opening statement Mr chairman ranking member Ruiz members of the subcommittee thank you for this opportunity to testify prior to my retirement from federal service in December 2022 I had been at the NIH for 54 years and director of niid for more than 38 years in those posts I was deeply involved in the scientific and public health response to several infectious diseases outbreaks including HIV AIDS pandemic flu Ebola and zika and so under my leadership we were well positioned to respond to covid-19 for at least two decades prior to the covid outbreak we at niid had invested billions of dollars in research on mRNA Tech technology and imen design both of which led to the Swift development of covid vaccines less than 11 months after the identification of this new virus safe and highly effective vaccines were widely available and unprecedented accomplishment in the history of vinology that saved tens of millions of lives worldwide I will now use my remaining time to directly address certain issues that have been seriously distorted concerning me the first issue concerns my actions regarding the possibility that s K2 might have resulted from a lab leak on January 31st 2020 I was informed through phone calls with Jeremy Farah then director of the welcome trust in the UK and then with Christian Anderson a highly regarded scientist at scrips Research Institute that they and Eddie Holmes a worldclass evolutionary biologist from Australia were concerned that the genomic sequence of s K2 suggested that the virus could have been manipulated in a lab I participated in a conference called the next day with about a dozen International virologists to discuss this possibility versus a spillover from an animal Reservoir the discussion was Lively with Arguments for both possibilities two participants have testified before this subcommittee that I did not try to steer the discussion in any direction it was decided that several participants would more carefully examine the genomic sequence after this further examination several who at first were concerned about lab manipulation became convinced that the virus was not deliberately manipulated they concluded that the most likely scenario was a spillover from an animal Reservoir although they still kept an open mind they appropriately published their opinion in the peer-reviewed literature the accusation being circulated that I influenced these scientists to change their minds by bribing them with millions of dollars in grant money is absolutely false and simply Preposterous I had no input into the content of the published paper the second issue is a false accusation that I tried to cover up the possibility that the virus originated from a lab in in fact the truth is exactly the opposite I now quote from an email that I sent to Professor Ferrar on February 1 2020 quote Jeremy I just got off the phone with Christian Anderson and he related to me is concern about the furing sight mutation in the spike protein of the virus I told him that as soon as possible he and Eddie Holmes should get a group of evolutionary biologists together to care carefully examine the data to determine if his concerns are validated and they should report it to the appropriate authorities I would imagine that in the USA this would be the FBI and in the UK it would be MI5 in the meantime I will alert my US government official colleagues of my conversation with you and chrisan and determine what further investigation they recommend let us stay in touch such best regards Tony unquote it is inconceivable that Anyone who reads this email could conclude that I was trying to cover up the possibility of a lab leak I have always kept an open mind to the different possibilities another issue is that of Dr David morrens who has the title of senior advisor to the ni ID director and who recently began has been investigated for conduct Unbecoming a government official naturally given his title a connection is made to me with respect to his recent testimony before this subcommittee I knew nothing of Dr moren's actions regarding Dr deac Eco health or his emails it is important to point out for the record that despite his title and even though he was helpful to me in writing scientific papers Dr morrens was not an advisor to me on Institute policy or other substantive issues at niid we had weekly executive committee meetings of The Institute leadership and daily morning meetings of my immediate staff and to the best of my recollection he attended neither of these furthermore his office is located in a different building from that of the ni director finally in a majority staff memorandum of May 22nd 2024 there is a statement quote Dr fouchi may have conducted official business via personal email unquote let me State for the record that to the best of my knowledge I have never conducted official business using my personal email thank you for listening I would be happy to address these and any other thank you I now recognize myself for as much time as I may consume for questions with equal time being afford afforded to the ranking member uh Dr fouy February 1 2020 you were on a call with Dr Ferrar Dr Collins and other scientists regarding the potential that covid-19 was engineered was CDC director Redfield on that call no he was not okay Dr fouy you've said that you had to rely on biologists and evolutionary biologists regarding Origins because you're not an is prior to the pandemic niid awarded at least three grants via the New York blood center to Dr Z eus are you aware of these I'm sorry to Dr H Zhao your microphone is not on Doctor your microphone is not on I'm not familiar with that name okay well ni ID awarded at least three grants via the New York blood center to that that that scientist he was a high-ranking Chinese pla official and director of a Lab at the Chinese acad Academy of military medical Sciences does it concern you if US taxpayer dollars are funding someone like this grants that are submitted to the niid go through very ex does it concern you I'm not talking about the process right does it concern you that the U that US taxpayer dollars would be going to someone who's a high-ranking Chinese pla official yes or no I would have to know more about that Mr chairman because I don't even know the talking about are you or were you ever aware that the US state department in 2005 issued warnings that the Chinese government was working on the creation of bioweapons I was not aware of that thank you did you ever discuss the Chinese bioweapons program with anyone in the intelligence Community I've never discussed the Chinese bioweapons program to my knowledge with anybody before during or after the covid-19 pandemic did you speak to the FBI CIA Dia or any us intelligence agency concerning viral kind what what time frame are you talking about sir I said before during or after the covid-19 pandemic did you speak to the FBI CIA Dia or any us intelligence agency concerning viral I can't give you the specifics of it but back in the time of the anthrax attacks we certainly had a number of briefings of um by agencies that M that were intelligence agencies I don't remember who they were it could have been any of the above that you mentioned about the possibility that there were bioweapons that had fallen into the hands of Bad actors I.E terrorists that might have been used potentially as a biot terror attack that was at a time when we had thought that the anthrax appreciate I appreciate that I appreciate your expertise in that well that's the answer but but did you at any time talk to concerning viral research of any kind again I say that at the time that there was concern about the fact that alqaeda may have been using or potentially using bioweapons we had discussions with with intelligence agencies about that possibility but not as related to say covid-19 not to my knowledge about Co now but let me just make sure we get the facts after the um investigations began about covid I was briefed by uh intelligence agencies about possibilities of there being uh activities going on in different Laboratories I was briefed by intelligence agencies thank you science is always open to debate and it's a benefit the science supported restricting travel from certain countries at the beginning of the pandemic and after these orders went into effect the president was called racist and xenophobic Dr fouchy you said in your transcribed interview that you um supported those orders Dr fouchi were those orders racist and xenophobic no they were not thank you the vaccine saved millions of lives and I want to thank you for your support and engagement on that however despite statements to the contrary I it did not stop transmission of the virus did the covid vaccine stop transmission of the virus that is a complicated issue because in the beginning the first iteration of the vaccine did have an effect not 100% not a high effect they did prevent infection and and and subsequently obviously transmission however it's important to point out something that we did not know early on that became evident as the months went by is that the durability of protection against infection and hence transmission was relatively limited whereas as the duration of protection against severe disease hospitalization and deaths was more prolonged we did not know that in the beginning in the beginning it was felt that in fact it did prevent infection and thus transmission but that was proven as time went by to not be a durable effect yeah definitely had positive effect for many people especially those that were vulnerable but we knew from the trials that people that got vaccinated still were subject to getting covid so was the covid vaccine 100% effective I don't believe any vaccine is 100% effective I now recognize the ranking member Dr ree from California for five minutes of questions thank you U over the past year and a half my colleagues on the other side of the AL have relentlessly vilified Dr fouchi under the guise of investigating the origins of the covid-19 pandemic but after reviewing nearly half a million pages of documents conducting 20 closed door interviews and receiving testimony from nearly a dozen Witnesses brought before this elect subcommittee for public hearings they have come up empty-handed for evidence of their extreme allegations that Dr foui lied about gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of virology and caused the covid-19 pandemic so I'd like to address both of the Republican claims in turn through the majority's investigation the select subcommittee has heard three definitions for gain of function research of the three Republicans have relied heavily on an overly broad definition that has no regulatory significance let me repeat that no regulatory significance in fact their definition is so broad that it would include the manufacture of flu vaccines as gain a function because it is so Broad the National Institute of Health does not use that definition when assessing whether proposed research is or is not quote unquote gain of function research for those assessments NIH has instead appropriately used the definitions provided in regulations and to be clear the select subcommittee has been reminded by Witnesses after witness that NIH at all times refer to regulations for the definition of gain of function research and not to a nebulous expansive definition with no legal bearing that is so broad it could apply to again the manufacturing of flu vaccines Dr fouchi according to the regulatory definitions for example in P3 Co that NIH applied to proposed research did NIH ever fund gain of function research in Wuhan China uh as you said uh um uh Congressman Ruiz according to the Regulatory and operative definition of P3 Co the NIH did not fund gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Urology thank you and despite my Republican colleagues effort to fit a square peg into a round hole it seems to me that you've been consistent on this issue from the beginning of the pandemic and they know this but they still use the terms gain of function Loosely and with respect to niad staff's assessments of whether proposed research was or was not gain of function research were you personally involved in those assessments or were those assessments made several levels removed from you and by subject matter experts those assessments were done by highly qualified and experienced programed people several levels below me thank you and your public statements that NIH did not fund gain of function research in Wuhan reflected the assessments made by IAD subject matter experts applying a definition found in the regulation known as the P3 Co framework is that correct that is correct thank you and thank you for clarifying that in fact all of that is abundantly clear in your 2021 Senate testimony on this matter when asked by the senate about gain of function research you testified quote that is why we have committees we have a P3 Co committee you also testified in 2021 quote gain of function is a very nebulous term we have spent not us but outside bodies a considerable amount of effort to give a more precise definition to the type of research that is of concern that might lead to a dangerous situation you are aware of that that is called P3 Co that was back in 2021 at the time of your May 2021 testimony P3 Co had been the operative def definition of gain of function research for several years correct that is correct so I will note that at your transcribed interview in January the majority conceded that NIH did not fund research in Wuhan that met the criteria of P3 Co I encourage the audience to read the transcript of that interview so you can evaluate the Merit of majority's claims for yourselves so now if we could quickly turn to the irresponsible and false accusation that you created SARS kv2 the virus responsible for the covid-19 pandemic so this accusation centers on a grant NAD awarded to Echo Health Alliance with a sub awward to the Wuhan Institute of v virology and we have been entertained earlier about the suggestion that this funding could have possibly gone to a bioweapons research capacity as well so I want to be clear no evidence provided to the select SubCom committee demonstrates that the work performed under NIH funding including at the Wuhan Institute of iology led to the creation of SARS K2 the majority has failed to demonstrate or even credibly suggest that any of the viruses studied under the grant could even possibly have been the progenitor virus Dr fouchi could you briefly explain why none of the viruses studied under the Echo Health Alliance Grant could have been the progenitor virus of the SARS K2 when you're talking about the evolution of a virus from one to another the viruses that were studied under the subaward to the Wuhan Institute that have been reported in progress reports in the literature and published papers those viruses were phenetically so far removed from so from from SARS CO2 that it is molecularly impossible for those viruses to have evolved or being made into SS K2 it's just a virological fact that was so far removed that it could not possibly be a progenitor of ss K2 so I want to be very clear on this point that the funding and the research conducted by Echo Health uh did not produce SARS CO2 that doesn't negate that this lab could have another lab could have been doing research and it could have leaked from a lab it still is a possibility but it was not directly or it was not funded by niad or NIH and just for the record this information was provided by NIH to then oversight ranking member James comr nearly three years ago in October 2021 so despite the clear evidence that Dr fouchi and his agency did not fund gain of function research under the P3 Co regulatory definition and that the virus is studied under the federally funded Grant Echo Health Alliance Grant could not have been the progenitor virus for SARS kov 2 Republicans have levied these unsubstantiated allegations knowing very well that they are not true and they have done so to push their extreme partisan narrative that Dr fouchi and our nation's Public Health pandemic yep now recognize the chairman of the full committee Mr comr from Kentucky for five minutes a question thank you Dr Fouch in your opening statement you attempt to distance yourself from your previous senior adviser Dr moren's you say that Dr Moran's title was just made up that he was not an adviser to you and that his office was in a different building so Dr fouchy did Dr Moran's report directly to you um actually I'm not sure exactly what the onp paper report is he is senior advisor to the director but it is conceivable we can get that information he might have reported through someone lower like my Deputy so your senior advisor did not report directly to you there are very few people who report directly to me okay Dr Dr BRS testified that he could walk into your office anytime he wanted to is that true no that's not true you don't just walk into the office I mean he's there I mean it's conceivable that he did he ever walk into your office I would say he did occasionally but the idea can can I finish the answer to you sir because I've got a lot of questions Dr fouchy did you ever delete an official record no Dr fouchy did you ever conduct official business via email to the best of my recollection and knowledge I have never conducted official business via my private email so there's a troubling pattern of behavior from your interner circle not just Dr morens but also your Chief of Staff Mr fulkers do you agree that it violates ni niid policy to use personal email for official purposes the the Dr moren's uh issue that was discussed by this committee violates NIH policy yes but does using official email using a personal email for official business does that violate policy using a personal email for official business violates NIH policy it violate niid uh nii Na niid policy to delete records to intentionally avoid fo you yes okay on April 28th 2020 Dr moren's edited an Ecco Health press release regarding the grant termination does that violate policy that was inappropriate for him to be doing that for a grante as a conflict of interest among other things so on March 29th 2021 Dr Ms edited a letter that Dr dassk was sending to NIH does that violate policy yes it does on October 25th 2021 Dr Mar provided Dr dasic with advice regarding how to mislead NIH on Ecco Health's late progress report does that violate policy that was wrong and inappropriate and violated policy on December 7th 2021 Dr morand wrote to the chair of Eco Health's board of directors to to quote put in a word in quote for Dr Dass does that violate policy should not have done that that was wrong and that violates policy well I'm not sure if a specific policy but I imagine it does violate policy he should not have been doing that in addition to all those actions Dr Marin wrote to Dr dassit quote Peter from Tony's numerous recent comments to me they are trying to protect you end quote did you ever talk to Dr Moren about Dr dassk or eco Health Alliance um I I can tell you regard to what you said I never spoke to about protecting him I mean obviously we knew that do desac was a grande so I may have mentioned and discussed Dr desac because he's a grande but I never spoke testifying that he just made that up excuse me you're testifying that uh Dr Mor just made that up I don't know where he got that but that's not true so by this point Dr fouchy when these these emails were written you should have known that Dr dassk was more than two years late on a required progress report with his Grant uh Dr dassk conducted an experiment that resulted in a novel virus showing excess growth that Dr dasic failed to report that experiment that Dr dasic was protecting the Wuhan lab and not sharing its lab notebooks and that Dr dasic failed to to disclose close obvious conflicts of interest so why were you trying to protect Dr dasik and Eco Health Alliance I repeat on the record I have not tried to protect Dr desc and that's number one number two you said something that's not true because I did not know about the compliance issues until well after the fact when I was being briefed for going to before a congressional committee so it wasn't as as the things were going on I knew that he was with did you know about Dr moren's close relationship with Dr dassk Dr morance made it clear that Dr desk was his friend I did not engage in any of that interaction between them and and just lastly if I REM Mr chair you you testified and answered uh the Chairman's question that you never had any communication with the intelligence Community throughout all of Co did I understand that correctly no you heard wrong I said I did have communication I was briefed by the intelligence Community multiple times during the covid issue and you never gentleman's time is expired I now recognize the ranking member of the full committee Mr Rasin from Maryland for five minutes of questions okay first Dr fouchy uh thank you for your testimony and your extraordinary service to the American people let me just start was there anything you wanted to clear up in that last exchange that where you were interrupted no I think I made it clear I mean they were talking about my knowing about uh a lack of compliance that became clear Congressman Rasin well after the fact it isn't as if they were not complying and I was not monitoring their non-compliance I didn't know about it until it was a done deal gotcha you've been a scientist and a scientific administrator for 54 years is that right more than a half century and correct you were director of the National Institute of of allergies and infectious diseases for more than three decades is that right 38 plus years 38 years okay and I assume that uh uh you've never been accused of trying to uh start a disease before is that right that is correct um you have devoted your life to fighting infectious diseases for the American people is that right that is correct I want to go back to um this email that you cited in your opening because I think it goes right to the heart of this uh campaign of character assassination against you the claim was essentially that you tried to cover up the possibility of there having been a laboratory leak which of course is perfectly possible and if this committee were doing its job we could actually be working to advance the investigation of that but they would rather assert that you tried to cover up this possibility um here's the email email that you sent uh on February 1st uh at 12:38 a.m. um to Christian Anderson um with a copy to Christian Anderson but you sent it to Professor Jeremy Ferrar Jeremy I just got off the phone with Christian Anderson and he related to me his concern about the furing sight mutation in the spike protein of the currently circulating 2019 ncov I told him that as soon as possible he and Eddie Holmes should get a group of evolutionary biologist together to carefully examine the data to determine if his concerns are validated he should do this very quickly and if everyone agrees with this concern they should report it to the appropriate authorities I would imagine that in the USA this would be the FBI and in the UK it would be M MI5 it would be important to quickly get confirmation of the cause of his concern by experts in the field of Corona viruses and evolutionary biology in the meantime I will alert my US government official college of my conversation with you and Christian and determine what further investigation they recommend let us stay in touch best regards Tony was this the email where you were peely trying to cover up the possibility of a lab leak uh yes uh Congressman Rasin and that's the reason why I mentioned in my opening statement that is it inconceivable that anyone could get out of that that I was covering anything up would you have any reason to cover up uh any new scientific evidence relating to the origins of the covid-19 virus absolutely not and that's the reason why it was important to get people together that to discuss this in a transparent way have you spent your whole life trying to determine the causes of infectious diseases and then to stop them to protect the American people yes I have well Dr fouchy um I want to join my colleague from Florida in apologizing to you uh that some of our colleagues the United States House of represent resentatives seem to want to drag your name through the mud uh they're treating you Dr fouchy like a convicted felon actually you probably wish they were treating you like a convicted felon they treat convicted felons with love and admiration some of them blindly worship convicted felons um is there anything else you would like to say to the American people about your service to America during the course of the co9 pandemic my main job during the covid pandemic was to play a role with my team at the vaccine Research Center to develop a safe and effective vaccine and we did that in an unprecedented short period of time never seen before in the annals of vaccinology as we all know that vaccine and those vaccines have resulted in Saving of hundreds of thousands of lives in the United States and millions of lives throughout the world well you have fought uh AIDS and HIV you have fought covid-19 um and you are fearless in doing so do you have any reason to be afraid of scientific evidence or data or the truth not at all thank you I will yield back to you Mr chairman now recognize Mr Griffith from Virginia for five minutes of questions thank you Mr chairman it's good to see you Dr fouchy so take a deep breath because my questions change sometimes based on things that happened in the hearing and I want you to follow the bouncing ball with me um and and there's no gotta at the end of this I'm just trying to figure this out you told Dr Ruiz in his questioning that it was absolutely impossible for any of the viruses that you all were funding I get that it was impossible for SARS covid 2 or SARS CO2 known as covid-19 to have come from any of the work that was being done at Wuhan at the same time time you told Mr comr that you didn't know about the non-compliance by Eco Health until after the fact and when the virus is already out there however it got there in light of the fact that part of that non-compliance was a report where we uncovered and I believe that Dr dashak was untruthful to this committee and one of of his reports to niad and further that in the two most sensitive years related to the uh humanized mice experiments we never got lab notebooks from Wuhan Institute of biology can you understand following the bouncing ball why some of us doubt that not that you had some hand in it or that you knew about it but the doubt that you can say state with certainty that it was impossible because they might have been doing stuff you didn't know about isn't that true um actually it's not incompatible at all Congressman what I said the viruses that was studied whether you did or did not give a five-year report on time was still the viruses that phenetically would be impossible to be the precursor of sarce K2 so it was completely compatible with the statement that I made to Dr is that accurate as well knowing that they had worked on uh adding a fur and cleavage site to uh Ms but sir there's a difference between the viruses that were funded by the NIH sub award versus anything else anybody else in China might be doing excellent we were talking about did the NIH you were talking about what you funded what we funded and that's the point and and that goes goes to my next question because I thought you might go there and I appreciate that because in an off the reccord member level briefing in February of 2022 I asked about the likelihood nature of a SARS related Corona virus to have a fur and cleavage site particularly since it takes the 12 uh nucleotide change in there to make it so to make it as viral as this was going on and at the time you said to me pretty much what you just said and I want you to just confirm it for the record well that wasn't us if that was being done it wasn't us and you conf confirm that for the record yes it wasn't you it wasn't what you were funding what I'm saying is that I cannot account nor can anyone account for other things that might be going on in China which is the reason why I have always said and will say now I keep an open mind as to what the origin is but the one thing I know for sure is that the viruses that were funded by the NIH phenetically could not be the precursor of SAS to and I appreciate that because I've I've never thought that that NIH or niad went out to to create this thing but I am a believer that it came out of the lab and I think you've just made it clear and sometimes people miss this Dr fouchy one side says one one side says one thing one side says the other and the actual fact may be that at sometime working on on that maybe they used some of our money to get started maybe they didn't but a group of scien is getting together might very well at Wuhan have said hey let's see what happens if we go over here and do this not that NIH funded it but they on their own went off and did something isn't that accurate isn't that possible well I actually would also would want to say that one thing we should put out on the table that you were talking about a $120,000 a year Grant in A6 billion doll budget so I mean if they were going to do something on the side they have plenty of other the money to do it they wouldn't necessarily have to use a $120,000 NIH Grant to do it and and I appreciate that because it means something could happen I'm glad you kept an open mind I would ask this one final thing though do you think they could have done it without the humanized mice that we gave them yeah could have done what sir I could have done could they have done any other research with the humanized mice that we gave them would they be successful China didn't have the humanized mice before we gave them to Wuhan isn't it accurate that they might have been able to do extra stuff with ir mice sorry sir that's a hypothetical that I can't really answer what they could have you can't say it couldn't have happened either I go back well you want me to prove a negative now recognize Miss Caster from Florida for five minutes of questions thank you Mr chairman you know these special investigative committees are are intended at the outset to bring light to difficult matters and I think unfortunately this select committee has brought more heat than light to things uh and one example is nearly five months ago Dr fouchy sat for a 14-hour voluntary interview with the subcommittee I was there for that interview which included exchanges on many important questions on Research safety long covid vaccine development and the importance of strong Public Health Systems in our local communities also we discussed pandemic preparedness uh like stockpiling supplies for our hospitals uh in advance the next pandemic but I want the public to know that for five months the Republicans sat on that transcript they could have released it at any time it was released last Friday if the public had seen it five months ago they would know that they the Republicans failed to find uh a shred of evidence of their far-fetched conspiracy uh linking Dr fouchy to a coverup of the origins of the pandemic instead the Republicans contorted and mischaracterized Dr Fouch uh words over Twitter uh to Jin up conspiracies about nih's role in the origins of the pandemic in the leadup to this hearing parts of that interview have again been cherry-picked and distorted in press releases and tweets so Dr Fouch I want to make sure that you have an opportunity to publicly clear anything up um does anything come top of mine right off the bat and and how they transcript I I don't want to be casting stones at the distortions of what was said in that but you know there were a couple of things that come to mind you know one I'm sure is going to come up later is the issue of the six- foot distance and I made the statement that it just appeared uh and that got taken at like I don't know what's going on it just appeared it actually came from the CDC the CDC was responsible for those kinds of guidelines for schools not me so when I said that it just appeared it appeared was there any science behind it what I meant by no science behind it is that there wasn't a control trial that said compare 6 foot with three feet with 10 feet so there wasn't that scientific evaluation of it what I believe the CDC used for their reason to say six feet is that studies years ago show that when you're dealing with droplets which at the time that the CDC made that recommendation it was felt that the transmission was primarily through droplet not aerosol which is incorrect because we know now aerosol does play a role that's the reason why they did it it had little to do with me since I didn't make the recommendation and my saying there was no science behind it means there was no clinical trial that proved that that's just one of the things that got a little distorted in the response to that and and I've learned and and watched you over the years I I have to go back to uh the zika outbreak where we didn't know uh how exactly it was being transmitted and um and at one point we weren't we weren't aware that some of the some of it was sexually transmitted that's an example of of why with these Public Health threats that you learn you learn unfortunately as we go along talk a little bit about about the zika health threat and how that we we didn't know what was happening in the early days your microphone all right I'm glad you brought that up because it really is also reflective what went on in the early months of covid when you're dealing with an outbreak that's a novel outbreak the zika outbreak that caused microsil was novel we have never seen that before covid was novel we'd never seen that before when you're dealing with a new outbreak things change the scientific process collects the information that will allow you at that time to make a determination or a recommendation or a guideline as things evolve and change and you get more information it is important that you use the scientific process to gain that information and perhaps change the way you think of things change your guidelines and change your recommendation and that really goes across the board because you're dealing with something that needs to be modified because it's a moving Target zika was a moving Target Co was a moving Target well thank you very much and I I want to thank the uh Democratic staff for your Minority Report and if um if it's not already submitted for the record I'd like to ask unanimous consent to offer into the record the the Democratic staff report just completed Republicans fouchy flop select committee's 15-month probe fails to find evidence of extreme claims linking Dr fouchy to co 19's Origins and thank the staff this is an outstanding report that that folks should read thank you now recognize Miss malakas from New York for five minutes a questions thank you Mr chairman uh I think many of us in the committee are really disturbed by re Revelations to this committee um that there were officials at NIH that deleted government records they deleted personal or they used personal information personal emails to communicate and circumvent Freedom of Information laws um so I I just had a couple questions about that Dr fou did you delete any emails or records related to the Wuhan lab or the origins of the virus no I did not okay uh Dr morens said in a 2020 May 2021 email he indicated that uh he was connecting people to you in a quote secret back channel do you know what he was referring to I don't have any idea what he's talking about there is no back Channel at niid okay there is uh he also said in another email that there is no worry about Freedom of Information uh act I can send stuff to Tony on his private email did you communicate with anyone uh Rel relating to anything regarding NIH or with Dr morren on a private email I do not do government business on my private email okay so was there so have you communicated with Dr morrens Via private email even if it was not necessarily your definition of government business it might have been because as I mentioned in my opening statement one of his functions is to write chapters medical scientific chapters with me so it is conceivable that I communicated with him on on my private email when we were writing a chapter and that was not official what about Peter daic no okay um I just want to clarify for the record because today you testified that you did not suppress the lab leak Theory yet in the past you have said quote it is a distortion of reality unquote you've said quote I've heard these conspiracy conspiracy theories and like all conspiracy theories they're just conspiracy theories that's what you told the American people and so would you like to clarify what science were you following then versus now yeah no I actually I've also been very very clear and said multiple times that I don't think the concept of there being a lab leak is inherently a conspiracy theory what is conspiracy is the kind of distortions of that particular subject like like it was a lab leak and I was parachuted into the CIA like Jason Bourne and told the CIA that they should really not be talking about a lab lek that's the conspiracy appreciate that Dr fouchy um how much have you earned from royalties from pharmaceutical companies since the pandemic began in 2021 zero it says NIH scientists made 710 million in royalties from drug M makers uh you're saying that you you did not receive any of the $710 million on covid I received I think $122 for an for an monoclonal antibody that I made 27 years ago okay so just in general though how much have you received not not related to covid just in general how much have you received in royalties between 2021 and 2023 I think none okay so somebody received the $710 milon somebody did but not me you didn't receive any royalties okay Ian I see no royalties associated with Co I mentioned I said know I I want I'm on the record and I want to make sure that this is clear that I've developed a monoclonal antibody about 25 years ago that's used as a diagnostic that has nothing to do with covid and I receive an average of about $120 a year from that pent okay but the bottom line here is that scientists at ni uh did receive 71010 million in royalties and I guess my question is don't you think that if these experiments are made using American tax dollars that any of those royalties this nearly billions of dollars should be going back to the American taxpayer not in the pockets of the scientists do you believe that's a law that we should consider changing uh if you want to change the patent laws and the and and and The Bu Dole act then go ahead okay but that's not for me to say I'm asking your opinion okay well anyway um moving on I just want to say that uh you know we know billions of dollars have been funding these animal experiments both here domestically and in foreign uh lands I'm very troubled by the uh animal the cruel horrific animal research that has been done on us land and in foreign Laboratories of taxpayers are footing the bill for billions of dollars these beagle puppies that have their uh these their throats slit uh they're being injected with ticks they are murdered after just a few months um piglets rabbits you name it FDA is saying we no longer need to be uh testing uh human medic indications on animals that there's other ways to achieve this um can you comment on that if it's time for the United States of America to be moving on from these cruel animal and horrific costly tests I'd be happy to comment in but I'm puzzled as to what that has to do with the origins of covid well I have a question about it before this committee and it has to do in general with the amount of waste of tax dollars that NIH is using well the animal experiments that are conducted by and funded by NIH go through strict uh uh regulations of the proper use of animals in research so I'm not Congressman with all due respect I'm not trying to be confrontive I I'm not sure what you're talking about but the experiments that the NIH funded go through strict regulatory processes of the treatment of animals The Humane treatment of animals well they're not very Humane and I will say as the former director you you you you you signed off on these experiments and so my time has expired and we will well I signed off on them because they were approved by a peer review now recognize Miss Dingle from Michigan for five minutes of questions thank you Mr chairman you know um instead of actually taking a serious look at the various Ways by which this virus could have emerged in a lab or in nature my Republican friend colleagues and friends have spent the last 15 months trying to pin blame on NIH niad and specifically Dr fouchy for the covid-19 pandemic and now and just you know let's bring everything in look I want to have a discussion about animal testing too but I'm really not sure how that comes into here so but I want to be perfectly clear though that the select subcommittee has seen no evidence of this however allegations by my Republican colleagues Amplified in the media have led to real tangible consequences for Dr kouchi in his personal life in a way that should be unacceptable to all Americans Dr foui you and I have known each other for a long time and I'm not even going to admit how long but during that time I've seen your commitment not just to science but to advancing the greater good and I know that this isn't a topic you enjoy discussing and I'm sorry I'm going to have to ask you about it but I think the American people need to know what we are doing to those who are serving the common good and public health I think it's important to make clear the harms that you and your loved ones have suffered because of these deeply irresponsible accusations because you know what you're human just like the rest of us so Dr fouchi can you please share with us the nature of the threats you have received since the car start of the covid-19 pandemic um yes there have been um everything from harassments by emails texts letters uh of myself my wife my three daughters uh there have been credible death threats leading to the arrests of two individuals and credible death threats mean someone who clearly was on their way to kill me um and it's required my having uh Protective Services uh essentially all the time uh it is very Troublesome to me um it is much more Troublesome because daughters at these moment how do you feel keep your mic on terrible do you continue to receive threats today yes I do every time someone gets up and says I'm responsible for the death of people throughout the world the death threats go up it's unacceptable that you've been treated this way especially after you've dedicated your life to science and research for the public interest you deserve better every human being deserves better and I'm afraid that the treatment you've received will also have far-reaching conse consequences for the future of science particularly when done for the public good Dr fer how do you think the threats towards you and other public health officials have received will impact Bright Young Scholars thinking about going off into science or public service think as many people want to follow in your footsteps as they did when I first met you you know Congressman um Dingle I I think this is a powerful disincentive for young people to want to go into public health and maybe even science and medicine in the public Arena because it's very clear that not only I because I'm I'm a very much of a public figure but many of my colleagues who are less visible than I whenever they speak up in defense of the kinds of things that we're trying to do to protect the American public they too get threats And when they see that their colleagues get threats they say to themselves I don't want to go there why should I get involved in that and you have some potentially very good talent that would be important to maintain the integrity and the Excellence of the public health uh Enterprise in the United States we're not getting the best people coming in because they're reluctant to put themselves and their family through what they see their colleagues being put through well you're right you're not alone and feeling that way a fact ahead of today's hearing the select subcommittee received a letter from the association of state and territorial Health officials which represents Public Health officials in communities of all political Persuasions detailing The Surge of harassment intimidation hate speech threats of violence and death threats that their members faced during the pandemic can I just I'm going to ask to insert the into the letter but I wanted to just make the point before I close Mr chairman that as many as 40% of Public Health work workers have been bullied threatened or harassed and I think we all need to take that on as a public health issue I'd ask to enter the letter into the record and yield back without objection thank you Mr and now recognize Miss Lesco from Arizona for five minutes a question thank you Mr chair uh Dr foui did the National Institute of Health fund the poten potentially dangerous enhanced potential pandemic pathogens gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of orology I would not characterize it the way you did the National Institutes of Health through a subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Urology funded research on the surveillance of and the possibility of of emerging infections I would not character ciz it as dangerous gain of function research I've already testified to that effect a couple of times so you're saying no correct um in in his May 16 I'm saying no because I've said no multiple times including on the transcribed in his May 16th 2024 testimony the NIH deputy director tabic said and I quote I can tell you that the failure of the Wuhan Institute of orology to provide us with the data that we requested and the lab notebooks that we requested certainly impeded our ability to understand what was really going on with the experiments that we have been discussing this morning my question to you Dr fouchi if the NIH didn't inspect the Wuhan Institute of biology and NIH didn't receive the lab books and data from China and the required reports from Eco Health Alliance were not submitted in fact they were late how can you definitively say that the NIH did not fund the dangerous gain of function research I go back to what I said that the gain of function research by the operative and Regulatory definition of P3 Co does not include at all the viruses that was studied under the sub how do you know that sir if there was no lab books nothing from China we know what viruses they were studying how how do you know you never went went there by the but you I'm telling you that the NIH funded research on these viruses if someone else somewhere in China was doing something else well that's the problem because NIH didn't go there you didn't get the reports that were needed how in the world would you know I'm going to go on to the next question well you're not hearing what I'm saying Dr moren's your senior adviser for over 20 years said in an email dated February 24th 2021 I learned from your Foya lady here now how to make emails disappeared when I am foyer but before the search starts so I think we are all safe plus I deleted most of these earlier emails after sending them to Gmail in another email dated 42121 Dr Moren said I forgot to say there is no worry about foas I can either send stuff to Tony meaning you on his private email or hand it to him at work or at his house he is too to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble Dr fouchi were you ever engaged in attempts to obstruct the Freedom of Information Act and the release of public documents no did you did Dr Moren communicate with you about official business using his private email official business no did you ever encourage Dr Moren to use his private email address for official business no my next question question sir is on February 1st 2020 uh you yourself Dr foui the NIH director Collins and at least 11 other scientists were on a conference called to discuss the origins of covid a number of the scientists said that they were concerned that covid was the result of a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of rology and were and were concerned that a revelation of the lab leak Theory would hurt their relationship with China the CDC director read field testified that he was not invited on this conference call and he believes because he believed the lab leak theory was possible three days later on February 4th 2020 four participants on the conference call authored a paper proximal origin which was sent to you for editing proximal origin pushed the natural origin theory on April 16 2020 the NIH director Dr Collins emailed you expressing dis May that the nature medicine article which was based on proximal origin didn't suppress the lab leak Theory and asked you for more public pressure to suppress the lab leak Theory the very next day in response to Dr Collin's request to suppress the lab leak Theory you cited the nature medicine article which discounted the lab leak Theory from the White House Podium my question to you sir did you cite this article at the white white house because the NIH direct director asked you to suppress the lab leak Theory I did not do that in response to anybody's suggestion to suppress anything it was in response to a question that someone asked at the podium and I did not edit any paper as shown in my uh official testimony so you said about four or five things Congressman that were just not true well we have emails to prove it well you back I now recognize Mr infu from Maryland for five minutes of questions thank you very much Mr chairman and by the way no we don't have it so I get tired of hearing we've got it and then when we ask for it it's not there we do not have it Dr fouchy and for everyone watching this that's just incorrect now let me just say a couple of things if I sound a little outraged just because you know we sit here and we watch one conspiracy theory after another get debunked and if I might on a point of personal privilege to the gentle woman from New York who wanted to argue that we should be worrying about testing of human medicines on animals if this committee really wants to do something let's talk about the most infamous biomedical research study in the United States the Tuskegee study where 400 black men in this country were injected deliberately with syphilis and allowed to die slowly over a 40-year period without any attempt to help them at all it was condoned by the US Public Health Service and if we want to talk well I'm going to talk about Co right now Mr chairman point I have the floor Mr chairman I want to say to you Mr chairman suspend please I want to remind the audience of dorum recognize Mr amum thank you Mr chairman uh I want to thank you and ranking member Ruiz for this opportunity um Dr fouchy we owe you an apology for the way we have wrecked you through the mud and none of us have said to you here's where you go to get your good name and your reputation back it's the most unfair thing I have seen if there were evidence if there were facts that supported the charges I like everybody else would be interested but we haven't seen a damn thing to suggest that these accusations are accurate you've been a hero to many for 54 years five plus decades you help lead this country through the anthrax scare through AIDS through zika through Ebola through SARS and through covid-19 pandemics and epidemics we owe you a collective thank you you are a world-renowned scientist and an American Patriot and whether or not people want to believe that that's on them but those facts are undisputable for a year and a half the Republican majority on this committee has sought to weaponize genuine scientific questions over covid-19 and to vilify vilify our Public Health officials and our nation scientists with unsubstantiated with baseless with allegations that just can't stand the light of day and so they've tried to do that with covid-19 and we are here now as a result of the aggregated amount of foolishness that has taken place and I've always said to this committee every time I've had a chance to speak let's go back to when we were in the heart of the pandemic when our family members and friends and co-workers were dying left and right when we were afraid to get near anybody where we wanted to wash down our groceries before we brought them into the house where we were willing to put on mask or headgear if it would keep us from being infected and we turned to our leaders and our Public Health officials and scientists for answers and we got some but then we didn't get some and then we got some later like Dr Deborah Burks who was Donald Trump's expert on the virus who said no bleach won't do it don't inject yourself with it and who also said publicly on the record that thousands of American lives could have been spared spared if we had done what we were being told to do by the scientific community at least one thing is clear those 1 million people who died as a result of these conspiracy theories will never come back and those families have empty seats at the table year after year and we do a diser if at the very least we don't acknowledge their deaths and the harm and the hurt that has been done to their families and learn learn how to find a way to trust science going forward in this country Dr FY you've been uh accused over and over again of going to the CIA headquarters and sitting down and having a meeting with the ca to construct a way to make sure that covid raged in this country is that correct that is incorrect Dr foui have you been to the CIA office in the last 20 years or headquarters I went to the CIA uh decades ago during the anthrax attacks to discuss uh the possibility of terrorist attacks thank you I want to um I wanted to get that on the record because that's just the latest Theory now that you and the CIA director conspired this is foolish people are not going to agree with you I understand that but we take and bmer somebody's good name think about if it were one of us we'd be jumping up and down trying to find a way to get Justice and so on behalf of those of us who are thankful who are part of many in a Grateful Nation thank you for your service sir I yeld back and I'll recognize Mr cloud from Texas for five minutes of questions thank you Mr chairman thank you for being here and uh I do want to Echo some of what Mr inum said because I do think we need to focus on the people and I think that's really what um The Angst that's left with the American people it's what they had to walk through uh during this time um I'm going to go down a list of mitigation measures that you supported over the course of the pandemic and ask you just to give a yes or no as to whether you still believe these measures were Justified business closures not hearing you at all could you please speak louder sure uh I I'm going to go through a list of Co mitigation measures that you supported over the course of the pandemic and ask you to give me a yes or no as whether you believe these measures were Justified business closures early on when 5,000 people were dying a day yes Church closers same thing school closures again stay at home orders these were important when we were trying to stop the tsunami of deaths that were occurring early on how long you kept them going is debatable Mas mandates for adults Mas mandates for children mask mandates for children under five and going back to what I said before all of that is in the context of at the timeand for children under five scientific evidence for that excuse me mask mandates for children under five there's scientific evidence supporting that there was no study that did masks on kids before you couldn't do the study you had to respond to an epidemic that was killing four to 5,000 Americans per vacine mandates for employees vaccine mandates for students vaccine mandates for military vaccines save lives it is very very clear that vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions I'm not we're talking about 19 uh did or do the vaccines the covid-19 vaccinees stop anyone from getting covid I answered that question to the chairman early on it became clear that they didn't no actually no in the beginning it clearly prevented infection in a certain percentage of people but the durability of its ability to prevent infection was not long it was measured in months and they didn't stop you from spreading it either early on it did if it prevented infection but what became clear that it did not prevent transmission when the ability to prevent infection w i I think what's troubling is when the American people look at the um certainty and the the case at which people lost jobs they lost livelihoods I had rural hospitals in my in my area that did not have a single case of covid in their rural community that had to shut down and people not get care that they did need uh for cancer and and some passed away because of those kind of things uh and and Time After Time Again people's lives are destroyed and we have not seen the same sort of once the new data came available we did not see a change of course and you'll point out for example in the schools that the CDC you know put out the guidelines for example but uh but we know that those guidelines end up being protection from lawsuits it's if you don't want to be sued you better follow the guidelines so they're not mandates de facto mandates but they turn out to be such a mandate um and and when the science began to change be we all understand that in the first couple weeks first few weeks even a couple months we were all trying to figure it out I think there's a lot of Grace for that the concern is that as the science became available there wasn't like a oh maybe we should consider the lab leak Theory oh maybe we should consider um natural immunity we never heard this messaging coming from you or from anyone else El who stood on the sidelines talking about these things and it's left the American people with a a tremendous distrust I want to talk a little bit about the grant process my understanding from your testimony to us it says that the nah process for rewarding grants is that basically research proposal goes to peer review committee to receive a priority score then it goes to an advisory Council for NIH Personnel it receives a final basically the group votes on it and then eventually it ends up on your desk for Signature right now you said in that that sometimes if I recall correctly it's those grants are often approved in Block in Mass when they're voted on and then you sign off on them that's correct I I this this is one of the things that's really troubling to the American people because they look at their lives being destroyed and there's no one to hold accountable because these systems or of of accountability have become systems of plausible deniability and so your name is on every single Grant but yet you you absolve yourself of any sort of responsibility by saying well you know it goes to this committee that's you know that has a number of people on it and they're approved in block and so there's no accountability for anything any of the taxpayer dollars that are going forth I disagree with you Congressman because if you look at the number of Grants we fund thousands of Grants it would be physically impossible for me to go through every single Grant in a detailed way to understand it that is true not only for me me but for virtually every Institute at the NIH then why does your signature go on it because somebody has to sign off on it and you trust the expertise and the competence of the staff that go over meis gentleman's time has expired I now recognize Miss Ross from North Carolina for five minutes of questions uh thank you Mr chairman I want to thank you Dr fouchi for your voluntary testimony today also for um so much great in your 14 hours of testimony and I again want to thank you for your service and your patience it's truly remarkable um because it Bears repeating let me just remind everyone that after 15 months my Republican colleagues extreme allegations against you remain unsubstantiated unsubstantiated and now during um during your two-day closed door interview in January discussed a number of topics regarding the public health response to covid-19 pandemic some of which we've touched on briefly but I just want to dive in a little bit deeper here um for example you you discussed both then and here with congresswoman Caster the recommendation that we maintain six feet of distance between one another to reduce the spread of covid-19 and you discussed how um social distancing recommendations were developed that you yourself didn't pick this six feet um and it was just really kind of a guideline in the moment in your view though do social distancing recommendations and other public health measures to reduce transmission save lives definitely okay um I'd also like to go back and take a deeper dive into the covid-19 vaccine discussion that we just had and you were also asked about that during your interview in January in the select subcommittee we've heard suggestions that the vaccine was ineffective because of breakthrough infections that occur after vaccination we just heard about that right here but as I understand it perhaps the strongest measure of covid-19 vaccines effectivess is the reduction of severe disease and death not necessarily getting a milder form of covid could you talk about that a little bit yes it's very clear that when you're dealing with many vaccines but particularly when you're looking at covid the as I mentioned and I'll repeat it quickly for you that early on there was a degree not as much as against severe disease of protection against infection unfortunately that protection against infection which is related to transmissibility waned rather rapidly in a matter of months what has stood firm well much better than transmission and much better than infection is the ability to prevent someone from hospitalizations and deaths and in fact the curves congresswomen are stunning when you look at the deaths and hospitalizations of people who are unvaccinated it's like this when you look at the deaths and hospitalizations for people who were vaccinated and boosted it's like this the difference is profound when you're dealing with infection again less so because of the waning of protection against infection well and that was also confirmed by a commonwealth fund December 2022 um report that um which came out two years after the Biden administration's effort to get covid-19 vaccines in arms in your effort too that it prevented more than three million deaths and averted 18 million hospitalizations and that came out in 2002 but it seems to corroborate what you're saying indeed and $1.15 trillion dollar in health care costs thank you for that ad um one pillar of the vaccine requirements was um was to have an increased uptake in the n in the covid-19 vaccines and that that at the time was supported by Leading Physicians um including the American Medical Association the American Academy of family physicians the American Academy of Pediatrics and more were the vaccine requirements a clinically sound tool for improving uptake of a safe and effective vaccine yes you would like people to get vaccinated voluntarily and realizing the important effect on it but the fact that people were vaccinated by whatever the motivation was clearly saved many many many lives and just with the 17 seconds I have um what steps can Public Health officials take to bolster confidence in these life-saving interventions since there has been so much misinformation circulating that's going to be very difficult congresswoman because there is so much Miss and disinformation around that we've got to do a better job of reaching out and trying to get the correct information but that's difficult when you have a very energetic group of people continually spreading Mis and disinformation about vacines we've got to be more proactive in putting out the facts and the data and the information that's correct thank you very much for your testimony and I'll yield back now recognize Dr Joyce from Pennsylvania for five minutes of questions thank you chairman winstrip uh for convening this important hearing and thank you Dr fouchy for testifying Dr fouchy one of the controversial regulations of the pandemic was the six-foot distancing role this role became an important policy consideration in subsequent regulations however you testified recently and I'm quoting this six-foot role sort of just appeared do you think that a role that sort of just appeared is substantial justification for the regulations that we saw based on that six-foot role Congressman thank you for that question I I answered that but I'll summarize it briefly for you when saying it just appeared it came from the CDC okay you stated that earlier what was your relationship with the CDC when you saw a regulation which was not based in the current science well when I say was not based in science I meant a pro prospective clinical trial to determine whether 6 foot was better than three was better than 10 but once we realize that the virus was not sped by droplets and was aerosolized did you feel an indication to go back to the CDC and said let's base this on science let's get rid of this six-foot rule this six-foot rule crippled Bill businesses it allowed students to stay at home and not learn Americans suffered and that suffering continues because the fracture of trust in American scientists continues to this day did you not feel an obligation for something that just sort of have appeared not to go back to the CDC and say let's base this on what we know it was a CDC decision and it was clear will you dialoguing with the CDC excuse me were you in communication with the CDC CDC was part of the Corona virus response team and you didn't feel an obligation to go to them and say look Americans aren't going to trust us we're providing them with misinformation we have discussions at the White House about that we did but the cdc's decision and was their decision to make and they made it and you didn't feel an obligation as the lead scientist at the NIH to challenge that I've challenged the CDC multiple times publicly on this regard excuse me publicly you challenged them on the six foot distance it is not appropriate to be publicly challenging a sister organization do you agree that Americans now have lost their trust in science in lead science from government because of misinformation like this well I you know when you talk about misinformation I think that you have to be careful it's not disinformation it was information that ultimately proved when you put the aiz in that that it was not an effective role to have six feet of distancing Dr fouy let's move on on April 21st Dr morrens wrote to Dr dasik in an email that there is no worry about foas I can either send stuff to Tony on his private Gmail hand it to him at work or at his house he is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble do you realize that this impact still considers today do you this is your lead trusted researcher who works with you your advisor do you realize the impact of that it was a terrible thing it was wrong and it was inappropriate thank you I think we all agree it was incredibly inappropriate recently in an oped that Senator Roger Marshall published just yesterday he raised concern about HHS foyer compliance following your testimony in front of the Senate help committee Dr fouchy what involvement did you have in HHS not responding to foyer request following your testimony in the senate in 2021 I had no role whatsoever in anything to do with the request when foyer is made it doesn't go directly to a person like me it goes to a department which then takes care of it so I don't have any role one way or the other in Foya let's go on were you aware that niad employees conducting official work on unofficial emails and inappropriately assisting grantees during your time as a director I was not aware of that as it was occurring it obviously came out during the commission the the committee hearings but I was not aware of that as and I think that you put an exclamation point on how important these hearings are Dr fouchy would you agree that this demonstrates the need for more accountability and increased oversight of niyad what you saw I believe with Dr morens was an Aber bareny and an outlier the individuals at the NIH and niid are of a very committed group of individuals and this one instance that you point out isn't a bareny and an outlier that does not from your senior advisor for 20 years well he was well the title is senior advisor we wrote scientif ific papers together he didn't advise me as I mentioned are your senior advisers not trusted staff again I told you that his title was senior advisor but he is not an advisor on policy he WR that's very confusing to have someone's title right and not having that to be their obligation but that is the fact though I think that that supports what we said there needs to be more oversight and there needs to be more accountability Mr chairman my time has expired but these points are very clear to all of us today in this hearing room I yield back I now recognize Mr Garcia from California for five minutes oh he left I now recognize Miss Green from Georgia for five minutes of questions thank you Mr chairman Mr fouchy you were quoted on CBS Face the Nation saying it's easy to criticize but they're really criticizing science because I represent science do you represent science Mr fouchy I am a scientist who uses the scientific method to gain information yes you said you represent science do you represent science Mr fouchi yes or no yes or no no that's not a yes or no answer yes it's a yes or no I don't think it is okay well we'll take that as a you don't know what you represent oh I but this as director of the NIH you did sign off on these so-called scientific experiments and as a dog lover I want to tell you this is disgusting and Evil what you signed off on and these experiments that happened to beagles paid for by the American taxpayer and I want you to know Americans don't pay their taxes for animals to be tortured like this so the type of science that you are representing Mr fouchy is abhorent and it needs to stop Mr fouchy you also represent the type of science that you where you confess that you made up the covid rules including six feet social distancing and masking of children I never said I made anything up you admitted that you made up you made it up say I made it up so are you saying this is fake news Mr I didn't say I made anything up what did you say I said that it is not based in science and it just appeared but this is science what does dogs have to do with anything that we're talking about today these are these are scientific experiments this is what you signed off on but you also told the American people they had to Distance by six feet they had to wear mask but let's also talk a little bit further about the type of science that you represent NIH scientists made $710 million in royalties from drug drug makers a fact that's been hidden let's talk about the fact about is it right for scientists and doctors getting paid by the American people government taxpayer paychecks to get patent where they're paid millions and hundreds of millions of dollars in royalty fees especially when the NIH and these government agencies most powerful agencies in our country are recommending medical uh suggestions and advice and making up guidelines like six feet distancing and masking of children do you think that's appropriate do the American people deserve to be abused like that Mr fouchy cuz you're not doctor you're Mr fouchy in my a few minutes no I don't need your answer I want to talk about this right here Mr I reclaim my time I reclaim my time Mr R Lady M Mr chairman order just in terms of the rules of decorum are we allowed to deny that a doctor is a doctor just because we don't want him to be a doctor yes because in my time that man does not deserve to have a license as a matter of fact it should be revoked and he he belongs in prison suspend the gentle lady should recognize the doctor as a doctor thank you Mr chairman is this what we have become is this what we have devolved into no Decor you know what we can do that hearing about the poor men that were injected with syphilis because I support you in that that's horrific and this government that does things like that to Americans doesn't have decorum to the American people gentlemen is point of regular order theorum recognize the point of order go ahead with your point of order you got it no I mean I I was going to say what what representative Raskin said that's completely unacceptable to be able to to deny Dr fouchi uh who's here a respected member of the of the medical community his title and that's actually a personal attack on on his character and I have instructed her he's not respected and I instructed her to address him as Doctor I'm not addressing as Doctor let's talk about let's talk about this I I reclaim time I'm reclaiming my time words get taken down I'm reclaiming my right a member can only move to have words I'm sorry the issues we are debating are important ones that members feel deeply about while vigorous disagreement is part of legislative process as I said at the beginning members are reminded that we must adhere to established standards of decorum and debate this is a reminder that it is a violation of house rules and the rules of this committee to engage in personalities regarding other members or to question the motives of a colleague remarks of that type are not permitted by the rules and are not in keeping with the best traditions of our committee the chair will enforce these rules of decorum at all times and urges all members to be mindful of their remarks does the gentleman from California have anything further well she should take her we should have to take her words down yeah I made it I I offered that her words be taken down Mr chair point of order Mr chairman uh Mr chairman I'd like to make a point of order Mr Griffin accused using president Trump we don't worship president Trump gent lady will suspend Mr Griffin you have a point of order Mr chairman while it may not be uh polite I believe the rule only applies to uh members of this body the Senate and um the president of the United States I do not apply believe that it applies the rule on taking down words does not apply to a witness again I'm not condoning the words I'm just relating or asking whether or not it applies to individuals who are just just happen to be here in front of us I agree the chair over rules point of order by the gentleman from Maryland but ask that members please afford all other members the respect they're entitled refrain from using rhetoric that could be construed as an attack on the motives or character of another member or the witness you may proceed thank you this was a time in history where you got to throw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals baseball game while Americans were forced to stay home and watch such events that they love from at home alone on their tele visions and what a hypocrisy this picture shows here you are without your mask with empty seats everywhere remember the cardboard cutout fans that was one of the most insulting things to Americans having to watch the games from home where you got to go and enjoy the game and sit right next to people not following the six feet of distancing not wearing your mask and everyone else was forced to stay home and stop enjoying life and you're science here your science just displayed perfectly in this picture we're children children in school were put in plastic bubbles because of your science your repulsive evil science and let's go back to your very own email you said earlier you don't use email oh you do right here this is your own email where you said the typical mask you buy in the drugstore is not really effective in keep keeping out virus I do not recommend that you wear a mask this is your email this is your own words but yet children children all over America were forced to wear masks healthy children forced to wear masks muzzled in their schools and then they were forced to learn from home because of your so-called science and your medical suggestions while you and all your cronies get paid from Big Pharma you know that what this committee should be doing we should be recommending you to be prosecuted we should be writing a criminal referral because you should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity you belong in prison Dr fouchi Mr chairman I have another point of order uh I recognize M Dingle just want to make sure the record is clear Dr fouchi testified that he did not use his personal email for official business business he did not say he did not use email and I think today this particular has been full of lies and disregard and disrespect and we need to stick to facts thank you the gentle L's time had expired before the point of order I now recognize Mr Garcia from California for five minutes of questions thank you Mr chair Dr Fouch I am so sorry you just had to sit through that that was completely irresponsible uh quite frankly some we're hearing this might be the most insane hearing I've actually attended I've only been in Congress for a year and a half but I am so sorry that you are subjected to those level of attacks and Insanity uh your quote unquote so-called science that the gentle woman is referring to has saved millions of lives in this country and around the world and I want to thank you for that I also think it's important to note that is my opinion is that you are an American hero and your team has done more to save lives than all 400 35 members of this body on both sides of the aisle you guys have worked not just during this pandemic but over time to save millions of lives in this country and across the world we lost 1.1 million American lives 1.1 million American lives 7 million lives around the world we were having 911 like events death events daily in this country losing 4,000 5,000 people every single day I was mayor during the time of the pandemic I remember how painful it was to close business businesses to shut down schools but how quickly we forget the pain and how scared we were as a country we were washing our groceries as they were coming in we were keeping seniors at a distance the tragedy that was happening in our nursing homes thousands of people were dying a day and you and your team of the best and the brightest scientists in this country in the world we're doing everything that you could and working night and day to save more and more of those lives a lot of my colleagues know that uh my mom was a healthcare worker during the pandemic my mom died of covid my stepfather died of covid I lost both of my parents during the pandemic so I take this very personally especially when other members of this body who are tasked to be responsible and to actually help the American people attack medical professionals like you and across the world vaccines a vaccine that you and your team helped Foster have saved millions of American lives these attacks are ridiculous now even before this committee started I'm going to point a few things out even before this committee started this same member that just went on this rant introduced the fire fouchy act and promoted on a podcast seeing that Co was a bioweapon that is how insane some of these comments are and I want to quote this this is a quote from the same member I don't believe in evolution these viruses were not making people sick until they created them they weaponized these viruses to be able to attach to ourselves and make us sick it's a bioweapon the they created them sir is you they're they are attacking you and our medical community for actually creating Co that has caused the deaths of of millions and we know that these extreme commas are targeting Public Health officials across the country I also want to show you this other comment same member who just attacked you the fouchy funded Wuhan lab created the virus this is so crazy and irresponsible in this post the same member of this committee's accusing you of orchestrating a global conspiracy to create covid on purpose just to make people get vaccines that you that you've done this sir the same member routinely promotes complete misinformation about vaccines and actually has encouraged the routine prevention of vaccinations that even eliminate diseases like the measles Dr fi you've brought together our nation and world's best and brightest scientists take on covid and create a vaccine that works I I want to ask you a question I want to be crystal clear for the public you brought together the world and America's best scientists do you believe that the vaccine that you all helped create and ensure is safe and effective for the public yes and it's track record has proven that and do you also agree that it saved hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of lives in America and across the world that is absolutely correct and it's very clear that it's saved millions of lives here and throughout the world the Europeans have done the same studies that we have and the and the the data are incontrovertible that they save lives sir and do you think the American public should listen to America's brightest and best doctors and scientists or instead listen to podcasters conspiracy theorists and unhinged Facebook memes no I'm listening to people who you just described is going to do nothing but harm people because they will deprive themselves of life-saving interventions which has happened and you know some have done studies Peter Hotes has done an analysis of this and shows that in people who refuse to get vaccinated for any variety of reasons probably responsible for an additional two to 300,000 deaths in this country thank you sir and your entire team for saving lives in this country and I'm sorry you have to continue going on with these attacks I yield back oh thank you you're not allowed to speak you thank you very much Mr chairman could you ever a removed from the thank you removed excuse me I ask escort yep thank you she can be removed yeah you can be removed actually you're not allowed to speak your time take your Starbucks with you Mr Garcia Mr Raskin you're out of line your times now recognize Dr Jackson from Texas for five minutes of questions thank you Mr chairman Dr fouchy I have to say I as so many Americans am deeply disappointed in your actions during a critical time in our nation's history while you were in key leadership roles as the Director of the National Institute of allergy and infectious disease and as the chief medical adviser to President Biden put quite simply you failed miserably in my opinion based on all we have learned during the Pand mic and all that we have since learned through this committee's work I believe your failures stem from both an effort of self-preservation manifested by a series of lies and cover up and by a total failure of leadership it was obvious to everyone that you and your organization NIH had a lot to lose if the American people were to discover that covid-19 was most likely leaked from a lab in Wuhan China and that you via Ecco Health Alliance and Peter daik actually funded This research and that this lab was actively and recklessly conducting gain of function research as such you did everything in your power to deflect and cover up this possibility you even recruited others to help you in this effort unfortunately this cost our country and the world valuable time time that may have led to answers regarding the origin may have blunted the spread and would have almost certainly saved lives while I think most of us have known all along what I just described what I have been appalled to discover through sworn testimony to this committee is the level at which you and those that worked for you went to cover up the obvious just a few examples and I know these have been touched on but they're important for everyone to hear Dr Lawrence tabac former acting director of NIH testified that under the generic definition that NIH did in fact fund gain of function research this was based on a definition that was initially used by NIH and a definition that was abandoned and removed from the website in October of 2021 and replaced by a new much more detailed definition with a much higher bar that you have since conven veniently used to define gain of function testing and to deny what Dr tabac has since confirmed he also said that Eco Health Alliance fa to properly and promptly report that their research violated the terms of the grant something that went completely unaddressed under your watch Dr Moran your senior adviser who you have tried today to distance yourself from but whose large volume of emails clearly demonstrate that you had a very close and personal relationship with and who reported to you directly has openly bragged about he how he subverted foyer request I remind you that the law requires you and your former organization to comply with Freedom of Information Act request it is not optional if you or your employees or your organization that you oversaw were were systemically uh avoiding transparency and illegally hiding or destroying documents that rightfully belong to the American people then you should be criminally charged and they should as well in addition Dr Gregory fulkers your Chief of Staff also engaged in illegal practices in which he crafted messages using symbols instead of letters to avoid Foy exposure in an email April 2020 from Dr morans to Peter daik he says quote there are things I can't say well I wonder what he couldn't say he also went on to say quote except Tony is aware and I have learned there are ongoing efforts within NIH to steer through this with minimal damage to you Peter and colleagues and to NIH and niid end quote and then a few days later he saide I have reason to believe that there are already efforts going on to protect you end quote in February of 2021 Dr Moran wrote to uh Boston University scientist Gerald k saying quote I learned from our Foy lady here how to make emails disappear after I'm foed but before the search starts so I think we are all safe end quote Dr fouchy I want to know what we being protected from and what you needed to be safe from I'm going to go on because I have a little time here he went on to say quote plus I deleted most of the earlier emails after sending to Gmail once again illegal and an actual crime Dr morans noted in another email to Dr K saying quote I learned the tricks of the I learned the tricks last year from an old friend Marge Moore who heads our Foya office and also hates foas end quote it is absolutely amazing to me that Dr morans and Marg Moore still have jobs and are taxpayers are still paying their salaries Dr morans wrote to Dr daik in April of 2021 quote PS I forgot to say there is no worry about foas I can either send stuff to Tony on his private email or hand it to him to work or at his house he is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble appar end quote apparently you neglected to surround yourself with equally smart individuals Dr morans wrote to another collaborator Peter hotit in June 2021 at Baylor College of Medicine that he had deleted all his emails related to co origin when qu the hit the fan end quot he said I feel pretty sure Tony were too the best way to avoid for hassles is to delete all emails when you learn the subject is pretty sensitive in October 2021 Dr Mor wrote to Peter daik quote Peter from Tony's numerous recent comments to me and from what Francis has been vocal about over the past five years we are trying to protect you and and they are protecting their own reputations as well end quote I'll just jump ahead the the American people can rest assured that we are going to continue to pursue answers and we continue to push for full accountability from you and your colleagues despite continuing efforts to try to cover this up Dr fouchy history will not be kind to you and you will be known as the man who put his personal interest before the interest of the American people the very people that you were supposed to be protecting your actions along with several others we have had before this committee have completely eroded America's trust in our public health system in the agency that you represented for half a century with that I Y back gentleman's time has expired and now recognize Mr Cuda from Hawaii for five minutes of questions thank you Mr chair and I hope I'll have an additional 30 seconds like the previous gentleman and Dr fouchi I have allowed that today on several occasions thank you Mr chair Dr fouchi you deserve better than this the other side suddenly cares about puppy ironic given recent book Publications versus the millions of people that you have kept safe and Alive over your lifelong commitment to Public Health I'd like to use my time to dispel some of the myths about you that have circulated in right-wing circles we can all acknowledge that yes suspension of in-person activities during the early days of covid it was necessary to save lives and to stop the spread and and it was not without its challenges it was difficult particularly for our nation students like my two sons in public schools and our business owners but to completely blame these policies on you Dr fouchi is absolutely ridiculous I'd like to make the record clear on something the decision to spend inperson learning dining and other activities that was not a decision that you were somehow solely responsible for including in your role as niad director is that correct in fact these decisions were actually made at the state and local level in communities across the country like my home state of Hawaii which was particularly aggressive uh in part as a response to the Trump administration's early failure to contain the initial outbreak of the virus is that not correct I'm sorry I didn't ma'am I'm not really hearing you very well could you just put your we'll put it a little bit closer but to be clear that the decisions were actually made at the state and local levels in communities across the country that is correct okay thank you now I'd like to shift topics and turn to the allegation that you sought to suppress opposing viewpoints about the pandemic response over the past 15 months majority members of the subcommittee have levied the allegation that federal health officials censored proposals like the great barington declaration which were inconsistent with the overwhelming consensus of the scientific and medical community much attention has been paid to an email Dr Francis Collins sent you regarding the great barington declaration where he called for a quick and devastating publish takedown of its premises to be clear this was not Dr Collins suggesting that you suppress or censor the great barington declaration rather he was suggesting that the points you just explained be memorialized to substantively refute the scientific premises of the great barington declaration is that correct yes and there was good reason for Dr Collins to have substantive concerns the great barington declaration proposed lifting mitigation measures for the vast majority of society and preserving them only for certain populations including the elderly and people with underlying health conditions this was months before a vaccination was available and public health systems were already being overwhelmed uh and thousands of Americans were dying daily Dr fouchi what percentage of the population did we estimate needed to be infected with covid before we would achieve so-called herd immunity herd immunity was very elusive with covid and the great barington decoration was flawed both conceptually and in practice conceptually that you could Shield vulnerable people as if the only vulnerable people are those in nursing homes we have tens and tens of millions of vulnerable people that you couldn't possibly Shield people with underlying conditions the elderly those would be the individuals so it would be conceptually impossible to do that her immunity As We Know means if you have a virus that doesn't change and a virus in which when you get infected or vaccinated you have highly durable perhaps lifelong immunity that's not the case with covid we know immunity wains and we have multiple variants so in practical purposes the great barington Declaration was invalid both conceptually and practically thank you Dr F you've as answered a few of my other questions in terms of the fact that for many of us that live in multigenerational communities uh thousands hundreds of thousands millions more lives would have been impacted by this so-called approach and given the fact that the virus's rapid Evolution that we have since seen since 2020 uh her immunity approaches would be absolutely ineffective against covid um if you would answer one more question considering the mortality rates at the time how many more deaths might we have seen just briefly I mean if we had done that just let it rip they very likely would have been another million people would have died I would imagine thank you Dr foui so it wasn't the federal government suppressing the great barington declaration rather it was about protecting and saving millions of American lives the covid-19 pandemic wasn't some academic exercise it was real it was in real time it was about saving lives in real time theories like herd immunity may seem plausible on paper but we have to remember that it is based upon the assumption that enough people would have to be infected and that would likely have meant that our family members our friends our neighbors our constituents especially those in our most marginalized multi-generational rural communities would have died so thank you Dr Fouch I want to thank you not blame you thank you for your science thank you for your science that have saved millions of American lives kept us safe including my children many of our families right here on this dis and thank you for clarifying these points for the record and for all of your efforts to keep us safe during the pandemic and so many other Health crisises we have faced over the decades that you have served Mahalo Mr chair and I yield back now recognize Dr McCormack for five minutes of questions thank you Dr winstrip chairman it's been insinuated that politicians only politicians only bloggers only conspiracy theorists are disagreeing with you I want to point out that I'm probably the only member of Congress that actually treated patients during the pandemic from the very beginning to the very end of the pandemic during night shifts in the ER thousands of patients during that time and uh in 2020 I was censored my medical license was threatened because I disagreed with bureaucrats literally taking off the internet as a person who is treating patients with Leading Edge Technologies developing theories but doing my very best but being censored by the United States government for the first time stepping in and taking the place of medical professionals as the experts in healthcare any dissent surrounding covid-19 treatments Mass mandates and any public policy surrounding the pandemic was immediate labeled as anti-science I watched as public health officials and politicians told my patients what treatment options were best for them regardless of their comorbidities or their medical history despite my education and my training and my experience my opinions were relegated to conspiracy and misinformation by so-called Healthcare experts who had never treated Tre a patient throughout the entire pandemic this has been a black eye in the medicine and has highlighted why government should never never insert itself in between patients and their health care providers the American people deserve to make medical decisions through conversations with their Physicians rather than politically motivated mandates Dr fouchy did you ever treat a patient for covid during the pandemic I was part of a team that was at the NIH that took care we didn't take care of many of them okay so not hands on got it thank you why would I be criticized by a bureaucrat for doing my very best as a healthcare this is a rhetorical question but why why would the government who's never treated a patient for covid you can read all the things you want but you're not there you're not seeing patient you're not watching people die intubating patients right there with that disease in your face watching it happen watching the development of this disease and actually learning from it but I'm being told by bureaucrats what's right and wrong and what's funny is everything I was censored on I was proven to be right pretty crazy isn't it you said in an interview that you gave as part of an Audi book written by Michael Spectre uh that you believed an Institutional should make it hard for people to to live their lives so they'd feel pressured to get vaccinated could we uh run the audio clip on that please you think can be done about it I have to say that I don't see a big solution other than some sort of mandatory vaccination I know Federal officials don't like to use that term once people feel empowered and protected legally you were going to have schools universities and college is are going to say you want to come to this college buddy you're gonna get vaccinated lady you're GNA get vaccinated yeah big corporations like Amazon and Facebook and and and all of those others are gonna say you want to work for us you get vaccinated and it's been proven that when you make it difficult for people in their lives they lose their ideological and they get vaccinated thank you are all objections to covid vaccinations ideological Dr pouchy no they're not and that's not what I was referring to well in reference to making it hard for people to get education traveling working I'd say it very much was in context and I take great offense to this Miss Allison Williams testified before this committee about losing her job because she sought an exemption for ESPN's vaccine mandate which came from recommendation from bureaucrats like yourself she and her husband were actively working with a fertility expert a physician on how to get pregnant and agreed with the premise that she was young healthy wanted to get pregnant and shouldn't get the vaccination for medical purposes but she was fired because you made it hard just like you said in your statement because you didn't want to make sure that the ideological got in the way of her working of living her life of making a medical decision with her health care professional I think America should take great offense to this that's exactly what you meant when you said making it hard for people to live without getting a vaccination you affected people's ability to work travel be educated to actually flourish in American to self-determined as we're all given god-given rights shame on you Dr Fouch you've become doct fear Americans do not hate science I don't hate science the American people hate having their freedoms taken from them you inspired and created fear through Mass mandates school closures vaccine mandates that have destroyed the American people's trust in our Public Health institutions this fear you created will continue to have Ripple effects over generations to come you have already seen its effects in education in the economy and everything else quite frankly you said if you if you disagree with me you disagree with science Dr fouchy I disagree with you because I disagree with yield I now recognize Mr moscowitz from Florida for five minutes of questions uh thank you uh Mr chairman uh Dr fouchy good to be with with you uh here today um I was not here uh but I saw a member of this committee questioned whether or not you represent science and try to make that in some offensive way I just want you to know most Americans don't think she represents Congress so one of the things I've learned so so uh I hear now you double double fouchy um so I don't want you to to to be offended uh offended by that uh I actually similar to uh representative McCormack who was serving in the field as a doctor during covid I was running the logistics operation and the Florida response as the Director of Emergency Management for the State of Florida for governor D santis so I was deploying masks and gowns and gloves we were setting up field hospitals we were setting up testing sites we were setting up vaccine sites uh throughout uh throughout the pandemic and the one thing that became clear to me as a countryes we were not prepared in fact we actually had had many preparations for a pandemic but both the states collectively and the federal government threw that out and kind of was just um uh making it up a as we go one of the things I wanted to ask you and I understand you're not in the response uh field but do you feel since you've left that we are better prepared today than we were uh several years ago when Co hit some respects excuse me in some respects we are but in others I'm still disappointed um and I think one of the things that was really a problem with the response was the degree of divisiveness that we had in the country about a lack of a coherent response where we were having people for reasons that had nothing to do with public health ass science refusing to adhere to Public Health intervention measures what I think that we will do better hopefully is that the CDC I believe is now recognized some of the failings of the lack of communication and and interaction between the federal response and the local public health officials one of the weaknesses that we had in the United States that other countries didn't have was a disconnect between the Health Care system and the public health system where where is the CDC can't demand information from local public health individuals they have to volunteer to give it to them and it isn't given to them in real time so we were at a disadvantage oh no question I saw that I saw how the the lack of investment in technology right we had states trying to share information with the federal government using you know Windows 2000 well fax machines fax machines exactly yeah so and so you know we spent $7 trillion in two packages and two administrations and one of my concerns is is that I feel that especially in supply chain I feel like we we're not that much better off than we were before covid am I wrong in that assessment yeah yeah I don't think you're wrong but I I hope that the CDC has made it very clear that they are trying to change that and correct that deficit of a separation between the local and the federal CDC so that we can get information in real time it was very frustrating for us that often we had to go to the UK or South Africa or Israel to get realtime information because they had a connection between what was going on in the ground and their public health system so they knew right away what was happening we didn't Dr fter you talked about how you know we live in partisan times a lot of misinformation uh and you know colleagues on on this body said you know you should be you know charged and and found guilty of course the only one that's that's happened to is your former boss uh but you know the question I have is when you saw a lot of that disinformation whether it was you know we can use a disinfectant to do like a cleaning or do light in the body or that you know China's working super hard president she's got it contained all of the stuff that was being put out were you concerned you know what was your feeling at that time uh working in the administration seeing that come from the podium well I was very frustrated by that it was very clear I was put in a very difficult position that I didn't like of having to contradict publicly the president of the United States I took no great pleasure in that but I felt it was my responsibility to preserve he must have thought you did a great job he gave you a commendation right before left well I felt it was my responsibility you know as to preserve my own personal integrity and my major responsibility to the American public to tell them the truth and if I could just take this opportunity when I was saying that if you attack me you attack science I didn't mean that I am science what I meant was that when the data showed that hydroxy chloroquin does not work and there are people saying oh it does I'll give it to people and we know it can be hurtful to them then when you're attacking what I'm saying that the science shows it doesn't work and the science shows that bleach doesn't work that when you attack that you really are attacking science because science has shown that it doesn't work that's what I meant when you attacking me you're attacking science thank you doctor thank you Mr chairman i y back gent times expired now recognize Mr Jordan from Ohio for five minutes thank you Mr chairman doctor why was it so important that the virus not have started in a lab uh we don't know where it started and that's the reason why I keep an open so I don't know what you mean by why was it so important it wasn't important you still don't know where you still don't know where it started the guys you gave money to figured out in three days no no no they Mr Anderson said on January 31st 2020 uh virus looks engineered virus not consistent with evolutionary theory the very next day Dr Gary said I don't know how this happens in nature it'd be easy to do in a lab and then three days later Shazam they switch and say it didn't it has to be nature so they figured out in three days but you still don't know no in fact if you look at what they was saying Congressman Jordan they were saying that it was not a manufactured virus it still could have evolved out of a lab let me read something here to you in our they're not incompatible in our study on the censorship of the Biden Administration working with big Tech I want to read you uh WhatsApp message from Mark Zuckerberg can we include that the White House put pressure on us to censor the lab leak Theory so this is a communication on July 16th 2021 Nick Cay Joel Kaplan Cheryl Samberg Mark Zuckerberg they're certainly feeling the the pressure to downplay any lab leak theory is there a question there there's coming there one's coming here's another email to Mark Zuckerberg it says subject line Co misinformation Wuhan lab League theory in response to continued public pressure and tense conversations with the new Administration we started removing five Co claims including the lab leak Theory Mr Zuckerberg responds this seems like a good reminder that when we compromise our standards due to pressure from an Administration in either direction we often later regret it why was it so important the virus not have started in a lab wasn't so important that the virus not we don't know we know what was important to someone in the Biden Administration so much so that the top people at meta the top people at Facebook are asking why are we getting all this pressure to to to downplay the lab League Theory and we have an email from June of the same year June 4th 2021 saying the same thing it was certainly important to somebody well what hases that got to do with me I'm asking you because you're the expert on the coron virus I'm saying why was the administration why was the administration so pushing not to have the lab leak Theory as something that was viable I can answer that I've kept an open mind throughout the entire proc an open mind Dr fouchy open mind that is correct what happened in those three days why did Dr Anderson and uh excuse me Mr Anderson and Dr Gary why did they changed their mind in 180 degrees because what what Christian Anderson says 3 days later after he said virus looks engineered virus not consistent with evolutionary theory three days later he says the main crackpot theories going around at the moment relate to this V virus being somehow engineered and that is demonstrably false how did they how did they figure all that out in three days Dr Fouch you can do still have an open mind well what they did is that that you know they testified before this committee what they did they went back and looked at the sequences and realized that their initial concern was unfounded about that and it did not look at all like it was manufactured but as they said in their paper even though they feel it was more likely three days they figured it out that's exactly you could do that in three days you can scan sequences in a day you don't need three days okay uh who's Robert Redfield the former director of the CDC Dr Redfield right and he was uh and he was also in the coronavirus task force is that accurate he was a member of the coron virus task force here's what he said to this committee he said Redfield said that fouchy and Collins left him out because Redfield suspected that Corona virus had leaked from the Chinese lab is that accurate well he said that but that's not true that is incorrect Congressman Dr redfield's lying to the committee when he sat right where you sat when he said that I kept him out that is an incorrect statement the the the the roster who was on the phone was Dr Redfield in that conference call on February 1st when you had Mr Anderson and Dr Gary on that call he was not and the conference call was put together by Jeremy Farah so no one kept him out he said he was kept out because did US tax dollars you want me to answer the question yeah I I would just wonder why it wasn't on the call it seems to me the head of CDC part of the coronavirus task force which was formed two days prior to that call would have been on the call well the call was arranged by Jeremy Farah you should ask him okay uh did US tax dollars flow through a grant recipient to the lab in China I'm sorry what was did US tax dollars flow through a grant recipient to the lab in China yes of course it was a sub awward to the Wuhan instit and who approved that award excuse me and who approved that award what agency approved that award National Institute of allergy and infectious diseases your your agency approved that right yes it did after did that have anything to do with this downplaying of the lab leak Theory no nothing to do with it nothing what do you do you agree that there was a push to downplay the lab leak Theory not on my part really really wow wow I think I think most of the country find that find that amazing I still got 11 seconds we got but look at the facts I've kept an open mind throughout the entire process all right I you back I now recognize the majority staff for no longer than 30 minutes of questions Dr fou Dr fouchy it's good to see you again I want to ask a couple questions about um some of the members questions and then get into some follow-ups um the issue of the uh CIA trip was brought up that was brought to us by a whistleblower that was not an allegation made by the committee it was an allegation made by The Whistleblower um you testified at a transcribed interview back in early January do you recall me asking you about that allegation about the going to the CIA yes um and do you recall and you denied it then as well and you denied it here today uh do recall the subcommittee publishing that you denied it I I don't recall uh we did we did okay we put it out in a press release afterwards that you denied the whistleblower's allegation um and then today during the course of the last couple hours have any members on the majority side of the dis asked you about a trip to the CIA yeah they have no they have I'm sorry Mitch I'm not hearing you so m i I have a point of order Mr chairman gentleman's point of order what's the gentleman's point of order um I have an inquiry about whether or not I'm hearing things or whether or not you just yielded 30 minutes of committee time to staff that is correct both sides and the question that the gentleman just raised was a question that I raised so apparently he was not listening when I was questioning Dr FY thank you for your point of order you may continue um what I what I asked was we asked you about this in a transcribed interview you testified that you did not go to the CIA we published that you refuted that allegation and then today no members of the Republican side of the dis have asked you that question is that accurate thank you um you've been asked a number of times about uh your former uh senior adviser Dr morrens um and have said and I want to make sure I characterize it correctly because I it goes a little back and forth um that you didn't conduct official business over a over a personal email with Dr morrens has Dr morren emailed your personal email before on non-official purposes as I mentioned we wrote scientific papers together so he very well may have used that course that's the email I use when I write a scientific paper right and that's because niad policy allows you to write on semiofficial time write papers but you just have to put a disclaimer that this is not the in other words if if you're doing something as official business you shouldn't use your emails that are official business so in order to be compliant with the regulations you would use a personal email I appreciate it um I want to ask about some of the public health policies enacted during the pandemic uh Dr Francis Collins the former NIH director recently said at an interview and I'm quoting uh you attach an infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life you attach a zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people's lives ruins the economy and has kept many kids out of school in a way that they never quite recovered um understanding the co task force had a lot of voices at the table is that an accurate description of the public health advisers and then you could fit in other advisers along the way yeah you know Mitch what what I believe that Dr Collins was saying was that we give a advice based on pure public health issues it's very very clear now retrospectively looking at the potential collateral negative effects of things like mandating it would be important for us now since the purpose of I believe why we're here is to how we can do better next time is to consider the balance I think things that we did in the beginning were in the cont text of horrible situation of four to 5,000 deaths per day but that doesn't mean that you don't go back and look and say did everything we do at that point and the duration for which we did it was that appropriate and do we need to reexamine I believe that's what Dr Collins was referring to and I agree with him on that and you got to my next question that we are here trying to figure out how to do better next time lose fewer lives next time um would that be a better thought process going forward of thinking about the possible unintended consequences of Public Health measures absolutely yeah um and you've heard from both sides of the dis today first weeks months novel virus nobody knew what was going on called for some drastic measures um understanding or I once there was a better understanding of who the most affected demographics were um do you think it would be important to more narrowly track uh craft Public Health measures to specifically favor those demographics the answer is yes but you have to be careful because if you have a a certain group that is being predominantly a Afflicted if you're really really clear that another group is really quite protected then you should fashion it demographically related but what often happens with outbreaks is that there are moving Target and you only hear about other vulnerables as you get further into the outbreak so the answer to your question is you're partially correct that you need to do that but you've got to be careful when you're dealing with a moving Target and uh we can appreciate that and you've been asked a little bit again about the theories of natural immunity and herd immunity those are both real scientific theories and infectious disease is that correct yes and between uh a in infection acquired immunity and vaccinated acquired immunity did the United States hit her immunity the answer is no uh and I've written a paper on that is that when you're dealing and just let me take 30 seconds I don't want to run out the clock on you but I think it's important to to make this point when you talk about herd immunity it's predicated on two principles that you're dealing with a pathogen that's not changing and number two that when you either get infected or vaccinated the duration of the immunity is measured in decades if not a lifetime so that if you have a pathogen that stays the same like measles doesn't change so I was infected with meagles measles when I was a child it's the same measles that's infecting people in certain countries in the developing world number two when you get either infected or vaccinated with measles you have immunity that's durable minimally in decades and possibly for life so if you get the same pathogen and you get a large percentage of the people who have either been infected or vaccinated then you have hert immunity we did not ever have that with covid um and you've also been asked a number of times about the vaccine and vaccine mandates uh were you the one that recommended to the president to mandate vaccines for certain individuals no do you know who did no it was it was more more of a it was a combination of of a group and just saying that you know certain agencies like the labor department or what have you would feel that this would to be done but it was not like I one day said hey we should mandate vaccines that did not happen um and I want to Echo the comments of the chairman that we agreed the vaccine saved hundreds of thousands of lives um and we talked about this a little bit in January and I think you touched on it a little bit today could issuing these mandates and removing the notion of informed consent from some certain sect of the citizenry lead to vaccine hesitancy yeah I I mentioned this in I believe in in the ti that as a matter of fact that's something that I think we need to go back now when we do an an after the event evaluation about whether or not given the psyche of the country and the push back that you get from those types of things we need to re-evaluate the cost benefit ratio of those types of things um and then I won't belabor the point but we talked about the six foot distance an awful lot today um do you recall if it was ever suggested to be 10 feet you know I don't recall Mitch if it was ever suggested it was 10 feet but I when I made my explanation of what it was I was saying that there was no trial that looked at 10 versus 6 versus 3 versus not even worrying about it at all um and you said today that there were discussions at the White House about the 6-foot rule you don't recall if it was discussions about whether or not it should be three or should be 10 or should be you know I I don't recall Mitch what the exact discussion was but as I've said in response to multiple questions what we had it was it came the CDC was said that on on the basis of their evaluation which was based on the droplet approach that 6 foot would be to go and there was no clinical trials going one way or the other that's why it was accepted by the group um and then it hasn't been a large topic today and we talked about kind of again the the many unknowns in early 2020 schools were closed through the semester some schools reopened in the in the for the fall semester some remained closed going through into 2021 um looking back uh were there are there current academic ramifications of remote schooling or kids not being in school I think there have been a number of St not I think I know that there have been a number of studies to show that there are lasting effects at least up to this point and they tend to attenuate over time but there have been substantial negative effects on learning and on children when you keep them out of school for a prolonged period of time have have you seen any studies suggesting physical health ramifications I haven't seen physical health ramification mental mental health um I believe that there are some that show psychological issues that relate to keeping kids out of the environment of the social environment of the school um I'm and apologize for bouncing around we don't have 14 hours with you today I've got 30 minutes so I'm going to I'm so sorry about that I'm going to move quickly um uh again across the Das both sides of the aisle a lot of questions on the origins of Co and finding out the origins and um how that could better lead to both protecting against spillover and Wildlife uh trade but also increased biosafety standards um as you sit here today is it possible that covid-19 was the result of a laboratory related accident oh absolutely and I keep like I mentioned multiple times I keep an open mind I feel based on the data that I have seen that the more likely not definitive but the more likely explanation is a natural spillover from an animal Reservoir but since there has not been definitive proof one way or the other we have to keep an open mind that it could be either and I'm based on that answer I think is the hypothesis that covid-19 accidentally leaked from a labba conspiracy theory no I mentioned that several times conceptually the concept of it is not a conspiracy theory um we've talked a little bit about the proximal origin of uh SARS kovy 2 the paper authored by Dr Anderson uh it came to two primary conclusions and I'm quoting our analysis clearly show that SARS K2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus and we do not believe that any type of laboratory based scenario is plausible um do you disagree with those conclusions I think Mitch if I'm not mistaken I don't have the paper in front of me I think they also said the possibility of if you passaged it and you could have done that and they and that and if you passage it it's in a lab so it is I mean that could be and they they dispelled that at the end with the we do not believe that any type of laboratory based scenario is plausible um so I'm just I ask again is a laboratory based scenario plausible well I mean again I'm not I I don't want to speak for what they meant in that paper but I have said multiple times I keep an open mind that it could be either a laboratory leak or it could be what I think the data is leaning towards most which is a natural occurrence from an animal Reservoir and this email was brought up too on April 16th 2020 Dr Collins wrote to you and said wondering if there's something NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy referencing the lab leak I hope the nature medicine article on the genomic sequence of SARS K2 would settle this but probably didn't get much visibility anything more we can do the next day you were at a White House Press Conference and cited proximal origin and said uh that proximal origin established that covid-19 quote is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to human um did anyone tell you to cite proximal origin from the White House Podium no it was in response I believe to a question that might have been asked by a reporter but I wasn't stimulated to say that at all I was responding to a question at that time back in April of 2020 um was it also your belief that a la leak was possible yeah I always had an open mind about it and then I want to correct the record again a little bit on um the Drafting and publication of the proximal origin paper did Dr Anderson send you drafts to review he sent drafts but I'm going to jump ahead of you if I might dribble around I did not edit it it was mentioned by a few of the it was congressmen I did not edit the paper and I appreciate that I just wanted to get on the record right um I want to talk about Dr moren's and what you wrote in your opening testimony and some of the answers that you gave today and just for clarity you were uh in addition to being unaware of his use of personal email and potentially intentionally deleting Federal records were you also unaware of his actions to assist Dr daik and Eco health I I am I was aware of his friendship I was not aware of his attempts to assist him to respond to an NIH inquiry so not aware of the editing of press releases or editing of letters no I was not on November 11th 2021 Dr Moren wrote in an email to Dr daic that he attempted to discuss the Eco Health Grant with you and you quote got upset and told him to have no more Communications uh with Peter why did you tell Dr Moren to no longer communicate with Dr D because I think it's inappropriate to do what he did I mean and your committee has called him out very definitively about that and it was inappropriate to do that th this is back in 2021 what did you know about what he was doing then I didn't know exactly what he was doing but I don't think it's an appropriate for people to be communicating and helping a Grande in a response I didn't know exactly what he was doing but I didn't think it was appropriate um when did you you testify to uh chairman Griffith or excuse me chairman comr um that you knew about the compliance issues later on with Eco Health when did you first become aware I became aware during briefings by my staff in preparation for Congressional hearings well after the fact where compliance issues actually happened that mean I didn't know as I've mentioned to you in the ti I didn't even know the grant existed before the outbreak and then finally when there was this issue about Congressional hearings I needed to know what is this grant what are we doing with it and are there any issues that's when they said there was a compliance problem of the fourth year versus the fifth year uh progress report um some of the other emails from Dr Moren I just want to read into the record and ask you if his recollection is accurate on April 27th 2020 Dr menen wrote I am sure privately he would love to see Peter and Eco Health fully restored although he did want to make make the comment to to me that Peter had screwed himself with the late report I already told him that all that crap wasn't true the late report was true despite what Dr Moren said on April 21st 2021 Dr menen wrote that he was sure you would do anything you could to restore the funds to Eco Health on June 5th 2021 Dr menen wrote that you were working behind the scenes to undo the damage to Eco Health on October 21st 2021 Dr Moren wrote Peter I had my regular meeting with Tony this morning he immediately inquired about you and several times asked how you were doing he used a lot of colorful language about the situation with attacks on eco Health on October 25th 2021 Dr menen wrote that you were trying to protect Eco Health on March 22nd 2021 Dr Moren wrote the most important is within NIH to get the decision reversed and the grant refunded I believe Tony would like to do this and on February 24th 2022 Dr Moren wrote it will will be a small consolation to hear the following but in my face-to-face meeting with Tony this morning he once again brought up as he usually does your plight Peter did you ever have any discussions with Dr Moren about protecting Eco health or helping restore funding not at all I don't know what I to be honest with the MIT I just don't know what Dr Moren is talking about with that maybe he's trying to as he said cheer up he said that in front of this committee cheer up Dr desich but to say that I'm getting involved in trying to help him or protect him not so did you ever have any conversations with Dr Moren about what Dr daik was facing or about the termination of the grant you know I may he may have mentioned to me something like Dr dayc is going through terrible times uh but I don't recall it is conceivable that he would have mentioned that to me because as he mentioned to you that Dr desac and he are very good friends so it would not be surprising if sometime time he had mentioned to me boy Dr des's going through some really tough times fine that doesn't mean that I say you should help him no absolutely doesn't so that's why we want to ask the questions and get get get the answers um during your transcribed interview with us uh you were asked about whether or not Dr dazak had a conflict of interest in reviewing the origins of covid-19 and you testified you know I hesitate to speculate about someone else should what someone else should do the only people that I'm involved with is my own staff who we've mentioned many times in this discussion who don't have a conflict of interest with the benefit of hindsight and the work of this committee do you believe Dr Moren had a conflict of interest regarding Eco Health well from what we know now he definitely had a conflict because he was communicating with a grantee of helping him in response to an NIH issue which is a conflict of interest I did not know that at the time when I made your statement and I appreciate that that's yeah um sticking with Eco Health in April 2020 NIH terminated and then subsequently reinstated and then suspended the Eco Health grant that had the Wuhan Institute as a subgrantee do you recall that decision yes were you involved at all in that decision no uh you previously testified to house Energy and Commerce that you were in essence told to cancel the grant do you recall who told you um we got it from a number of now retrospect effectively we found out how it was it was the White House told the department to tell the NIH to cancel the cancellation what is that do we need to listen to that okay he he was he was escorted out yeah okay good um I'm sorry repeat the question Mitch did you agree with the cancellation you know I I it wasn't a question of agreeing or disagreeing it was like can we really do that I don't think that you can do that and as it turned out I was right because the general counsel of HHS said by the way you can't do that you've got to restore the Grant and that's why they restored it and then suspended it pending the compliance review exactly um not to keep reading Dr moren's emails but on June 24th 2020 Dr Moren wrote an email he referencing you made some additional comments to the effect that this came from the White House and he was totally opposed to it you weren't totally opposed to it well see that's his in you know he's doing a lot of interpretation Mitch his interpretation I was totally opposed to it it was more of can we really legally do that and the answer turned out I was right no you can't um do you recall the did the department ask you first or Dr Collins first to ter I think it went directly to building 10 uh excuse me building one the the director's is that the NIH director yeah I think it it went from the Department to NIH to us okay um were you prior to your retirement in December of 2022 were you involved in any of the compliance actions NIH took against Eco health I don't believe so I think the the act and and again I'm I'm a little unclear about the time but I think most of the disciplinary actions actually occurred after I left if I'm not mistaken the yes the actual suspension and debarment occurred after you left but there were a number of letters requesting lab notebooks or further information while you were still there but what happened mention it's important to point this out once it was clear that there was compliance issues while I was still there we were told at niid stay out of it compliance is going to be handled by building one I.E the NIH director and Mike laow so the compliance was said don't touch it Don't Go Near it just will take care of it and you just brought this up since the original termination then suspension NIH found numerous major violations of Grant policies has since debarred the Wuhan Institute of orology and suspended and proposed for debarment both Eco Health as an institution and Dr daic individually are you aware of those yes I am um during previous TI and hearings when asked if they supported every one of these action and supported the suspension in dearment uh both Dr Collins and Dr tabac said yes sitting here today do you support the suspension and Department of Eco Health yes I want to move on to the kind of like known unknowns of covid Origins to quote Dr lipkins paper from early 2020 um on October 20th 2021 Dr tabek sent a letter to uh then ranking member Mr comr that said the bat Corona viruses studied under the Eco Health Alliance Grant could not have been the source of SARS K2 and the covid-19 pandemic you've testified similarly both back in January and today um some of the things that uh I believe chairman Griffith brought up was just kind of that statement results on some things rests on some things that we just can't know um in your experience Dr fouchi do researchers uh publish every virus that no I mean uh I think researchers don't always publish every single thing they do um do they routinely publish every experiment that they conduct uh I'm sure there are people who don't publish every single experiment that they do and then is there a lag time between the sampling the analysis and the publication yeah I mean Publications are often months before they come out is it possible if not plausible that Eco health and the Wuhan Institute of rology have samples from between 2020 when they originally published a paper or excuse me 2015 when they originally published a paper with all of their samples and now that are unpublished sure it's possible but Mitch I'm I might just throw in there you can't get away from the fact that the viruses that were study that we that the NIH gave them a grant to study don't pull back on the fact that no matter what you did with those viruses they were phenetically so different they could not possibly be the precursor of s kobe2 and and I agree with that I guess my only point is that you don't know all the viruses they were working with yeah and let's make that clear because uh Griffith Congressman Griffith asked it and I answered you quite honestly that none of us can know everything that's going on in China or in Wuhan or what have you and that's the reason why I say today and I've said it the ti I keep an open mind as to what the origin is um the last thing last topic I want to touch on is gain of function we touched on it in January you touched on it a little bit today I know um the pandemic has resulted as I'm sure you're aware with a rather large debate and including with the nsbb updating their uh dangerous research policies surrounding gaina function P3 Co and dual use research of concern um at the prior to October of 2021 the NIH website listed gain of function as a type of research that modifies a biological agent so that it confers new or enhanced activity to that agent and the P3 Co framework the U that the US government uses to further regulate a sub a subpart of that research that is more dangerous specifically that could cause widespread and uncontrolled death or disease in humans um putting aside what's what's regulatory I agree with you the P3 Co definition is regulatory are there types of research that could fall under the broad definition but not the P3 Co definition well I believe members on the minority side have mentioned that influenza is a gain a function to a virus to make it grow better in eggs making an eoli manufacture insulin is telling the eoli to do something it wasn't able to do before by mutations of course that's the case um so in kind of the ven diagram of This research something could fall under gain a function without falling under further regulation I know where you're going and you're not going to get there but go ahead um according to Ecco Health's year five progress report they facilitated an experiment in Wuhan that had seven mice infected with Wuhan Institute of rology one as the backbone five survived then eight mice were infected with a chimera of wiv one and the spike from another virus and two survived in Ecco House's own words these results suggest that the pathogenicity of that fulllength Chimera is higher than others right um you were asked today and uh it was read back to you a little bit but on May 16th uh just a few weeks ago Miss leco asked Dr tabac did NIH fund gain a function research at the Wuhan Institute of rology through Ecco health and Dr tabac answered if you're speaking about the generic term yes we did right on May 11th you were asked a similar question and you answered the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of I'm going to ask it and you can answer it how you how you want to answer it according to the broad definition of gain of function research and the definition Dr tabac was testifying pursuant to uh did niad fund gain of function research via Eco Health in Wuhan the broad the broad definition of gain of function in my mind is not applicable here and does nothing but confuse the situation and that is the reason why after to three years of deliberation by the bodies including the nsbb as well as the national acmy it was decided to make an operative and Regulatory definition if you hearken back to the original broad definition it does nothing but confuse people and that's the why every time I have mentioned gain of function at the Senate hearing with senator Paul and the TI and today the definition that I use is not my personal definition it's a codified regulatory and operative definition made by a body that has nothing to do with me thank you Mr chairman I yield back I now recognize the minority staff for not longer than 30 minutes Dr fouchy nice to see you we've covered many different topics today we just want to make sure that you have the opportunity to provide your full perspective on any and all of them is there anything you'd like to add clarify or say about any of the topics we've today we've covered just about everything but if you come up with uh something you want to ask me i' I'd be happy to try to fill it in but I think we've been rather rather extensive today I think that's great and I think we agree and so with that we'll yield back I would like to yield to the ranking member Ruiz for a closing statement if he would like one Dr Fouch I'd like to thank you for your testimony today and I would like to thank you for your Decades of service to our nation uh especially with the HIV um epidemic that our nation suffered through the pandemic flu Ebola zika and covid-19 and your years of research and investment in that led to the rapid development of the covid-19 vaccine that saved millions of lives thank you and over the past four years you have been personally targeted by extreme narratives about the origins of the covid-19 pandemic and the US government's response to it they began in force in retaliation to wisdom you offered that contradicted The Reckless uh and dangerous uh therapeutic recommendations by President Trump and have remained part of House Republicans political Playbook these extreme narratives have been the Bedrock of the select subcommittee's republican-led probe and the untenable inferences they've somehow drawn despite the overwhelming evidence that it is inconvenient to those narratives I want to be clear the evidence uncovered from more than 425 th000 pages of documents and 20 closed door interviews of current and former Federal officials has undermined the extreme narratives behind Republicans own prob as I alluded to at the beginning of this hearing my Democratic colleagues and I are committed to speaking objectively and truthfully about what the evidence shows and this is what it shows Dr fouchi did not fund research through the Echo Health Alliance grant that caused the co9 pandemic Dr Dr fouchi did not lie about gain and function research in Wuhan China Dr foui did not orchestrate a campaign to suppress the lab leak Theory these findings are Apparent from the evidence in fact this much was clear by the time of Dr fouche's two-day transcribed interview this past January and the five months since the select subcommittee has conducted several more closed door interviews and reviewed several thousand more pages of documents the the this additional evidence in Dr fouche's testimony today has only made Republicans claims less plausible and more Preposterous and when I was named ranking member of the select subcommittee I made a commitment to follow the facts and objectively analyzing the origins of the covid-19 pandemic the select subcommittee is to meaningfully improve our nation's preparedness for future pandemics then we must take an objective approach to the factual and scientific evidence available to us the origin of the covid-19 pandemic remain uncertain I would like to remind my Republican colleagues that that uncertainty is not an opportunity for them to author fiction for partisan gain it could have been a lab league and it could have been an animal transmission and at the cost of meaningfully advancing our understanding of Co 19's Origins Republicans have levied extreme allegations of creating SARS K2 against Dr fouchi the result is that Republicans own Pro has failed to shed any additional light on a central question for our select subcommittee in fact we're actually entering the fourth quarter of this Congress and this select subcommittee on Corona's pandemic and what have we focused on it's not an objective uh investigation on the orig origin as either lab leak or animal transmission we have spent the vast majority of time like in this hearing with Republicans trying to prove that Dr funded research through Echo Health that created the SARS K2 virus and in order for that to be true it is dependent on proving the labak theory to be true so it has not been an objective investigation as to whether or not the virus came from lab or or an animal Transmission in order to prevent and prepare for the next pandemic it has been to push this narrative and this hearing is their climax their star witness to finally prove their narrative and they did not do so instead of focusing on Solutions like fortifying our Public Health Workforce and infrastructure securing domestic Supply chain of vital public health equipment and medications or equipping schools churches synagogues mosques businesses to safely stay open during the next deadly novel viral pandemic instead they focused on accusations without evidence and it seemed like even though the evidence was there that the accusations were false it didn't matter they still accused him on a cover up suppressing the truth that he initiated prompted or edited the proximal Origins paper that he funded gain of research that created the SARS K2 virus even that he received royalties you know his answers today and his transcribed interviews and his countless emails refuted all of this they always have and his testimony today did again but that I guess that doesn't matter for the majority the truth is that there is no evidence to prove this narrative that we spent so much time addressing their accusations are without evidence but it doesn't matter to them intentionally misleading the public is propagating disinformation and it's wrong and dangerous not only because it manufactures distrust in our Public Health leaders and our Public Health agencies but also because it targets Dr fouchy and other public health officials for violent death threats Dr fouchy just said that anytime anybody alludes to the false accusation that he created the covid-19 pandemic his death threats go up but irresponsibly and recklessly members on this subcommittee continued to accuse him of that so for the remaining months of the select subcommittee I reaffirm my commitment to take a serious balanced look at the question and the possibilities of whether the novel Corona virus emerg from a lab or from nature and I emphasize to my colleagues that any uncertainty about those Origins is an opportunity for us to work constructively together on forward-looking measures to improve our nation's Readiness for future Public Health threats thank you Mr chman and I yield back thank you again Dr fouchy I want to thank you for coming here today I again truly appreciate your willingness to come voluntarily ly before this Select Committee for both your transcribed interview and hearing today um you know this hearing was an opportunity to learn about our covid-19 response and how we can improve and do better and uh we did some good things during that and I'll I'll site operation warpspeed is is one of them it's also an opportunity to more closely examine the office in which you served because there seemed to me some significant wrongdoings that took place and I believe that we can make changes and prevent that from happening in the future that's my goal it's an opportunity to take a close look about the processes and the procedures in place in our health institutions in the United States that's our job as oversight in Congress that's what we're supposed to do I don't know what Playbook some are talking about because it's might been my goal as chairman and I think you've seen the staff be in the same way to take a hard look at the facts so that we can do better in the future I know that at the end of the transcribed interview not only during the interview we talked about other types of vaccines we may be able to create mucosal vaccines maybe Inhibitors of furin if there's a fur and cleavage site as part of the vaccine I appreciated that conversation so very much and at the end you thanked me for your for the fairness and we had the opportunity to to share a l lot that day I think what I'm most concerned about as we go forward as a country and from our agencies is that we can be trusted and that we are better in our messaging and talk about Clarity Dr McCormick today talked about what it was like actually treating covid patients day in and day out I had recommended early on that America needed to hear more from doctors that were treating covid patients what they were seeing what was working what was not working I compared it to General schwarzkoff uh during the golf War everyone tuned in every night to hear what general Schwarz kov had to say not the politician but what the general in charge had to say and I think that was important the one who is in the trenches but look you know we we've gone back and forth on the definition of gain of function I think it's been pretty clear what was uh you said was on your mind and there's there were two different definitions if will a generic definition and an operative regulatory definition but so you know when we go through this when America hears is that you say NIH did not fund and Dr tabach said NIH did fund Clarity matters I think it would have helped when you were in front of uh Dr or Paul Dr Paul in the Senate if you were clear about what you meant the American people had never heard of gain of function until this came about Clarity matters you know when we we conducted great trials on the vaccines I thought they were phenomenal normally you have 8 to 10,000 people uh we had about 40,000 people in each one of the trials and what we knew from the trials is that one it saved a lot of lives that's one thing but we also knew that if you got vaccinated you could still get covid we didn't make that clear to the American people in my mind and that and that you could still get sick and so if someone stands up not you but if someone stands up and says if you get vaccinated you're never going to go to the ICU and you're not going to die well that was still happening so where was the messaging I wish you would have corrected that right then and there you know uh President says oh maybe we just inject bleach well some people maybe thought that was that was serious we made it clear it was not and that was important but here we have operation warp speech which I know firsthand you were working on and you were kind enough to work with the doctor's caucus to explain what was going on with operation warp speed and we have a presidential candidate who says well if that's developed I'm not taking it I'm paraphrasing and then takes it the American public deserve a lot better from their government and what should have been a 911 moment for this country this pandemic was turned into a political nightmare we need to do better these are agnostic issues not political and I think from what we have learned from you in the TI and and and here today there's a lot of things that we can do better and the and the grant process being one of them I mean if you look when I when I sign a prescription I'm responsible for it somebody needs to be responsible and if you're signing for Grants but not responsible for it you just sign it then you're not responsible for the dollars that are going out and and then maybe it's the advisory committee that needs to be signing the grant so that there's some level of responsibility and responsibility for compliance I think that's one of the biggest Lessons Learned uh through all this we can do better America is a great country we can fix our problems but we have to take a good hard look at what we did what we didn't do be honest with ourselves be better in our messaging to the American people especially when it comes to health and that's why I felt it was very important that we don't do things like mandates but let patients have a conversation with the the doctor that they know and trust and make sure that we're getting the doctors all the information and data that they need from adverse effects of the vaccine adverse effects of the vaccine to what the vaccine can and can't do whether you're at risk or not at risk what are your risks those are personal conversations that need to take place and I and I look forward to try and establish a system that does a better job at that I'm going to conclude and just say thank you once again Dr fouchy matter of fact I'd be glad to have more off- the reccord conversations about things we can do in the future uh drugs we may be able to develop treatments we may be able to provide and vaccines we may be able to produce and uh so if you're amenable I might reach out to you for that and other scientists as well that may have varying opinions so again thank you again for being the witness today with that and without objection all members will have five legislative dat within which to submit materials and to submit additional written questions for the witnesses which will be forwarded to the witnesses for their response if there's no further Business Without objection [Music]

Summary: e the select subcommittee on the Corona virus pandemic will come to order I want to welcome everyone this morning pursuant to committee on oversight and accountability rule 7D members of the committee May particip ipate in today's select subcommittee hearing for purposes of questions at the discretion of the chair and pursuant to an agreement with the committee on Energy and Commerce the chairman and ranking member of the committee on Energy and Commerce s…