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Dr Anthony Fauci's department hid plans to create mutant monkeypox virus that 'could've started pandemic,' bombshell Congress report finds
Dr Anthony Fauci's former department 'deceived' Congress over its plans to create a Frankenstein monkeypox virus that had pandemic potential, a new report says.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) submitted plans to create a more transmissible and more lethal strain of Mpox in 2015, when Dr Fauci was still in charge of the agency.
The plans only received widespread attention in late 2022 - amid concerns that Covid may have been borne out of similar experiments using US government grant money in China.
The blueprint to create a mutant Mpox virus raised major concerns among experts and led to an investigation by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which released the results from its year-and-a-half probe this week.
The report said the HHS, NIAID and NIH repeatedly 'obstructed and misled the committee' about whether the risky experiments had been approved and conducted, describing their cooperation with the probe as 'unacceptable and potentially criminal.'
Fauci looks glum at a Congressional hearing earlier this month
Investigators added: 'HHS and the NIH repeatedly told the Committee the... experiments had not been "formally proposed" or "planned," had never been approved or conducted, and were not currently under consideration.
'[These] repeated assertions were false.'
They also said NIAID, a branch of the NIH, should not be trusted to carry out this type of research: 'The primary conclusion drawn at this point in the investigation is that NIAID cannot be trusted to oversee its own research of pathogens responsibly.
'It cannot be trusted to determine whether an experiment on a potential pandemic pathogen or enhanced potential pandemic pathogen poses unacceptable biosafety risk or a serious public health threat.'
Monkeypox, which is in the same family of viruses as smallpox, causes a rash and flu-like symptoms and sparked a global outbreak in 2022, infecting tens of thousands of people.
There are two types of monkeypox viruses: Clade I, which causes severe illness and has killed up to 11 percent of people in previous outbreaks, and Clad II, the type that caused the global outbreak in 2022. These infections are more transmissible but less severe and nearly 100 percent of people survive.
In October 2022, a team of government scientists wanted to insert genes from the more dangerous Clade I Mpox into Clade II, making a hybrid strain that could have been both more lethal and more contagious.
Investigators said this would be classified as gain-of-function, which is research that can result in deadlier and more transmissible viruses and is feared to be behind the creation of Covid.
It was estimated the new Mpox virus would have had a fatality rate of up to 15 percent and a reproductive rate of 2.4, meaning one sick person could infect more than two other people.
At this rate, the hybrid strain would have had pandemic potential.
In October 2022, Dr Bernard Moss revealed a team of scientists wanted to equip Clade II Mpox with genes from the more dangerous Clade I strain
The report comes just off the heels of recent testimony from Dr Fauci regarding the origins of Covid, which some government agencies believe was risky gain-of-function research taking place in China and funded by the US, including NIAID.
Dr Fauci has maintained that his agency was not involved in GOF experiments in China, but the lack of transparency surrounding Mpox research calls into question how reliable the word of the HHS, NIH and NIAID is.
Scientists said their experiments would have revealed how different genes make monkeypox more deadly and spur the development of better drugs and vaccines.
But the modified virus posed 'an exceptionally high risk' to the public if it were to accidentally leak, according to Dr Richard Ebright, a microbiologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
The team in Maryland argued their work did not involve 'enhancing' a pathogen because they were seeking to swap natural mutations rather then create new ones, meaning the hybrid could not be more deadly than the existing clades.
But the news still shocked experts and Americans as they raised concerns that such research continued to be conducted in the US despite fears similar practices may have started the Covid pandemic.
Despite its approval, researchers maintain the work was never carried out, but the report states 'HHS has repeatedly refused to produce any documents that corroborate this claim.'
The above shows the different characteristics of the various clades of monkeypox
The Maryland team's work was being led by NIAID scientist Dr Bernard Moss at the agency's headquarters in Bethesda (shown)
The House committee is now seeking additional evidence from HHS, NIAID and the NIH to confirm the risky experiments were never done.
Dr Ebright told this website after news first broke: 'A laboratory-generated monkeypox virus... more lethal than, and as transmissible as the monkeypox virus currently circulating in human,s potentially would defeat protection by vaccines and likely would spread beyond current at-risk populations to the general population.'
Monkeypox can spread from contact with infected animals or close contact with an infected person. There is no FDA-approved treatment for Mpox, only therapies to manage symptoms, but there is a vaccine to protect against it.
In the US, an Mpox outbreak began in May 2022 as part of a larger global outbreak that stemmed from the Clade II strain endemic in West Africa.
The CDC reports that as of January 2024, the most recent data available, there have been 32,000 cases of monkeypox in the US, with 58 deaths. Globally, there have been 95,900 cases since the outbreak began.
While the committee began its investigation in October 2022, the agencies repeatedly refused to answer questions.
And lawmakers were only given documents to examine in March 2024 'after subpoena threats forced' the agencies to provide them, which finally confirmed the experiments had been approved.
Following their findings, investigators recommended establishing an oversight board to review NIAID-funded research on dangerous pathogens and moving final approval for GOF research from NIAID to another entity.