Bryce Nickels & Jay Bhattacharya interview Rand Paul
Summary and transcript of the live interview with Senator Rand Paul on X.
On Thursday, June 13, 2024, Rutgers Professor and Biosafety Now co-founder Bryce Nickels and Stanford Professor Jay Bhattacharya conducted a live interview with Senator Rand Paul on X.
In this wide-ranging interview about the “COVID cover-up,” Senator Paul discussed many topics, including Anthony Fauci’s recent testimony before the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on June 3, broader issues with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), gain-of-function research, and the upcoming bipartisan hearing in the Senate on the origin of COVID-19 on June 18.
On Anthony Fauci: Senator Paul discussed Fauci’s attempts to distance himself from his long-time special advisor at the NIAID, David Morens. Paul noted, "He immediately, through his assistant of 20 years, his special adviser of 20 years, under the bus," suggesting Fauci was trying to avoid being implicated in Morens’ actions. Paul added, "I think when someone protests that much…you wonder if the distancing has a purpose."
On FOIA Evasion: Senator Paul emphasized the severity of Morens' and potentially others' efforts to delete emails and evade FOIA, which he argued are felony crimes. Morens was accused of instructing people to use private emails and phones to communicate with Fauci to evade FOIA requests. Paul mentioned a Morens email that said, "I've talked to the FOIA lady, the FOIA lady's explained to me how to delete searches even after they've been requested legally." He also remarked, "The idea that someone whose job is to facilitate Freedom of Information Act and to comply with it was actively teaching people how to evade the Freedom of Information Act and to destroy evidence. These are felony crimes."
On the Partisan Divide: Senator Paul highlighted the stark contrast in how Democrats and Republicans treated Fauci during the hearing in the House of Representatives on June 3. He observed, "The Republicans were pretty hardcore in drilling down on Fauci and malfeasance and cover-up, and to a person, the Democrats were all bending the knee, kissing the ring, and extolling his greatness."
On the NIH's Lack of Transparency: Senator Paul expressed frustration over the lack of transparency in how NIH handles FOIA requests and research funding. "We have two 250-page documents that are completely redacted, and we can't get a copy of them." He also stated, "It's my contention that the NIH is at least as secretive, if not more secretive, than the CIA."
On His Conditional Support for the NIH: Senator Paul acknowledged the importance of the NIH and his historical support for its funding, but he emphasized the need for greater transparency and accountability. He stated, "I'm a senator who's voted for very, very little federal spending, but I have voted for NIH funding. So that tells you something because I have a high degree of scrutiny for what we do." However, he expressed strong dissatisfaction with the NIH's current practices, saying, "I'm so unhappy with what they're doing now that if I had my druthers, I wouldn't give them another penny. In fact, I'd zero them out completely, I'd say you get nothing. Not that that's the end result, you get nothing until you cooperate with the investigation."
On Donald Trump: Senator Paul suggested his support for Trump’s presidential campaign may be contingent on Trump's willingness to ensure transparency and accountability at the NIH. Paul stated, "I haven't decided to get involved in the presidential race, but ultimately when I do talk to Donald Trump, part of whether or not I get involved in that is going to be whether or not he's going to release every scrap of paper and appoint someone to be head of NIH and HHS that will reveal all the documents and will have an honest appraisal of whether there was a cover-up and heads will roll." He also emphasized the need for Trump to take significant actions to "drain the swamp."
On Gain-of-Function Research: Senator Paul discussed the need for greater oversight and transparency in gain-of-function research, highlighting the potential risks it poses. He mentioned his efforts to push for legislation that would create a commission to oversee such research across all government agencies. "Our hope is to have a bill that sets up a commission, presidential commission that oversees all gain-of-function research, classified, unclassified, throughout all of government." He explained the broader implications, saying, "The virus in all likelihood did leak out and all likelihood was gain of function and caused a pandemic that 15 million people died from."
On NIH Reform: Senator Paul proposed significant changes at the NIH, including term limits for its leaders, increased transparency in financial disclosures, and splitting Fauci's role into three positions. He argued that these reforms are necessary to prevent the accumulation of too much power and ensure accountability. "I would term limit them all, either two four-year terms or two five-year terms, so they don't last generation after generation." He also emphasized the need for transparency in financial disclosures, "There's no way you should be on the vaccine committee voting for Pfizer or Moderna's vaccine if you're receiving royalties from those companies."
On Bioweapons: Senator Paul stated his firm opposition to the U.S. or any government developing offensive bioweapons and emphasized the importance of international cooperation to prevent the weaponization of viruses. "I'm absolutely opposed to our government or any government developing offensive weapons."
On Nuclear Weapons: Senator Paul expressed his opposition to the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States. He believes the U.S. should explicitly state that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons, emphasizing that such a policy would send a clear message to other nuclear powers. He further acknowledged that even the retaliatory use of nuclear weapons would be catastrophic, highlighting his broader stance against the weaponization of extremely dangerous technologies, including viruses. "I think we need to go further. For example, we're talking about weapons. I'm against, I think our country should be explicit that we are not for the first use of nuclear weapons."
On Bipartisan Cooperation: Senator Paul discussed the upcoming bipartisan hearings on COVID origins and biomedical research. He emphasized the need for bipartisan support to pass meaningful reforms. "We have gotten some cooperation now from Chairman Peters, Democrat. He's allowing some of these investigations to go forward."
On the Upcoming Senate Hearings: Senator Paul discussed the upcoming hearings focused on the origins of COVID-19 and further discussions on gain-of-function research. "The first hearing will be to examine the origins of COVID. We have Richard Ebright from Rutgers... and Stephen Quay... They’ll both be talking about sort of evidence for why they believe that the evidence points towards the virus coming from a lab." He added, "The second one is going to be more about what we should do to reform..."
On the New Gain-of-Function Legislation: Senator Paul spoke about his intention to introduce legislation to improve oversight and accountability in scientific research, particularly related to gain-of-function studies. He mentioned the need for bipartisan support for the bill: "We're sending it around...because we want to hear comments from everybody...Nothing has a chance really of passing unless the Democrats agree to it. So we have to get Chairman Peters to agree to it. He's open to looking at it. They're looking at it now."
Below is a transcript:
Senator Rand Paul 00:00
Good morning, guys. Glad to be with you.
Bryce Nickels 00:03
Good morning. So, I have already given you an introduction. I wanted to kind of just jump right in because I know we have a limited amount of time with you. We were just talking about Anthony Fauci. I don't know if you heard a little bit of that and I wanted to begin by asking you what you thought about the Fauci hearing that we had on the third of June.
Senator Rand Paul 00:27
You know, I think he gave us very little new information, but what I was struck most by was that he immediately, through his assistant of 20 years, his special adviser of 20 years under the bus, you know, this David Morens, and when asked about Morens, he says, I barely knew him. He didn't come to meetings. He wasn't part of the policy team. He didn't have access to my office, and furthermore, he didn't even have an office in my building. And so, I think when someone protests that much, you wonder if the protestations are--the distancing has a purpose, you know, if he's really worried about being caught up in David Morens’ web. And Morens was pretty explicit. He's pretty much dead to rights in the sense that he said to many people, don't use my government email, use my Gmail, use my private phone, if you need to get messages to Tony Fauci, I can hand carry them like a courier, and I can give him notes, I can call his private phone. I've talked to the FOIA lady, the FOIA lady's explained to me how to delete searches even after they've been requested legally. He changed people's names. They used to take Kristian Anderson's name and change one of the vowels to a dollar sign, which I think there's a certain irony there, but all of this Morens’ testimony was so damning that Fauci felt necessary to completely disassociate himself from that. And I guess the conclusion I took from this, that if I were in charge of this hearing, and my private advice has been to those in charge of the hearing, I would ask Morens to come back in. And it can be done as a private deposition, but the main reason I'd ask him to come back in is that he basically is out on an island by himself. Fauci pretty much says, you know, I don't know the guy, I never did any of those things, I didn't delete any of my emails. So if Morens now doesn't like Fauci calling him a liar, maybe they get better testimony from Morens on a second go round. I've also suggested that the FOIA lady be brought in, and I think she is scheduled for a deposition. And the idea that someone whose job is to facilitate Freedom of Information Act and to comply with it was actively teaching people how to evade the Freedom of Information Act and to destroy evidence. These are felony crimes. And I think if you really had a prosecutor worth their salt, Morens would have already been indicted and charged, and the FOIA lady in all likelihood would. But from that, you might be able to get the truth of the matter about Fauci. I don't think he's been honest. I don't think he's telling the truth. I think in all likelihood, yes, emails were deleted. The main question I would ask the FOIA lady is, I suspect someone like Fauci didn't take the time to delete his emails, but I would ask her point blank, under oath, did you facilitate or help him to delete emails? The thing about the deleted emails, were they any big deal? Well, you have emails from David Morens, Fauci's assistant, saying, well, I think we're safe now. I deleted all those earlier emails. I think we're safe now. And it's like, that sounds like the whole language of people committing crimes. I mean, that sounds incredibly indicting of his behavior. So I don't know that Fauci necessarily told as much. He did deny all the allegations, though. So I guess the only way we know if he is lying is either to subpoena his records, which I would have done a year ago, his private phone records and his private email records, because I don't think I've taken at face value that he didn't conduct business on his private email. I think it should be, we should check that to see if he's telling the truth.
Bryce Nickels 04:00
Jay, before you ask a question, just to follow up on that, it's interesting you mentioned the David Morens' piece. Is that the piece that you think will resonate the most with the public, that he threw his long -term close associate under the bus?
Senator Rand Paul 04:18
I think it resonates only if Morens were indicted. I think the Democrats, the Democrats on the committee, though, were very hard on Morens. They played kid gloves with Fauci and still treat him as a saint, and that was another striking aspect of the hearing is that to a person, the Republicans were pretty hardcore in drilling down on Fauci and malfeasance and cover-up, and to a person, the Democrats were all bending the knee, kissing the ring, and extolling his greatness. It wasn't the same for Morens. They all criticized Morens pretty much, and so you would think that the best chance of getting further to the truth is that Morens doesn't like being the fall guy, but then again, he's still sort of – they say he's on unpaid leave. Some people say he's on paid leave. They really won't give us a direct answer, but the fact that he hadn't been fired and he maintained that he's been absolved by the investigation over there makes us think that there needs to be a housecleaning from a new president, because if the NIH thinks the things he did were okay and that he doesn't – he just gets a slap on the wrist, I hope that's not the NIH's conclusion, but if it is, we've got bigger problems at the NIH.
Jay Bhattacharya 05:34
I mean, it's striking that you have an environment at the NIH that seems to applaud this kind of hiding of basic functions. I remember there was a FOIA of the 2020 research agenda of the NIAID, Fauci's organization. And literally every single page of that document, which should be a public document, was blanked out with a B4, B5 redaction for FOIA so the public can't know what the NIH was up to or planning to do in 2020. And just as a member of the public, it's extremely frustrating. We taxpayers pay the taxes, we pay for David Morens’ time, we pay for Tony Fauci's time, and they're acting as if they are above the law. Senator Paul, why is it that the Democratic Party seems to be so much like the protective of Tony Fauci rather than critical? Like it seems so clear and obvious that he has important things he should be saying. And I mean, I'm so glad to see that the hearing you're gonna have next week is joint with Senator Peters. Cause I think this really should be something that's beyond partisan politics. It's something that the pandemic has affected every single human life. How can it be that one political party wants to not look into it?
Senator Rand Paul 07:04
You know, it is perplexing. The Democrats historically, as a party, have been a party that's always interested in anything that leads to death. You know, pollution, plastic in your baby bottles, plastic in, you know, but all kinds of things that might cause cancer might be a problem. Democrats, we wanna investigate them to in excess, probably. But here, we have a million people died in the United States from a virus. There's a lot of evidence that came from a lab that we were funding, and yet there's a complete disinterest. We've gotten a little bit of cooperation, mostly with a little bit of duress, frankly. We trade things back and forth. We trade approval of other pieces of legislation for signatures to get records, and so we pushed on and on. But to give you an example of the resistance, you mentioned a document. We have two 250-page documents that are completely redacted, and we can't get a copy of them. Even though the Senate and the House voted unanimously to declassify everything, the problem is these aren't even classified, and yet they refuse to give them to us. To me, the most important bit of information that they've refused to give us is concerning the determination of whether or not the research in Wuhan was gain of function. So under the law, it should have gone to a safety committee called the P3CO committee, but it never made it there. And so the P3CO committee would have made the judgment whether it was gain of function or not. But in committee, when I challenged Fauci on this, Fauci responded and said, all of my scientists up and down the line, they have all said it's not gain of function. And so my question to them is, we'd like to see the deliberations. There's a meeting, and we only know this because of Freedom of Information Act, but there's a weekly meeting called the Dual Use Research of Concern slash gain of function meeting. So there are discussion of these projects. We'd like to hear the arguments because we think they made a grave error that let's say there were three scientists on one side and two on the other. Let's hear their arguments for the scientists who believed it was gain of function. And if they thought it wasn't, let's hear the arguments for why it wasn't. And the reason why this is a grave error is that the virus in all likelihood did leak out and all likelihood was gain of function and caused a pandemic that 15 million people died from. So that's not a small error. You would think it would be primary among the things we would wanna know would be what were the deliberations? What were the arguments? Because the people who made those arguments now need to be challenged and those arguments need to be challenged and then the process needs to be challenged. So we have gotten some cooperation now from Chairman Peters, Democrat. He's allowing some of these investigations to go forward. And our hope is we've written a bill that we've sent to him. Our hope is to have a bill that sets up a commission, presidential commission that oversees all gain of function research, classified, unclassified, throughout all of government, throughout all the agencies. Because this stuff is hidden under bushel and basket throughout the entire six trillion dollar government. There's a lot of places you can be doing this research including classified areas. But this commission would overlook all of that and we would define what gain of function is and then it would be their job and their ability to reach out and into any portion of government to look for this research. The big reform is the people doing this would not be the people dispensing the funds. There's too much of a cozy relationship between the recipient of the funds and the dispensers of the funds. And so those people cannot make objective decisions anymore. And it's got even worse at NIH. Now that they get $450 million from Moderna, how can NIH be objective with determining things with regard to grants that involve Moderna since they're recipients of so much money? So there's a lot of things that have to be done. We think the bill would go a long way towards this. I think why the resistance from the Democrats is perplexing but I think the Democrat philosophy in general is that central planning is acceptable, that healthcare would be better dispensed if we had like a czar or a king or a dictator of health. And they just don't have a problem with that. They think that experts know better than the common man. They think the common man is not smart enough to make a decision whether they get a vaccine or not. And frankly, I reject all of that. And I'll give you one quick example before we get to the next question. For the most part, over age 65, vaccines were voluntary. If you were still working with the government or in the military, it wasn't voluntary. But over 65, most people is voluntary. It's like 97% of people voluntarily chose to get it over 65. Because they read the newspaper and they saw the people dying were over 65. The people under age 15 that have gotten this vaccine, it's like three or 4%. People are a lot smarter than you think. They've, you know, moms have addressed and dads have addressed the risk of the vaccine versus the risk of the disease for a kid. And 80 year olds have made this risk assessment. And by and large, the voluntary assessments, I think are actually pretty smart. But the government doesn't want that. The government wants to mandate that your six month old kid take three vaccines, which I think is actually malpractice. But it is a philosophy of difference where we respect the individual and think the individual can make rational, reasonable decisions and should be allowed to voluntarily. And the other side, which really doesn't care much for individual freedom, medical freedom, and thinks that experts know best. And because of that, I think they've defended Fauci to the bitter end.
Bryce Nickels 12:37
Can I sort of, there's a lot to unpack there. I guess what I would ask is you seemed actually to be adopting, and you even mentioned this, you're really adopting what I consider a classical democratic position of protecting the public from the dangers of scientific research. So in a way, there has been a bit of a pivot in a sense where Republicans are favoring issues that would be traditionally democratic issues. I do actually think that there will be cooperation. I mean, you are working now with bipartisan hearing and with respect to what happened in the House, the Democrats remarkably did come together to defund EcoHealth. So in a way, I think this is a remarkable opportunity for a lot of bipartisan initiatives because it's sort of a flipped situation. Are you, I guess, can you just state your view of the NIH? Because I think a lot of, you know, my perception from talking to staffers, Republican staffers is that they're all very supportive of science. They just want the truth. Is that, what is your vision for a future of the NIH?
Senator Rand Paul 13:57
I think that there needs to be more transparency. I'm troubled by an NIH director, Francis Collins, who basically sent an email to Fauci saying, take them down, and referring to Jay Bhattacharya and referring to, I think, Martin Kulldorff and others, take them down. The mafia, mafiosa kind of language, the idea that couriers go back and forth with handwritten messages to avoid discovery by the public, the idea of deleting emails now are safe. I mean, the whole thing doesn't sound like science. The arrogance, as you mentioned earlier, of someone saying that they are the science. Some of that is tenure, and I think the length of tenure goes to the head of that person sometimes. So having one person there for 40 years is a huge mistake, and I have actually written an op-ed comparing Fauci to J. Edgar Hoover and the abuses. And I think really the abuses of civil liberties are similar, and the arrogance of his long reign is apparent, the problems of it. So I would actually take Fauci's position and divide it into three. It's allergy, immunology, and infectious disease. I'd have three people take that position instead of one, and I would term limit them all, either two four year terms or two five year terms, so they don't last generation after generation. I think he just accumulated too much power, and he became above all of it. And so those are some of the reforms that have to happen at NIH. I also have a bill that did pass unanimously with bipartisan support in committee, and that is to put on their financial release form for all the NIH scientists and all these people populating these vaccine committees. They're going to have to release their royalties. And this was probably one of the most insulting things, responses from Fauci was that when he responded to me is, I don't have to tell you, we don't have to tell you, it's basically none of your business, the law protects us, we don't have to reveal royalties. That to me is a smugness that I will not let go and will not let go until they are finally forced to put this on their disclosure agreements. There's no way you should be on the vaccine committee voting for Pfizer or Moderna's vaccine if you're receiving royalties from those companies. I don't know that they are, but if they aren't, they should have immediately released. I mean, if I'd have been charged those committees, so the committees would not be besmirched and they would not be criticized, if nobody on there was receiving royalties, I would put a press release out the same day. But the fact that they respond that they don't have to tell us makes us think they have something to hide. I don't know what we'll find, whether any of them are getting royalties from those two companies, but it is pretty important. The decision making, look, the committees essentially recommended, the FDA committee and I think the CDC committee recommended that people at risk take a booster. And that's not an unreasonable thing, particularly if it's voluntary. Over 65 take a booster. I have no real objection to the advice. But then it was changed by Rochelle Walensky, a Biden appointee, and she changed it to everybody above six months and older should get a booster. And so that kind of thing, we've really got to do something about that. And there have to be reforms about who runs the NIH, what are the checks and balances, there needs to be more transparency, is my contention that the NIH is at least as secretive, if not more secretive, than the CIA. That's crazy. They will not release thousands of pages of documents, but specifically, I want the NIH deliberations on what is or is not gain of function with regard to specific experiments in Wuhan and otherwise, and they will not give that to us. And that is something that, you know, if we had a good appropriations process, if Congress had any kind of spine, they should zero them out tomorrow and say, don't get another penny. Everything stops, your salaries, everything will stop until you send us the documents and we'd get them in a week. That's the power of the purse, but we don't use it. And the appropriators just are there, they think their job is appropriating, not, you know, refusing to appropriate. So we really don't have the leverage. Typically, in times past, Republicans and Democrats in the legislature were united to get information out of an executive branch. But now it's become much more partisan and Democrats in Congress defend the Biden administration. And I keep telling them, this is nothing about the Biden administration. Most of the information I want actually happened during the Trump administration, not by political appointees, by long term people who are at the NIH. But there are real problems and something's going to have to change.
Bryce Nickels 18:39
But just to be clear, you do support the NIH because I, my impression is you do, but I like the anger, your rightful anger at the lack of transparency is something that I've been equally angry about as someone that receives NIH funding, but you do think it's a valuable entity for the country, correct?
Senator Rand Paul 19:00
I'm a senator who's voted for very, very little federal spending, but I have voted for NIH funding. So that tells you something because I have a high degree of scrutiny for what we do. But yes, I have voted for NIH funding and would say that I'm generally supportive. But I'm so unhappy with what they're doing now that if I had my druthers, I wouldn't give them another penny. In fact, I'd zero them out completely, I'd say you get nothing. Not that that's the end result, you get nothing until you cooperate with the investigation. And, you know, I haven't decided to get involved in the presidential race, but ultimately when I do talk to Donald Trump part of whether or not I get involved in that is going to be whether or not he's going to release every scrap of paper and appoint someone to be head of NIH and HHS that will reveal all the documents and will have an honest appraisal of whether there was a cover-up and heads will roll. You know, he talks about draining the swamp, he's gonna need to drain the swamp. But last time around he appointed Scott Gottlieb to be head of the FDA and the revolving door sent him right back to Pfizer. And at Pfizer's perch on their board, he's over there calling Twitter trying to take down anybody critical of vaccines. And so that's the part of the swamp that didn't get adequately drained and needs to be drained the next go-round.
Bryce Nickels 20:14
Actually, I've even told members of your staff, I really want to work on this issue about transparency. I've spoken to my colleagues about us as NIH funded researchers need to take accountability--we need to clean our own house if we're going to expect to get more money. And I understand very clearly, you're not the only one that said no more money for the NIH if they don't act in the best interest of the public and be transparent. I think we can fix that. Jay and I have talked about that, but I understand--I mean, I think it's actually perfectly reasonable, but I do feel that your efforts are pointing towards a future where we will get a much better NIH. Jay, did you have a question?
Jay Bhattacharya 21:01
I mean, just a quick note on that point, science requires transparency. If you're going to have science done in the public interest, if it's going to meet up to the name of what science is about, it absolutely requires transparency. So to that extent, when the NIH acts as if it should hide the activities it has doing, it is no longer really truly a scientific organization. It's science and public interest will show us that it's in public interest. And I totally understand, again, as an NIH -funded researcher myself, why the public distrust the NIH now. I share your outrage over this, Senator Paul. And to me, the key thing is checks and balances, oversight, transparency. Any legislation or pressure on the NIH to become the kind of organization it really should be, I think the entire scientific community should be welcome.
Senator Rand Paul 21:55
I think one of the things that could get this beyond sort of a partisan plane to recognize is I try to inform people that the debate over gain of function didn't start with COVID. It started really in 2010 or heated up in 2010 when the avian flu was purposely mutated to become more transmissible among mammals and to become aerosolized. This is a virus, an animal virus, but in humans can have as high mortality as 50%, but fortunately is not very contagious, like many animal virus doesn't transmit well from human to human. When they did that there was a huge debate and this had nothing to do with politics. Many of the people, in fact I've met many of the people that argued against Anthony Fauci who was for the wild, wild west and said basically even if a pandemic occurs the knowledge would be worth it but there were many, many scientists on the other side most of whom are not Republicans. Frankly if you take a poll of NIH scientists I would say 90% are probably Democrats. They work in universities, they depend on taxpayer monies, they're just not Republicans. That just frankly is the truth and yet many of these people who don't identify with many of the policies I'm for, were all adamantly and still are adamantly opposed to Anthony Fauci's perspective that you know whatever goes, goes, we're just going to be on the side of knowledge is always good. And the thing is, if you tell the common man that all knowledge is good, or you tell him that, gosh the Chinese are taking Ebola and they're aerosolizing it--and I'm making this up--but let's say this is the argument, and so we need to aerosolize Ebola so we can figure out how to counteract aerosolized Ebola--that's a death wish. One of the best people on this, one of the best essays written was from Kevin Esvelt. He's a really bona-fide real scientist in this area, works at MIT, has written and compared it to nuclear weapons basically that this kind of stuff is as dangerous as nuclear weapons and may be more insidious and is sort of a gamble and a risk to civilization as we know it. I mean, those are big statements, but I believe every bit of that and the reason why we do have concern and why there's a role for government is is that you can order the components of polio virus online now and you can create polio in your in your lab and not just you know a few labs. He estimates as much as 60, 70,000 not only PhDs but technicians have the ability to create viruses in a lab and eventually you're going to get rogue actors in this and you may already have rogue countries in this but we do need to look at this and even more so than the NIH there's all kinds of classified research going on. I have no idea they will not reveal it to me, they don't reveal it to the intelligence committees. These committees, people who are working on biological potentially biological weapons within our government have no oversight. This should scare us all to death and they all may be well -intentioned. They may sit you know stand in front of the flag and salute the flag and they may be the greatest people in the world but there is a concern that they've lost track of what the true danger is to leaks and to give you one quick example of how common leaks are SARS -1 in 2002, 2003 probably came from nature. We found it in animals, we found it in animal handlers and they found the source pretty quickly but once they had it in the lab the isolating people, quarantine people worked pretty well because it wasn't very contagious and it kind of died out but six times after it had died out it leaked from a lab in Beijing. They have six separate examples of SARS -1 that has now died out in nature leaking then from the lab. Alison Young has written about these leaks. Leaks are pretty common even in very safe labs so you want to make sure it's as safe as possible but ultimately you know people say well what about the science obey the science. I don't want to make the absolute rules. Our committee will be of scientists won't be me deciding what gain of function is ultimately we'll help to define it but deciding what is too dangerous to be done will actually be done by scientists in the field but they can't be the same ones receiving it. So if I'm a world famous coronavirus gain of function guy, I can't be on the committee to approve the funds you know it's gonna--or a woman--it has to be somebody who is, has a scientific background, knows about it, but it really shouldn't be limited to the people receiving it, because that makes it very difficult to have objectivity.
Bryce Nickels 26:34
So you, sorry, before, I know you're going to go in a few minutes and I want you to comment on next week, but I want a very important thing you just said there about Ebola. Are you willing to sort of state for the record that you oppose the U.S. developing offensive bioweapons? Because I believe that, I'm reading between the lines, to me that's the critical thing. Is that something that you oppose or you're saying that we'd have to be very careful when thinking about developing bioweapons or an offensive, because there's no such thing as a defensive bioweapon?
Senator Rand Paul 27:08
Yeah, I'm absolutely opposed to our government or any government developing offensive weapons.
Bryce Nickels 27:14
OK, that is wonderful to hear. That is wonderful to hear.
Senator Rand Paul 27:17
I would say the same, and I think we need to go further. For example, we're talking about weapons. I'm against, I think our country should be explicit that we are not for the first use of nuclear weapons. And I don't think we really are, but we don't explicitly state that. And I think we should explicitly state that to send message to other nuclear powers, we are not ever launching nuclear weapons unless in response to others...and even that would be a catastrophe for the world. But I see no reason to weaponize viruses. But we have to be very careful because some of the research says, oh, we're just going to create a vaccine. But we have to make, let's say you have an animal virus, avian flu is a good example, not very contagious in humans. And we want to develop a vaccine for humans. But in order to do that, we have to make it more contagious in humans. And that's what people think happened in Wuhan, is that the coronavirus, one, it was maybe deadly enough, but it wasn't infectious enough. SARS-1 just wasn't infectious enough. So, the creation of a new virus required it to become more infectious in order to develop a vaccine against it. In all likelihood, that's where it was benign. I don't have any animus, I don't particularly love the form of government, but I don't have a particular animus against the Chinese. I actually do think it probably was an accident. They were trying to create a vaccine and an accident happened. But I meet with the Chinese officials from their government trying to stress that we need to rejuvenate the Biological Weapons Convention. We need to participate in it. We need to talk in it because ultimately, we have to come up with a definition that kind of works, and that has scientists to interpret what that means to be gain of function. But it has to be much more stringent than what we have on the books. But then we need internationally to begin talking again at the Biological Weapons Convention about trying to get countries voluntarily to adhere to a standard that says for goodness sakes we shouldn't try to open up and get smallpox out there and do a lot of research on smallpox as deadly as it is.
Jay Bhattacharya 29:17
Senator Paul, what can we expect next week from the hearing that you're running with Senator Peters? What do you expect to come out of it? And what are the next steps you're planning to take sort of going forward on these issues that we were talking about?
Senator Rand Paul 29:34
The first hearing will be to examine the origins of COVID. We have Richard Ebright from Rutgers, who's a molecular [biologist] with 175 peer-reviewed papers, long academic history, an editor of scientific journals, but also a longtime advocate for more controls on gain-of-function research. He'll be there. Stephen Quay is a scientist, but also a businessman who works in this field and has written extensively about. They'll both be talking about sort of evidence for why they believe that the evidence points towards the virus coming from a lab. And then also the reason we have to have that debate is because if it just came from animals, all we have to do is test animals, which I'm not against that. We should have surveillance of animals and things like that. But if it came from a lab, we have to look at what's going on in a lab. There also will be proponents who don't believe it came from the lab and think there's no way it came from the lab. Like Bob Garry will be in this committee hearing as well. He was one of the authors of Proximal Origins that was the project instigated by Anthony Fauci, but instigated at a time where Bob Garry and others were all privately saying they think that the virus was manipulating and came from the lab. And that's the extraordinary thing about this whole debate is that through freedom of information, we discovered that all the prominent scientists who wrote Proximal Origins, which concluded something more than most scientific papers usually say, they said unequivocally in the abstract that this virus is not a laboratory construct. And I don't know of an objective scientist out there who really would say a statement that strong. Less likely, more likely, even myself who thinks this came from the lab, I can't tell you 100% certainty. I can just say there's no evidence that typically has been found that it came from animals and there's a lot of evidence that it came from the lab, but it is a reasonability. It's sort of like 90%, 80%, but Bob Garry and the other authors of Proximal Origin were all privately saying they were pretty convinced and they're saying, that's not a conspiracy theory. Look at this evidence. I'm worried. I stayed up late last night. They were all very concerned privately, but within a day or two became completely opposite and published a paper. So I think it'll be an interesting debate between those three. And there's one more that a Democrat witnessed that's coming in. I don't have the name in front of me…
Bryce Nickels 31:51
Greg Koblenz is his name. I was going to say, are you... So with Bob Garry, of course, is somebody that even actually signed a letter to my work saying that I should be disciplined, but are you aware that he has actually had three papers retracted? I mean, speaking to his credibility, and that's not even the Proximal Origin one, which we've submitted two letters trying to get the editor to do something about it. For scientists, these journal publications are such a big deal. I know that for lawmakers, it may be difficult to understand the magnitude that or the power that these, just the presence of these in journals have. And but Gary, I didn't know, like, if you were aware that he had already a track record of, you know, scientific misconduct with three retractions, which I think is very noteworthy when considering his credibility as somebody to speak on the origins of COVID. So whereas, of course, Ebright has had zero, if you're wondering, but...
Senator Rand Paul 32:54
Yeah, I think what will definitely come to light is the contradictory statements, perhaps the papers being retracted, but the contradictory statements in private that Bob Garry was saying all along and in public. You have to begin to worry when scientists are so absolute about something. It's sort of like, and he wasn't as signatory to the Lancet letter, but 27 scientists signed the Lancet letter. To tell you the truth, I wasn't paying as close attention. I read the news report of it, and I kind of just accepted it. I knew the first SARS came from animals, and 27 scientists said that this one probably did too. And I was like, oh, well, they're probably right. And then I discovered later on five or six of them are part of the funders of the Wuhan lab. And then I find out that the language, if you look closer, uses words like conspiracy theory. Well, I've never heard of a scientist who puts in any kind of, even a letter to the editor, the idea that the opponents on the other side of the argument are conspiracy theorists. But it's also why it's important that people know that this began way before this. This began with the debate over avian flu being mutated in 2010, if not before. And so this really isn't, you know, the people who all of a sudden politicized this, you have to ask, why did they not appear to have come from a lab? And I think it's culpability. Frankly, they felt guilty that they'd spent millions of dollars on this lab in Wuhan, and if it escaped from them, it would have looked like obviously poor decision making to have funded all that research. And you know, when Anthony Fauci was asked about it, he says, and I think Francis Collins responded the same way. They were asked, do you do any special inspections of foreign labs to make sure they're up to par? The answer was no. Do you have a way of accrediting labs overseas to make sure that they're safe? The answer was no. And did they personally know about it? They say, oh yeah, we approve all the grants, but we really didn't know a lot about these grants and what was going on. And that's the real danger of this. There has to be more scrutiny on this kind of stuff.
Bryce Nickels 34:53
Well, so you did mention this is the first hearing you're going to have a subsequent hearing on gain a function. Is that coming up soon?
Senator Rand Paul 35:00
The first one is mostly about origins, but it will probably be wide ranging. The second one is going to be more about what we should do to reform. And we'll take, you know, a lot of the people that are testifying in the first are also people who have had ideas about reform. There was a letter, I can't remember who the, where it was published, but 33 scientists, Jesse Bloom and others, David Relman and others have all signed a letter talking about reforms. We took that letter and suggestions for reforms and comments from Ebright, Quay and Esvelt at a previous subcommittee hearing. We took all these comments and tried to create a bill and we've begun showing the bill to the scientists because frankly, I don't want to be accused of, you know, while I'm a physician, I'm not a scientist in this area of saying, oh, I'm going to lord it over all the scientists. I want to set up a system where it is better policed, but there still has to be some nuance of deciding, you know, because the other side will say, oh, you're going to prevent them from giving a bacteria gain of function to make insulin. Well, no, I'm not, I'm not interested in that, but figuring out what to do and which viruses to contend with is still going to involve some human. It's not going to, we're not proposing a blanket ban on this. Some have talked about a blanket ban, but I've been more that there needs to be a responsible committee, a better definition, a more inclusive definition, and then a more responsible committee, but also a committee that's able to reach into the corners of classified research. The P3CO committee didn't have any power to look at research. They could only look at research that was given to them, and I think I was told during this period of time, they only looked at like three bits of research, and none of them were from Wuhan, and so we have to have a committee that has more power to look at it, and also if people lie to the committee, there has to be punishments. If you lie to the committee, it has to be some self-referral. People will refer their grants, but the people on the committee can also look at grants that weren't referred, but then there'll be a penalty. If you don't refer yours over, and you're going to be mutating avian flu or coronavirus in a gain-of-function research, there will be penalties for not referring your research over. I still suspect that we're only talking about maybe hundreds of projects. I don't think we're talking about thousands of projects that would actually have to receive the scrutiny.
Bryce Nickels 37:21
When will you be introducing that bill? Will that be coordinated with the second hearing? Or making that bill public?
Senator Rand Paul 37:29
We're sending it around, and we'll even send it around to you guys to look at, because we want to hear comments from everybody. We've sent it to our Democrat counterparts. Nothing has a chance really of passing unless the Democrats agree to it. So we have to get Chairman Peters to agree to it. He's open to looking at it. They're looking at it now. We've sent it to probably six or eight of the scientists who have been worried about gain of function and on basically the opposite side of Anthony Fauci from this. But everybody's going to get to see it. And we don't want to put something forward that's not going to pass. We want to put something that helps the situation but also works. And like I say, it's going to have to have Democrat support. And there is a possibility. I mean, we passed in committee requiring that they put forward their royalties unanimously. And so the new financial reforms, if we can get it out of the Senate and through the House, will simply require a lot of these people have to do financial reforms. But it's going to be transparent. Right now, it's all secretive. And you can kind of request it. And sometimes you get it. Sometimes you don't get it. It will be on a website the same way mine is. All of my investments and all my assets are on a website. You can Google my name somewhere and find out where my money is placed and where my income comes from. And that should be also true because this is a big business. This isn't just disinterested scientists who are not working for any money at all. There's a lot of money involved in this now.
Jay Bhattacharya 38:54
Senator Paul, thank you for joining us. I really appreciate it. I know you have to run now, but it was a really informative discussion and I hope you wish you all the best in in this kind of oversight activity. I think it's really vital for the future of all humanity.
Senator Rand Paul 39:09
Thank you for having me. Thanks guys.