The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is hiring a new chief for their virology section. That the federal government should not be hiring anyone, especially not senior staff, during the lame-duck period is self-evident. But what is in many ways even more notable about this appointment is that it reveals that the NIH has a virology section. One certainly could not have guessed this based on the people trotted out by Anthony Fauci during the pandemic, all of whom were from outside the NIH. Curiously, there has been no interest whatsoever from the media as to why that might be, especially since, as we can now all see, the NIH has its own virology branch.
This latest revelation aligns perfectly with newly released emails from January 2021, which gives us an insight into how NIH leadership was not only censoring critical voices in academia, such as that of Jay Bhattacharya, President-elect Trump’s likely pick as new NIH head, but also actively censoring its own experts. In one email, obtained last week by Jimmy Tobias after a years-long Freedom of Information Act battle, Carrie Wolinetz, the senior advisor to the director of the NIH, demanded outright censorship of an in-house NIH expert.
The expert, David Resnick, who works in the NIH’s bioethics section, co-authored a paper discussing the merits (or lack thereof) of gain-of-function experiments. This worried Wolinetz because it might have prompted questions about the origin of Covid and the potential role the NIH may have played in the virus's creation:
“I have some global concerns with the notion that an NIH employee would be providing what amount to critiques of HHS policy that is implemented by NIH, or suggestions that contradict messaging by NIH leadership.”
The “HHS policy” which Wolinetz felt compelled to protect from any criticism, according to her own email, was based on a blog post by her superior, the then head of the NIH, Francis Collins. In his blog post, dated March 26, 2020, Collins expressed his strong opposition to the lab leak theory, which he called “outrageous.” The sole basis for Collins' post was the fraudulent Proximal Origin paper, published just a few days earlier. Collins failed to acknowledge that he, along with Fauci, played a significant role in orchestrating the publication of this fraudulent paper, which explicitly aimed to promote the natural origin theory while discrediting the lab leak theory. Wolinetz's justification for silencing a prominent colleague was so flimsy that the only reasonable conclusion one can draw from her actions is that she was helping Collins and Fauci to cover up their involvement in seeding the pandemic, which included outsourcing gain-of-function experiments on coronaviruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Notably, Wolinetz’s email had only one recipient: Lawrence Tabak, the then principal deputy director of the NIH, who would soon become the acting director, a position he held until 2023. In his reply, Tabak agreed to meet Wolinetz to talk about silencing Resnik.
Even more notably, it took another three and a half years years for Resnik to finally publish his article in July 2024, by which time the NIH's deceitful natural origin narrative had largely collapsed. In the published article Resnik stated:
“the idea that a biosafety lapse at the WIV—or some other laboratory for that matter—could have caused the COVID-19 pandemic is a very real possibility that has significant bioethical and public policy implications.”
It is no wonder that NIH leadership was so eager to silence him.
The implications of Wolinetz’s actions are significant. She pervasively infringed upon academic freedom, as well as on Resnik’s First Amendment rights. Typically, the media experiences a total meltdown when there is even just a suggestion that a government scientist has been silenced; in this instance, we have airtight evidence that this actually occurred. However, since the scientist in question may have made remarks that could be interpreted as mildly critical of Collins and Fauci, the media has completely overlooked the story.
There are additional implications to consider, and this brings us back to the NIH's recruitment of a new chief virologist. The broader issue, which goes directly to the heart of the Covid origin cover-up, is that despite receiving in excess $60 billion annually from taxpayers and employing over 20,000 staff—many of whom are highly compensated scientists—Collins and Fauci completely disregarded their in-house experts regarding the origins of Covid. Instead, they brought in several conflicted scientists whose careers were entirely dependent on funding from Fauci.
The scientists were subsequently tasked with writing the fraudulent Proximal Origin paper, along with other actions to further the cover-up, such as promoting the false natural origin narrative in the media. Not coincidentally, two of the scientists brought in by Fauci and Collins, Kristian Andersen and Robert Garry, had previously worked in a lab in Kenema, Sierra Leone, which is suspected to be the origin of the Ebola outbreak in 2014. Their expertise in covering up suspected lab leaks may explain why they were chosen. Notably, Andersen had no prior experience with coronaviruses.
These external scientists, employed by Fauci to obscure the true origin of Covid, later collectively received over $50 million in grant allocations from Fauci. Andersen, the lead author of the fraudulent Proximal Origin paper, had an $8.9 million grant awaiting approval on Fauci's desk as he was tasked with leading the cover-up.
As a general proposition, we were already aware that NIH’s own scientists had been excluded from the Covid origin issue. This was evident because the only names that consistently appeared in connection with Fauci and Covid’s origin were those of his hand-picked group of conflicted scientists, who relied on his financial support. However, the full extent of this exclusion was not revealed until the latest batch of emails was obtained. As is often the case in matters of government corruption, particularly regarding the cover-up of Covid's origins, the truth is even worse than we initially believed. Rather than merely ignoring or neglecting internal scientists, they were actively silenced by the director's office.
It cannot be overstated that, although the silencing of Resnik is a serious issue, it is likely just one of many such cases—for which we happen to have obtained incriminating emails. Who else has been silenced? How toxic must the work culture at the NIH be if no one, including Resnik himself, has spoken up?
This entire episode further underscores the urgent need for a total overhaul of the NIH, or perhaps even its complete dissolution. Instead of being dedicated to scientific advancement, the $60 billion organization has become a hub of politics, cover-ups, and corruption. The new Trump administration cannot arrive soon enough.
