Fauci Tussles Again with Congress Over Coronavirus Origin & Charges of Using Personal Email to Conduct Business & Sabotaging FOIAs

Is he being unfairly targeted, or should we have been forewarned during his decades-long rule at NIAID?

Anthony S. Fauci, MD, the newly retired director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was in the hot seat in Congress again on June 3. The House Oversight and Accountability Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing focused primarily on the lab-leak theory of the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and his close association with Peter Daszak, PhD, president of EcoHealth Alliance, whose NIAID-funded collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is coming under increasing criticism.

Subcommittee Chair Representative Brad Wenstrup, DPM (R-Ohio), questioned Fauci’s attitude toward scientific work. “Dr. Fauci, you once said, ‘if you disagree with me, you disagree with science.' Science doesn't belong to any one person," Wenstrup stated, according to MEDPAGE TODAY. He also asserted that Fauci “chose not to pursue an aggressive and transparent scientific investigation of both natural spillover and lab leak,” the two most prominent hypotheses of the origin of the virus associated with Covid-19. (1)

Referring to a cache of personal emails the Subcommittee received in May, Wenstrup said, “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.” He also chastised Fauci for definitively stating, from the White House, that the rapid spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus had not been the product of a lab leak at the Wuhan laboratory, even though it’s not been proved. (1)

During the Congressional hearing, Fauci denied deleting any emails or official records related to WIV or the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. (1)

If we look back at how Fauci has dealt with a couple of the other pandemics that erupted during his tenure as Director of NIAID, it’s pretty clear that in every instance, Fauci has acted in his own interest, not in the interest of patients.

For example, Fauci was an early and enthusiastic promoter of using AZT, an astonishingly toxic but rehabilitated chemotherapeutic drug, to treat people with AIDS—and, as now with PrEP drugs, giving a toxic drug to people with no signs of illness.

On January 31, 1994, the Office of Communications, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, published “Informational Statement: AZT for Asymptomatic HIV Infected Patients.” At the time—almost exactly 30 years ago—NIAID had created the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ATCG), described as “a large nationwide network of clinical trials sites” to evaluate therapies for “all aspects of HIV disease in adults and children.” (2)

ACTG Protocol 019 compared two different doses of AZT (the only FDA-approved anti-HIV therapy at the time) and a placebo “for the treatment of HIV-infected adults with no symptoms of HIV diseases.” Patients’ relative number of T-cells (CD4 cells) determined which “treatment” was most successful. (2)

Once the results of Protocol 019 were published in 1990 in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) (3), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended that AZT “be approved for use in HIV-infected individuals with CD4-positive T-cell counts of less than 500 and mild or no symptoms of AIDS.” Despite the government’s enthusiasm for treating asymptomatic, mostly gay men with a toxic chemical, it apparently took at least four years to “facilitate the transfer of this information into clinical practice.” (2)

Meanwhile, the ACTG program reached out to a new patient group: HIV-positive pregnant women. A new protocol, ACTG 076, administered AZT or placebo to pregnant women (including IV zidovudine, or AZT, during delivery and liquid AZT to babies at birth) to curb the percentage of HIV transmissions to babies.

There were a few problems with this study: First, 80% of the pregnant women recruited for this study were Black and/or Hispanic. Second, not only did women receiving AZT develop “blood toxicities” and other side effects, according to “Questions and Answers” in an NIAID News story, so did the same number of pregnant women receiving placebo. (4)

Third, ACTG 076 was ended prematurely (as were most anti-HIV drug trials). (5)

Why? Perhaps in response to the birth defects occurring in babies exposed to AZT in utero. (6, 7)

I first learned about these birth defects in early July 1992. I received a call at the offices of the New York Native from a man who said he had information for me, but he couldn’t be identified as its source. I agreed, and he met me, bringing scribbled, handwritten notes he’d cribbed at the end of a meeting; they described the birth defects seen in babies born to women taking AZT while pregnant. Remember: AZT is a drug that halts cell replication—surely not an optimal “treatment” for a developing fetus.

A week or so later, the “ACT UP Update” that appeared in the publication Network reported the information I’d been given by my source. ACTG Protocol 076 was enrolling extremely slowly, the “Update” reported, and even though the AIDS activist group had pressured the government for information, they only succeeded in obtaining an “oral report” on the first 30 pregnant women treated with AZT and their babies. This report “showed that 10% of the children had extra digits (fingers, toes), something which Burroughs-Wellcome [the maker of AZT] had found in their informal pregnancy data...” (8).

One of the scientific articles published about Protocol 076 looked at birth defects in rats and mice born to dams (pregnant rodents) given AZT. They’re almost too numerous to list, but here’s a few: physical malformations (missing tails, missing anuses), situs inversus (inversion of organs from left to right), and bent bones, particularly bent ribs. (9)

This report also took a retrospective  look at 43 women who’d taken AZT while pregnant prior to ACTG 076. Birth defects in their babies included albinism, polydactyly (extra fingers and toes), clitoral enlargement, heart defects and others. However, “None of these defects are attributable to zidovudine exposure,” the protocol asserted. (9)

Who was a major promoter of giving AZT to pregnant women and their fetuses? NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, MD, under whose auspices ACTG 076 was conducted. He commented in the NIAID News story that “long-term follow up of all of the children born to mothers in this study is essential to learn more about the risks and benefits of the treatment beyond these encouraging early results.” (4)

Promising long-term follow-up was a safe comment for Fauci, laughable though it was. A concurrent study in Europe, the Concorde Trial, found that not only did AZT do nothing to prevent disease and death in HIV-positive individuals, but also that the truncated AZT studies in the US had “an average follow-up of about one year or less.” (5)

I attempted to get more information about Protocol 076 through a FOIA request, which was denied. I appealed the denial to then-Assistant Secretary for Health, Dr. Philip Lee, who upheld it; he advised me to sue the government if I wanted more information, helpfully noting that the District Court of the United States in either my home or business district was probably my best bet for obtaining a review. (6)

As you can see, Fauci and friends were juggling any number of crises in the early 1990s. What follows is a report from 1992 of Fauci’s response to the announcement of cases of “non-HIV AIDS” and their possible connection to ME/CFS. In this report, I briefly mention a TV show I was on with Fauci. After taping wrapped, Fauci said loudly to the well-known moderator of the new talk show, “If I’d known she was going to be here, I wouldn’t have come.”

So, meet 1992’s Anthony Fauci; I hope the experience will be enlightening.

Fauci Snows Larry King: Looking anxious, Fauci tries to play down the seriousness of “non-HIV AIDS”

By Neenyah Ostrom
(First published in the New York Native, August 17, 1992)

Dr. Anthony Fauci tried to convince the host of CNN’s Larry King Live that, whatever the newly reported cases of “mystery AIDS” are, they are nothing to worry about, probably affect the same “risk groups” as does AIDS, are completely unrelated to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, may not be related in any way to AIDS, are certainly not endangering the blood supply, and are possibly not even caused by a virus or any other infectious agent. And, in this political season, Fauci also asserted that the Democratic Congress did not appropriate as much money for AIDS research as the Bush Administration had allocated. Fauci is the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the man in charge of the US government AIDS research effort.

Joining Fauci in this propagandizing was Dr. Mervyn Silverman, the President, Co-Founder, and Acting Executive Director of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR). Silverman’s main mission is on the show, which broadcast August 6, appeared to be to convince the public that the toxic drugs AZT, DDT, and DDC, if taken early enough and in just the right combination, were able to extend life, or at least delay the development of symptoms, or at least improve the quality of life of the patient, or at least be the politically correct thing to do.

King began by asking Fauci to describe what he thought was happening in these “mysterious AIDS” cases in which patients develop severe immunodeficiency and the types of infections suffered by AIDS patients—such a Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia—but are not infected with HIV.

Fauci said that between 20 and 30 such cases had been identified and because such a small number of people were affected, it really was nothing to worry about. Fauci said that it wasn’t clear that these cases represented a new type of AIDS; these patients’ immunodeficiency could, he stressed, be caused by something other than an infectious agent. Fauci speculated that the cases might not even represent a new illness, but that increasingly sophisticated testing of people’s immune systems was turning up what could be “background” immunodeficiencies (whatever those are).

Is the blood supply in danger, King asked. The blood supply was probably perfectly safe, Fauci asserted, and Silverman agreed. King asked them both if they would be willing to get a blood transfusion, should the need arise; both men answered yes.

Some unexpectedly challenging calls—besides the obligatory Howard Stern inquiry—got through to Fauci and Silverman. One man pointed out that Celia Farber, in a recent article in Spin magazine, quoted statistics showing that HIV could be isolated from only about half of AIDS patients. How did Fauci explain that, the caller asked, and King echoed the question.

Fauci replied that the information was not true. King quizzed him again, and Fauci repeated that the information in Spin was not true.

Silverman chimed in that it was really a shame that such articles are printed, because they get people all upset and cause them to question scientific authorities, even to the point of not taking the “AIDS test.”

“But there are some doctors who believe HIV has nothing to do with AIDS, isn’t that right?” King asked Silverman, who replied with a curt “Yes.”

Another caller asked why the blood supply was not being screened for HTLV-II and if the new “mystery AIDS” cases could possibly have anything to do with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Fauci responded that the blood supply is screened for HTLV-II and then appeared to suffer a slight short-term memory loss, asking, “What was that second question?” King reminded him that it was about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome’s possible connection to the non-HIV AIDS cases.

People who have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fauci said, do not have the profound immunosuppression seen in the new non-HIV AIDS cases. For instance, he pointed out, they do not have T-cell counts that fall below 300.

Fauci was clearly very uncomfortable talking about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and couldn’t quite figure out where to look so his eyes darted everywhere: to King, to the camera, to Silverman, off into space. For most of the show, in fact, he looked ready to bolt.

King asked if more money should be allocated for AIDS research; should the government be doing more?

Silverman took over, pointing out that Fauci, as a fairly high-ranking employee of the Bush Administration, couldn’t be expected to criticize it. Silverman continued to say that more money for research was always needed.

Fauci rose to the defense of his employer, saying that the Congress had not appropriated all of the money for AIDS research that President George Bush had included in his budget.

The show ended with an angry call from a physician in the Midwest who treats AIDS patients. He demanded to know why Fauci and other health officials had not informed physicians about the cases of non-HIV AIDS before the information appeared in Newsweek. Shouldn’t the doctors know about it before the mass media, this doctor asked sarcastically.

Fauci became very defensive, asserting that it had only become clear in the last couple of weeks that the non-HIV AIDS cases constituted a real phenomenon and, therefore, there had previously been nothing to inform the physicians about. He did not look happy at the show’s end.

Fauci’s good on television, as long as he’s being touted as President George Bush’s hero or patted on the back for rushing toxic drugs through the approval process without adequate safety testing. But when reporters start acting like reporters, as they have since the non-HIV AIDS cases came to light, Fauci’s thin skin gets him into trouble; he becomes defensive, condescending, and sarcastic.

The toughest spot Fauci has been in since the non-HIV AIDS cases were announced occurred on CNN’s Newsmaker Saturday, when science reporter Jeff Levine reminded Fauci of an interview he’d done with Levine about 11 years ago. Levine had asked Fauci about the 29 cases of severe, unexplained immunodeficiency recently found in gay men and Haitians, he reminded the health official; Fauci had assured the reporter that the new illness was unlikely to become widespread. Might we not be seeing the outbreak of another illness that could create an epidemic as widespread as the AIDS epidemic, Levine asked. Fauci snapped back that it was unlikely.

Fauci has shown a stubborn closed-mindedness throughout the AIDS epidemic and the Native has previously raised the character question: Does Anthony Fauci have the character to lead the nation’s AIDS research?

Has Fauci’s loyalty to his lifelong employer, NIAID—for which institute he has worked since completing his medical education in 1968—caused him to ignore or reject information about AIDS that originates elsewhere?

Fauci has consistently denigrated the importance of the findings of Dr. Shyh-Ching Lo of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology—another government research institution, but not Fauci’s own. Fauci has consistently refused to consider the possibility that any organism other than HIV might be important in causing AIDS.

Shortly after Lo’s finding—first described as a “Virus-Like Infectious Agent (VLIA),” but then identified as a mycoplasma—had resurfaced in the mass media in early 1989 (Lo was not allowed to talk to the press for nearly three years after he first announced he’d found a new pathogen in AIDS patients), Fauci told me that Lo’s organism had nothing to do with AIDS.

“The scientific evidence is overwhelming that HIV causes AIDS,” Fauci said during the taping of a cable news talk show on which we both appeared (with numerous other people).

Since then, it has been shown that Lo’s mycoplasma is the cause of AAN, AIDS-Associated Nephropathy, an often-fatal kidney infection that attacks people with AIDS.

That wasn’t known in early 1989, but that is irrelevant; it is Fauci’s arrogant response to questions about the importance of new pathogens that bears upon the character question. Fauci didn’t consider the finding seriously; he didn’t say, “We must find out what this organism is and if it makes people sick”; he said, “The scientific evidence is overwhelming that HIV causes AIDS.”

Even after the discoverer of HIV, Pasteur Institute’s Dr. Luc Montagnier, recommended people with AIDS be treated with readily available and reasonably inexpensive antibiotics that are effective against the mycoplasma that he and Lo both found in AIDS patients, the US government’s health officials have not informed physicians that simple antibiotic treatment might keep their AIDS patients healthy, and alive, longer. The responsibility for that inaction must be laid squarely on the director of US AIDS research, Anthony Fauci.

Fauci has shown that he is unable to deal with any challenge to the government’s scientific dogma about AIDS; he regards such challenges not as attempts to reach the truth about the epidemic, but as attacks on his integrity, as a column he wrote for the AAAS Observer in September 1989 made abundantly clear.

Of Berkeley Professor Peter Duesberg’s assertion that HIV does not cause AIDS, Fauci wrote that he “laughed at that for a while, but it led to a lot of public concern that maybe HIV is a hoax.” And those reporters who were foolish enough to cover Duesberg’s dissent, Fauci wrote, were upsetting the general public, like his sister Denise.

“My barometer of what the general public is really thinking is my sister Denise,” Fauci explained. “My sister Denise is an intelligent woman who reads avidly, listens to the radio, and watches television, but she is not a scientist. When she calls me and questions my integrity as a scientist, there really is a problem. Denise has called me at least ten times about Peter Duesberg....”

Fauci’s sister Denise’s efforts to find out if Duesberg’s argument has any merit is perceived by her brother as an attack on his integrity.

Thus is Fauci’s flawed character revealed: He possesses such hubris that any question that challenges his assumptions, even a question of objective fact, is perceived by him as a personal attack.

Such overweening pride recently proved to be the downfall of Nobel Laureate David Baltimore. When some of the data in a scientific paper he coauthored several years ago was questioned by a young post-doc, Baltimore ignored the young woman, characterized her as a “discontented” troublemaker, and did nothing when she lost her job. During a Congressional investigation into possible forgery of these questionable data, Baltimore decried the investigation and called it a “witch hunt.” When the FBI proved that the data were out-and-out fakery, Baltimore—primarily because of the arrogance he had displayed throughout the entire embarrassing affair—was forced to resign his position as President of Rockefeller University.

The Baltimore brand of arrogance appears to be Fauci’s greatest character flaw, and may be Fauci’s undoing as it was Baltimore’s.

Fauci certainly has accomplices in misleading the public about AIDS, and they would include any and everyone who contributed to the dogma that AIDS can be prevented by changing certain distasteful—to them—behaviors.

Twelve years of Republican administrations have not brought the country simply into the worst recession since the Great Depression; we also teeter on the brink of a health disaster the likes of which we have never seen.

Twelve years of Republican administrations, and the corrupt and just plain bad science that has been condoned, even rewarded, have allowed an epidemic of acquired immune deficiency, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, to run rampant in the population.

Twelve years of Republican administrations have placed the entire country—but most particularly health care workers—at risk for developing tuberculosis, a disease that, in the pre-Reagan era, was thought to be nearly eradicated in the US.

Because of the corrupt government AIDS and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome research that Anthony Fauci has presided over, millions of Americans may become completely disabled in the near future as their immune systems decay.

The appearance of the non-HIV AIDS cases may just expose the error and the fraud presided over by Fauci, which he is too proud to acknowledge and correct.

With the acknowledgement of the non-HIV AIDS cases occurring in people outside of the recognized “risk groups,” the behavior modification mantra that government health officials have been using to put themselves to sleep at night is not going to work anymore.

Anthony Fauci is about to have a lot of sleepless nights.

Kindle and paperback versions of my most recent books, America’s Biggest Cover-Up: 50 More Things Everyone Should Know About The Chronic Fatigue Syn­drome Epidemic And Its Link To AIDS, Updated 2^nd Edition (2022) and Ampligen: The Battle for a Promising ME/CFS Drug (2022), are available on Amazon.com

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1.          Shannon Firth. “Fauci Denies ‘False Accusation’ of COVID Origins Cover-Up. Republicans question his interactions with scientists who may have acted improperly.” MEDPAGE TODAY, updated June 5, 2024. https://www.medpagetoday.com/washington-watch/washington-watch/110460?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2024-06-03&eun=g2191631d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Headlines%20Evening%202024-06-03&utm_term=NL_Daily_DHE_dual-gmail-definition
2.        Office of Communications, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “Informational Statement: AZT for Asymptomatic HIV Infected Patients.” January 31, 1994. Reproduced in the New York Native, Issue 568, March 7, 1994.
3.        Paul A. Volberding, et al. New England Journal of Medicine, April 5, 1990.
4.        “ACTG 076: Questions and Answers”; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Office of Communications, February 21, 1994.
5.        Jean-Pierre Alboulker and Ann Maria Swart. “Preliminary Analysis of the Concorde Trial”; The Lancet 341:889, April 3, 1993.
6.        Neenyah Ostrom. “Tuskegee II: The government refuses to release any data on pregnant women and their infants being given AZT—are birth defects being hidden?” New York Native, Issue 562, January 24, 1994.
7.        Neenyah Ostrom. “Thalidomide for Black Mothers”; New York Native, Issue 568, March 7, 1994.
8.        “ACT UP Update”; Network, July 1992.
9.        “Phase III Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trial to Evaluate the Efficiency, Safety, and Tolerance of Zidovudine for the Prevention of Maternal Fetal HIV Transmission.” Sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectioius Diseases. IND 28.972. Version 2.0. “FINAL.” September 1, 1992.
10.  Ostrom, Neenyah; “Fauci Snows Larry King: Looking anxious, Fauci tries to play down the seriousness of ‘non-HIV AIDS’ “; New York Native, issue 487, August 17, 1992.
11.  Fauci, Anthony S. “Writing for My Sister Denise”; AAAS Observer, September 1, 1989, page 4.