Former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield accused top U.S. scientists of orchestrating a cover-up to obscure COVID-19's origins, suggesting they feared government oversight of controversial research practices, during an interview on Newsmax on Thursday.
Redfield alleged Thursday that a group of U.S. scientists deliberately sought to steer attention away from the Wuhan lab as the origin of COVID-19 to protect "critical" gain-of-function research from potential government regulation.
Appearing on "The Record With Greta Van Susteren," Redfield said, "I think there was clearly an effort to turn the attention away from the original origin, which was the Wuhan lab. There's no question about that."
Redfield, who led the CDC from 2018 to 2021, claimed that the motivation behind the alleged cover-up was to prevent restrictions on scientific research that involves enhancing the potency or transmissibility of viruses — commonly known as gain-of-function research.
"They wanted to protect gain-of-function research, which they thought was critical," Redfield said. "If it was determined that this virus came as a consequence of science, then that would lead to government regulation of science. And they didn't want to see that happen. So that's really, I think, what was the motivation behind Fauci and Collins… orchestrating really, I think the right word is cover-up, to turn the attention away from the lab and to come up with this false hypothesis that it was a natural spillover."
Redfield's remarks referred to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Francis Collins, the former director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
When asked whether top officials consulted with the White House on resuming such research, Redfield said he was not personally involved. However, he said a process was created to allow exemptions to the Obama-era moratorium on gain-of-function research.
"Fauci and Collins did present this to someone in the White House to be able to get an exemption to the moratorium… and that's when they created this committee that was supposed to review potential research that would be done, that would then be allowed to go forward," he said. "That happened, I think, in 2017."
Redfield added that the push to conduct some of this research offshore, including in China, was not brought to the attention of domestic policymakers. "It was never presented to myself; it was never presented to the head of domestic policy," he said.
"I'm of the view that we shouldn't be doing this research," he said. "I wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal… calling for a moratorium on gain-of-function research. Now, there's an executive order for that moratorium. I'm highly supportive of it."
Redfield's comments come amid renewed scrutiny. On Wednesday, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino posted on social media that the bureau is investigating a potential cover-up related to the virus' origins.
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Jim Thomas ✉
Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.
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