At 79 years old, Dr. Anthony Fauci — who has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984 — has yet to come out with the “Big One” — a vaccine or infectious disease treatment that will allow him to retire with a victory under his belt.
He failed to create a successful vaccine for AIDS, SARS, MERS and Ebola. A COVID-19 vaccine is essentially his last chance to go out in a blaze of glory. As evidenced by his history, he will stop at nothing to protect Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine and Gilead’s antiviral Remdesivir.
He even threw tried and true pandemic protocols out the window when COVID-19 hit, turning into an unquestioning spokesman for draconian liberty-stripping measures instead. To echo a question asked by Dr. Sal Martingano in his article,1 “Dr. Fauci: ‘Expert’ or Co-Conspirator,” why are we not questioning this so-called expert?
Fauci ‘Has Been Wrong About Everything’
The risk we take when listening to Fauci is that, so far, he’s been wrong about most things. In a July 14, 2020, “Opposing View” editorial in USA Today, White House adviser Peter Navarro, director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, stated that Fauci “has been wrong about everything that I have interacted with him on.”2 According to Navarro, Fauci’s errors in judgment include:3
• Opposing the ban on incoming flights from China in late January 2020.
• Telling the American people the novel virus outbreak was nothing to worry about well into February.
• Flip-flopping on the use of masks — first mocking people for wearing them, and then insisting they should. In fact, mid-July, he suddenly urged governments to “be as forceful as possible” on mask rules.4
• Claiming there was only anecdotal evidence supporting the use of hydroxychloroquine, when the scientific grounds for it go as far back as 2005, when the study,5 “Chloroquine Is a Potent Inhibitor of SARS Coronavirus Infection and Spread,” was published in the Virology Journal.
Fauci should have been well aware of this publication. According to that study,6 “Chloroquine has strong antiviral effects on SARS-CoV infection of primate cells. These inhibitory effects are observed when the cells are treated with the drug either before or after exposure to the virus, suggesting both prophylactic and therapeutic advantage,” the study authors said. In other words, the drug worked both for prevention and treatment.
As noted by Navarro, more recent research found hydroxychloroquine reduced the mortality rate among COVID-19 patients by 50% when used early.
Interestingly, in a March 24, 2020, interview7 with Chris Stigall, Fauci did say that — were he to speak strictly as a doctor treating patients — he would certainly prescribe chloroquine to COVID-19 patients, particularly if there were no other options.
Then, in August, he flipped back to insisting hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work,8 even though by that time, there were several studies demonstrating its effectiveness against COVID-19 specifically.
So, it appears Fauci has had a hard time making up his mind on this issue as well, on the one hand dismissing the drug as either untested or ineffective against COVID-19, and on the other admitting it would be wise to use, seeing how the options are so limited.
Navarro continues:9
“Now Fauci says a falling mortality rate doesn’t matter when it is the single most important statistic to help guide the pace of our economic reopening. The lower the mortality rate, the faster and more we can open. So when you ask me whether I listen to Dr. Fauci’s advice, my answer is: only with skepticism and caution.”
Fauci Has Done Nothing to Help Unite the Country
While Fauci claims to be exasperated by how political the pandemic has become,10 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pointed out in an August 2, 2020, Instagram post11 that Fauci himself is, at least in part, part of the problem, as his double standards on hydroxychloroquine have done much to polarize and divide the nation:
“Fauci insists he will not approve HCQ for COVID until its efficacy is proven in ‘randomized, double blind placebo studies.’ To date, Dr. Fauci has never advocated such studies for any of the 72 vaccine doses added to the mandatory childhood schedule since he took over NIAID in 1984. Nor is he requiring them for the COVID vaccines currently racing for approval.
Why should chloroquine be the only remedy required to cross this high hurdle? HCQ is less in need of randomized placebo studies than any of these vaccines since its safety is well established after 60 years of use and decades on WHO’s listed of ‘essential medicines.’
Fauci’s peculiar hostility towards HCQ is consistent with his half century bias favoring vaccines and patent medicines. Dr. Fauci’s double standards create confusion, mistrust and polarization.”
In a June 10, 2020, article,12 Global Research also questioned Fauci’s many attempts to disparage the drug for no apparently valid reason; even promoting the fake (and ultimately retracted) Lancet study that claimed to show hydroxychloroquine was dangerous. At the end of the day, who benefits? Well, certainly it benefits the drug and vaccine industries, which seems to be where Fauci’s loyalties lie.
Fauci’s Bias Is Hard to Miss
While Fauci is not named on the patents of either Moderna’s vaccine or Remdesivir, the NIH does have a 50% stake in Moderna’s vaccine,13 and the recognition that would come with a successful vaccine launch would certainly include Fauci.
He also has lots to lose — if nothing else, his pride — if Remdesivir doesn’t become a blockbuster, as his NIAID is sponsoring the clinical trials.14 The NIAID also supported the original research into Remdesivir, when it was aimed at treating Ebola.15
His bias here is clear for anyone to see. April 29, 2020, he stated16 Remdesivir "has a clear-cut and significant positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery." How good is that? Patients on the drug recovered in 11 days, on average, compared to 15 days among those receiving a placebo. Overall, the improvement rate for the drug was 31%.
Meanwhile, research17 now shows hydroxychloroquine reduced mortality by 50% when given early, and many doctors anecdotally claim survival rates close to 100%. This still isn’t good enough for Fauci, who continues insisting hydroxychloroquine is a bust.18
His stance on these two drugs certainly doesn’t make sense based on the data alone. But it does make sense if he wants (or has been instructed) to protect the profits of Remdesivir.
As director of NIAID, which has been part of Remdesivir’s development from the start, why wouldn’t he want to see it become a moneymaker for the agency he dedicated his career to? It also makes sense when you consider his primary job is to raise funds for biodefense research, primarily vaccines but also diagnostics and drug therapies.19,20
Fauci Doubts Safety of Russian Vaccine
Early in August 2020, Russia announced they would begin vaccinating citizens with its own COVID-19 vaccine, despite not finishing large-scale human trials.21 The announcement drew skepticism from American infectious disease specialists, including Fauci, who said he has “serious doubts” that Russia’s COVID-19 vaccine is actually safe and effective.22
He’s probably right on that point. It’s hard to imagine you can prove safety and effectiveness in a mere two months of trials. But the fast-tracked vaccine efforts of the U.S. and EU are hardly bound to be significantly better, considering the many shortcuts that are being taken.
Fauci Ignores Two Decades of Failed Coronavirus Vaccines
Despite being in a position to know better, Fauci conveniently ignores the many failed attempts to create other coronavirus vaccines over the past two decades, including vaccines against SARS and MERS. A paper23 by Eriko Padron-Regalado, “Vaccines for SARS-CoV-2: Lessons From Other Coronavirus Strains” reviews some of these past experiences. As noted in the Conservative Review:24
“Since their emergence in 2003 and 2012 respectively, no safe and efficacious human vaccines for either SARS-Cov1 or MERS have been developed.
Moreover, experimental non-human (animal model) evaluations of four SARS-Cov1 candidate vaccine types, revealed that despite conferring some protection against infection with SARS-Cov1, each also caused serious lung injury, caused by an overreaction of the immune system, upon viral challenge.25
Identical ‘hypersensitive-type’ lung injury occurred26 when mice were administered a candidate MERS-Cov vaccine, then challenged with infectious virus, negating the ostensible benefit achieved by their development of promising … ‘antibodies’ … which might have provided immunity to MERS-Cov.
These disappointing experimental observations must serve as a cautionary tale for SARS-Cov2 vaccination programs to control epidemic COVID-19 disease.”
NIAID Safety Controversies and Ethics Violations
When recently asked for a rebuttal to criticism of his leadership during the pandemic, Fauci replied, “I think you can trust me,” citing his long record of service in government medicine. However, that long service record is fraught with ethics and safety lapses.
For example, in 2005, NPR reported27 the NIH tested novel AIDS drugs on hundreds of HIV-positive children in state foster care during the late 1980s and90s without assigning patient advocates to monitor the children’s health, as is required by law in most states.
Fauci was appointed director of the NIAID in 1984. The AIDS research was part of his research portfolio, and the AIDS research division reported directly to him, so these violations occurred on his watch.28 In 2008, two NIH biomedical ethicists published a paper on the controversial practice of using wards of the state as guinea pigs, noting:29
"Enrolling wards of the state in research raises two major concerns: the possibility that an unfair share of the burdens of research might fall on wards, and the need to ensure interests of individual wards are accounted for ... Having special protections only for some categories is misguided. Furthermore, some of the existing protections ought to be strengthened."
Under Fauci, the NIAID became the largest funder of HIV/AIDS in the world.30 Despite that, numerous articles over the years have discussed how AIDS activists have been less than satisfied with Fauci and the NIAID.31,32,33 A 1986 article stated:34
“If Fauci were less intent on amassing power within the federal health bureaucracy … he would have left AIDS treatment research with the NCI, where it began, relying on that institute's proven expertise in organizing large, multisite clinical trials for cancer therapies."
A July 23, 2020, article in Just the News lists several other safety and ethics problems that Fauci has been involved in through the years, including conflict of interest violations in vaccine research.35
Just the News also interviewed NIAID chief of ethics and regulatory compliance Dr. Jonathan Fishbein, whom the NIAID was forced to reinstate in 2005 after it was determined that Fishbein had been wrongly fired in retaliation for raising concerns about lack of safety in some of the agency’s research:36
“Fishbein said … Fauci failed to take responsibility for the managers and researchers working below him when signs of trouble emerged, allowing problems to persist until others intervened. ‘Fauci is all about Fauci,’ Fishbein said. ‘He loves being the headline. It’s his ego.’”
Fauci’s Connections to Wuhan Lab
By now, you probably also know that the NIAID funded gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. As reported by Newsweek:37
“In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million.”
This money was not given directly, but rather funneled to the Wuhan lab via the EcoHealth Alliance. According to a recent report by The Wall Street Journal,38 the NIH is now insisting EcoHealth Alliance submit all information and materials from the Wuhan lab before it’s allowed to resume funding.
Fauci is a longtime proponent of dangerous gain-of-function research. In 2003, he wrote an article39 published in the journal Nature on how “the world needs new and creative ways to counter bioterrorism.”
“We will pursue innovative approaches for modulating innate immunity to induce and enhance protection against many biological pathogens, as well as simple and rapid molecularly based diagnostics to detect, characterize and quantify infectious threats,” Fauci wrote.
“These are lofty goals that may take many years to accomplish — but we must aspire to them. Third, we must enormously strengthen our interactions with the private sector, including biotechnology companies and large pharmaceutical corporations.
Many biodefence-related products that we are pursuing do not provide sufficient incentives for industry — the potential profit margin for companies is tenuous, and there is no guarantee that products would be used.
Therefore, we will seek non-traditional collaborations with industry, for example guaranteeing that products will be purchased if companies sign up … so that we can quickly make available effective vaccines and treatments …”
With that, there can be little question about which team Fauci is on. He’s on the side of drug and vaccine makers, and has been for decades. There’s no money to be made by either the agency or its private collaborators from natural products such as vitamin D, vitamin C, quercetin or its drug equivalent, hydroxychloroquine. All of these are dirt-cheap and off patent.
Prediction Track Record = Null
Fauci’s predictions for COVID-19 mortality have also turned out to be as inaccurate as all of his previous predictions. In 1987, he predicted heterosexual infection of HIV/AIDS would rise to 10% by 1991. It never rose above 4%.
He predicted the bird flu would result in 2 million to 7 million deaths. In the end, the avian H5N1 flu killed 440 worldwide. He sought billions of dollars to combat the threat of Zika, a virus that fizzled without making much of an impact anywhere.40
When you look at his track record, you realize he’s predicted “nightmare” scenarios for decades, none of which have materialized. Considering how rarely Fauci has ever been right, maybe it’s time to do as Navarro suggested: Listen with skepticism and caution.
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