Scripps Research Institute scientist Dr. Kristian G. Andersen accused congressional Republicans of “selective[ly] quote-mining” his emails in their investigations of former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease director Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Andersen provided written testimony to the House Oversight and Government Accountability Committee ahead of a Tuesday Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing. The subcommittee subpoenaed Andersen in June, seeking information about his March 2020 paper that downplayed the likelihood of a lab leak. He corresponded with Fauci and several other scientists during the draft process, with Republicans arguing Fauci played a leading role in drafting the paper.
Fauci and two other scientists “prompted” Andersen and three other authors to “provide agnostic and scientifically informed hypotheses around the origin of the virus,” Andersen wrote in 2020. The authors of “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” sent the paper to Fauci and National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins before they submitted it to Nature Magazine.
According to Andersen, however, claims that “Fauci prompted the drafting of ‘Proximal Origins’ to disprove the lab leak theory” are “false and based on selective quote-mining of private emails.”
“There was no ‘prompting’ to disprove, or dismiss, a potential ‘lab leak.’ As for the meaning of ‘prompted,’ I was referring to the fact that Drs. Farrar, Fauci, and Collins all encouraged us to look more closely at the important question of COVID-19 origins, and more specifically, our initial hypothesis that this could have been an engineered or lab-associated virus,” he added.
WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 08: House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) (C) questions witnesses during a subcommittee hearing with ranking member Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA) (L) in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on March 08, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Andersen, an infectious disease specialist, initially supported the lab leak theory. He told Fauci in a Jan. 31, 2020, email that COVID-19’s “features (potentially) look engineered,” and that his team found the virus’s “genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.” On Feb. 4, however, Andersen blasted the lab leak as “crackpot” and “fringe” in an email to Peter Daszak, who worked on bat-based coronaviruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Between the emails, Andersen, Fauci, Wellcome Trust founder Jeremy Farrar and other scientists participated in a conference call. Although what was discussed is unknown, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Dr. Robert Redfield told the subcommittee he was excluded because he supported the lab leak theory. (RELATED: Fauci Was Warned About Possible Creation Of COVID-19 In January 2020, Newly Transcribed Emails Show)
“I was quite upset as the CDC director that I was excluded in those discussions. Why would they do this? Because I had a different point of view and I was told they made a decision that they would keep this confidential,” Redfield testified in March.