Fauci, Drosten and the dynamite emails: „A new kind of scientific crime“

An interview with Prof. Dr. Roland Wiesendanger of the University of Hamburg by Stefan Frank of Achgut.com Jan. 21, 2022

(https://www.achgut.com/artikel/fauci_drosten_und_die_dynamit_mails_neue-form_von_wissenschafts_kriminalitaet). 

Recently published e-mails from February 2020 show that renowned virologists were already confronting Anthony Fauci and Christian Drosten at the time with evidence of a laboratory origin of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. But Fauci and Drosten wanted to nip any discussion of the matter in the bud.

For Achgut, Stefan Frank spoke with Professor Dr. Roland Wiesendanger of the University of Hamburg. In February 2021, the physics professor published a study on indications of a laboratory origin of the virus which received worldwide attention and has since been translated into many languages. At that time, when the topic was still taboo, he was attacked and slandered by journalists in Germany.

Professor Wiesendanger, emails have come to light this month that cast a very bad light on Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House's chief immunologist. What are these emails and why have their contents now become public?

The emails have come to the attention of a broader public through the publication of a letter from Republican members of the US Congress. It is about the email correspondence of Anthony Fauci with some very respected virologists in the period from Feb. 1 to Feb. 4, 2020, in connection with a teleconference on Feb. 1, 2020. This email correspondence has been available for several weeks due to a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act in the U.S., but was previously known only to insiders. As a result of Republican members of Congress making these emails public, their contents are now available to the media and all interested parties worldwide. 

Why are these emails so explosive?

The explosive thing is that they make it very clear that we are dealing with a huge cover-up as far as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic is concerned. It is obvious that already in January 2020 - before even the very first cases of infection occurred in Germany - several leading virologists informed Anthony Fauci that the gene sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which was known worldwide since January 11, 2020, has a special feature, namely a so-called furin cleavage site, which does not occur anywhere else in the subgenus of coronaviruses to which SARS-CoV-2 belongs. This furin cleavage site ensures that SARS-CoV-2 viruses can penetrate human cells particularly easily and that human-to-human transmission can occur very easily, which was previously unknown for coronaviruses. So this was something completely new and gave several virologists reason to conclude that it was very likely of non-natural origin - that SARS-CoV-2 might actually have come from a laboratory in Wuhan. 

In one of our two earlier discussions, you pointed out that this assumption was obvious, partly because of the close proximity of the outbreak site and the world's largest institute for coronavirus research in Wuhan.

Precisely. In February 2020, two Chinese scientists first made this assumption public on the Internet on the "Research Gate" website. Now it has become known that those virologists - among them very well-known virologists from the USA and Germany - who were involved in the teleconference of Feb. 1, 2020, and exchanged e-mails, actually had the same suspicion and issued a warning to Fauci as early as January 2020. From the email correspondence, it appears that there was collusion, coordinated by Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins - then the head of the National Institutes of Health in the U.S., who in fact resigned late last year - and Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Trust. The major consequence of this collusion was that within a few days, those who were involved in this conference call abandoned their original assumption and turned their opinion around 180 degrees.

What did these virologists do then?

Just two or three days after that teleconference, they initiated three things: They organized, under the leadership of Peter Daszak, that much publicized open letter in the medical journal "The Lancet," signed by 27 leading virologists, denouncing the laboratory theory as a "conspiracy theory." This was done at a time when no one could rule out a laboratory origin. Furthermore, they sent a corresponding letter to the president of the National Academy of Sciences in the USA. They also initiated a technical publication in the journal "Nature Medicine" under the leadership of Kristian Andersen which strongly contributed to misleading the public and especially the media. In this publication it is formulated very strongly in the introductory summary - the abstract - that there cannot be a non-natural origin, although the matter was actually left quite open at the end of the article. Most readers probably did not read to the end of the article. In any case, no strong arguments were actually made in this publication. Nevertheless, such measures have contributed to the fact that the world, and virtually all journalists, have accepted this narrative - that the laboratory theory is a conspiracy theory.

But now, explosively, it turns out that the virologists who participated in this teleconference had a very different view - one that is consistent with the view of three Nobel laureates: Luc Montagnier of France, a Nobel laureate from Kyoto University, and a Nobel laureate from California, David Baltimore, who has even spoken of a ‘smoking gun’. This means that what was accepted as a broad consensus among virologists - that SARS-CoV-2 was of natural origin - is now clearly refuted and reversed by this disclosure. On the contrary, there was a consensus among leading virologists that this furin cleavage site clearly indicated a non-natural origin, i.e., a laboratory origin. It was only twisted into the opposite for political reasons and to shield virological research from public scrutiny, thus misleading the world community.

Anthony Fauci defended himself in a television interview, saying that he had never ruled out a laboratory origin, merely considered a natural origin more likely, and still sees it that way. So supposedly he has not changed his position.

Anyone can research what Fauci really said between February 2020 and the end of 2020.  He was just like the other participants in the teleconference in the camp of the zoonosis theory of natural origin. After all, that's not surprising. You have to know that ten years ago, in 2012, Anthony Fauci wrote in a scientific paper that the gain in knowledge from so-called gain-of-function research, which is carried out on various viruses - including corona viruses - to make them more infectious for human cells, among other things, would outweigh the associated risk of a global pandemic. Now, when it became apparent in early 2020 that there would be a pandemic, and the outbreak actually happened near those institutes that have done the most intensive research on corona viruses, in particular on the biotechnological manipulation of corona viruses in the course of gain-of-function research, Anthony Fauci of course immediately saw the danger.  If this connection between the pandemic and a laboratory accident becomes established, there would then not only be problems for the Chinese, but of course also for himself and all the other virologists who have supported this gain-of-function research over the past ten years or carried it out themselves, despite the moratorium that the Obama administration placed on funding such dangerous research.

Nevertheless, Anthony Fauci - and this is documented - circumvented this moratorium, which was in place between 2014 and 2017, and continued to funnel funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology through the EcoHealth Alliance. Of course, if it had become entrenched in the public's perception that it was this very lab that caused the current pandemic, Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, and all those involved would have been in deep trouble. They will be in even more trouble now that the cover-up has been exposed. But they actually believed that they could get away with this cover-up. 

But now Fauci & Co. have been exposed. The e-mail correspondence has become known, and even the Republicans in the US Congress are asking questions.

Yes, especially Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky, who has repeatedly pestered Anthony Fauci with unpleasant questions. There were several hearings, and other U.S. senators also questioned him. And it seems now that Fauci gave testimony before the U.S. Congress that many consider perjury. He testified under oath that the National Institutes of Health had not funded any gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute - although it subsequently emerged that such research had indeed been funded in Wuhan, and leading experts from the United States clearly regard this as gain-of-function research. There is no room for interpretation: research reports by the EcoHealth Alliance that have become public have confirmed that biotechnological manipulation increased the infectivity of coronaviruses. This is, by definition, gain-of-function research. That is why calls for resignation from Anthony Fauci are sure to increase in the coming weeks. 

You mentioned the EcoHealth Alliance several times. What kind of organization is that?

EcoHealth Alliance, whose president is Peter Daszak [and who was appointed by WHO in 2020 to participate in an investigation into the origin of Corona –S.F.], has collected extremely large sums of money over many years from various American companies and research funding institutions -- starting with the subdivision of the National Institutes of Health headed by Anthony Fauci, but also from other American funding organizations, in order to investigate the pandemic potential of biotechnologically modified viruses. That is, people have been modifying coronaviruses in particular in the laboratory and creating new chimeric (composite) coronaviruses to show how such manipulations could cause them to become particularly highly contagious to humans. The objective was to find out whether such changes might also occur naturally and what dangers might be posed to humans. In fact, however, this research has produced no benefit at all in the last ten or fifteen years, but only significant dangers. All rational scientists see it this way. Recent investigations -- and this has become so incredibly important in recent weeks, in addition to the publication of the Fauci correspondence -- have shown that EcoHealth Alliance, led by Peter Daszak, but also involving Zheng-Li Shi from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and others, actually write in their research proposals that they want to insert so-called furin cleavage sites in both SARS and MERS viruses. MERS viruses are also coronaviruses, but they are 10 to 15 times more deadly than SARS viruses. This has particularly upset the international community, because there is now a document that proves that virologists actually planned and applied for experiments that have the potential to be an event comparable to genocide, to put it bluntly.

So virologists planned - and this is not speculation but has become verifiable in their written proposals - research that is so risky that the whole of humanity is exposed to the danger of a huge catastrophe. Everybody is aware that no laboratory in the world is safe enough for such research, and we know that these experiments on coronaviruses were not even carried out in biotechnological laboratories of the highest safety level 4, but in level 2 labs. That is absolutely irresponsible. And now the connection is very clear. These 2018 research proposals prove that the scientists involved planned to insert a furin cleavage site into SARS-like coronaviruses to allow them to enter human cells much more easily. And now we know from the Fauci emails that the leading virologists saw  precisely this characteristic of the SARS-CoV-2 virus as a particularly strong indication of a laboratory origin.

When you put these two things together, you can't come to any other conclusion than that this virus is the result of a laboratory accident in Wuhan.

This was not the fault of the Chinese government and the Wuhan Institute of Virology alone, but of an international network of virologists. Is that fair to say?

Yes, especially with the participation of US scientists. In my study on the origin of the corona pandemic, published almost exactly one year ago, I included a copy of  the grant Daszak received from the subdivision of the National Institutes of Health headed by Fauci and pointed out that this extremely risky research was funded with U.S. taxpayer money and that this extreme danger was created not only by the Chinese but also by the U.S., and that both countries had an interest in keeping the truth about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 secret. 

This sounds like mad scientists with excessive ambition. Was it also about financial interests?

Yes, of course. Both. On the one hand, it was about the prestige of the scientists involved. I want to make it clear once again: The catastrophe we are currently experiencing is not primarily the result of a failure on the part of states such as China or the USA. It is first and foremost the failure of scientists who were obviously not aware of their responsibility. In the end, they were only concerned about their own prestige. This point has also been discussed in the scientific community. The degree of danger posed by the viruses that were biotechnologically manipulated was taken as a yardstick for the quality of new scientific publications. In other words, the greater the pandemic potential that could be demonstrated, the more likely it was to be published in the most prestigious journals, such as "Nature" and "Science." In fact, Zheng-Li Shi, Peter Daszak and others such as Ralph Baric have been able to publish one paper after another in these highly respected journals. The more dangerous the viruses became, the greater the sensation, because of the threat of a pandemic, and the greater the willingness of the funding organizations to provide funding. The logic was, the greater the danger, the more important it is to fund the research. The annual salary of Peter Daszak, like that of Anthony Fauci, is well over $400,000, even more than that of the American president. So it was not just a matter of prestige for those involved, not even in China. Salaries there also depend heavily on the number of publications in the most respected journals. So in addition to purely scientific prestige, it was also about money.

In the fall, a report by the American intelligence services on the possible origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was published. Didn't these intelligence services actually have access to Anthony Fauci's e-mails?

We have to distinguish between the part of the intelligence report that became public and the non-public part. Of course, we all know only the public part, and there is nothing in it, as you know, that is of any value: a squishy summary from which nothing clear emerges. That was to be expected. What government in the world would disclose that it was substantially involved in this research and contributed to the outbreak of the current pandemic? Let's assume that it was one hundred percent certain that it was a laboratory accident. There would be enormous claims for damages from all the countries of the world, not only against China, but also against the USA. What government would admit such a thing? You can see this in how U.S. President Donald Trump behaved. First he made a very strong statement in the spring of 2020 that this virus came from the lab in Wuhan, but then he failed to provide any evidence. Even in the fall of 2021, in an interview with a TV station; when asked if he knew what the cause of the pandemic was, he clearly answered yes, but when the reporter asked: what that cause was, Trump said that he was not allowed to say.

So even an American president is not allowed to reveal everything, especially if America's national interests are affected. This also means that we cannot expect to learn the full truth from American intelligence services. That's why pressure had to be exerted by non-government groups to make these research proposals and the Fauci emails public. This was not done by the American intelligence services, even though they would have had the most direct access to these documents.

I know from conversations with American colleagues that the intelligence agencies, which were commissioned by President Joe Biden, did not investigate intensively at all. Everything we know today about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is thanks to initiatives by scientists and also by lay people who have done research on the Internet and groups like US Right to Know, which have started initiatives to bring these events to the light of day.

How do you expect this to proceed? And what has to happen, or what can happen, to shake up the public? Highly explosive information has now come to light, but it's not as if all the newspapers and radio stations are reporting on it.

Especially not in Germany. In the U.S., this is an incredibly hotly debated topic in all the media, including, of course, the political consequences. But you're absolutely right that the mainstream media in Germany, in particular, is sweeping this issue under the rug - including the fact that a German virologist was also involved in that teleconference on February 1, 2020, and demonstrably helped to bring about this cover-up.

You are talking about Christian Drosten?

That's right, yes. Only editors of "Tichys Einblick" have written about this.  As recently as May 2020, Mr. Drosten spoke of "nonsense" in an NDR podcast interview with regard to a possible laboratory origin. He said at that time: "What I hear, even from supposed experts, simply lacks any basis. Their level of knowledge doesn't go beyond a superficial knowledge of student textbooks. And with this knowledge base, one then trumpets videos to the world and encourages the really dangerous conspiracy theorists, some of whom also have political agendas. That's irresponsible." This is proof that Mr. Drosten is involved in this whole web of lies. He has undeniably had the information that a group of leading  virologists had the science-based suspicion of a laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2 as early as January/February 2020. When he then says in a podcast in May 2020 that these are all "supposed experts," with "superficial knowledge from student textbooks," then this is a scandal that must finally become public.

A point has now been reached where this can no longer be accepted. This is misleading the public, and it must be clearly stated that Mr. Drosten, as well as all other colleagues involved in this cover-up. bear a serious responsibility for the fact that China could not be pressured in time - as early as February 2020 - to send a commission of inquiry to Wuhan and to have the events at the Institute of Virology investigated in detail. Australia was the only country at the time that demanded an immediate investigation, which would have been logical and urgently necessary. 

It was not only Mr. Drosten who did this in Germany. All of the participants in this teleconference of Feb. 1, 2020, who in their respective countries - i.e. the USA, Great Britain, etc. - took on the same role as Mr. Drosten and sold this zoonosis theory as the only plausible theory to the public in a media-effective way, while everything that went in the direction of the laboratory accident theory was branded as conspiracy theory. This misled the world community and the entire media and scientific community. That is extremely reprehensible. Mr. Drosten has lost all credibility as a scientist. It is the task of science to stand by the truth and not to put any political agendas or even personal interests in the foreground. This is a disaster for science as a whole. 

If you had known more about the origin of the virus, would you have done things differently in practice, for example, to contain the pandemic?

There were many things that could have been done differently. These warnings about a very probable laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2 already existed in January, at the latest at the beginning of February 2020. That was at a time before COVID-19 had spread widely in Europe. Both communication and response could have benefited from these insights, especially the response from the policy side. If it had been clear from the beginning that this is a completely new virus, artificially created - with an almost perfect adaptation to humans - and just not comparable with any naturally occurring viruses, then the whole discussion would not have arisen that COVID-19 is perhaps "like flu." No! The essential difference is that flu viruses are of natural origin, whereas here we are dealing with an artificial virus type adapted to humans, optimized to dock to human ACE2 cell receptors and to enter human cells by means of the furin cleavage site. If this had been clear from the beginning, there would certainly not have been many completely superfluous discussions about whether the virus is potentially dangerous or not. This is the responsibility of all those who covered it up.

This is now fact, since the Fauci emails have been published, even if there are people who still deny the lab origin. It is clear that not only was there a cover-up on the part of the Chinese government and Chinese scientists, but leading virologists from numerous countries have been complicit in this cover-up and are therefore partly responsible for the failure to respond in a timely and appropriate manner.

In one of these emails from Anthony Fauci, he expresses concern that a discussion of a laboratory origin could cause "unnecessary damage" to "science in general" and "especially in China" and could "distract" scientists. In an April 2020 email, he expresses hope that the discussion will eventually go away on its own.

Yes, that's nicely put. One could also say that the greatest damage would have been done to himself, because he vehemently defended and promoted this dangerous gain-of-function research for many years, and he himself was responsible, not least for circumventing the moratorium imposed by the U.S. government under Barack Obama. He bears full responsibility; he would be held liable, and therefore one may be curious to see how the legal proceedings against him in the U.S., which have already begun, will proceed. The fact that he promoted and demonstrably outsourced this gain-of-funtion research because - according to his own information - it was too dangerous makes it quite clear that he was aware of the potential danger. In the e-mail correspondence about a possible laboratory origin it was also mentioned that a discussion about it could "disturb international harmony." In reality, Fauci wanted to get his own neck out of the noose.

Do you think that there will be a parliamentary investigation in Germany like in the USA - and that Christian Drosten will have to answer for his actions?

I hope that it will come to that. However, these are issues that need to be advanced not only nationally but also internationally, because the implications are global. All the countries of the world have to pay for what these virologists have done. This is not just a question for the scientific community. It has been said that "science must sort this out." But it became political when U.S. President Donald Trump took a position, and by now, it's not just a matter of politics either. It's about the strong suspicion of negligent homicide in the millions and the suspicion of covering up crimes. This is why a legal discussion is now beginning, not only in individual countries, but internationally. This must be dealt with from the legal point of view as well. It is only now that everyone has become aware of what we could be threatened with in the future, as a result of the research proposals by Daszak and his co-authors that have now become public. If virologists plan to do gain-of-function research with MERS viruses that are ten to fifteen times more lethal - and, as just mentioned, they actually wanted to insert furin cleavage sites into MERS viruses as well - then a research plan with such an intention has possible consequences that can no longer be tolerated.

If it becomes known that someone is planning attacks with such a high potential for destruction, appropriate government agencies usually take immediate action. However, we are dealing here with a new form of "scientific crime." This designation is appropriate and correct in view of the extent of the potential danger, and obviously there are no official agencies that are yet sensitized to this. If virologists are planning something like this, exposing the whole of humanity to such uncontrollable risks and dangers, then this is no longer a question of science alone, nor of politics alone, but will soon increasingly be a legal issue that is likely to occupy the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court in the future.