Introduction

On June 1, over 3000 of Anthony Fauci's emails were published to the public under a FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) request. Some of those emails revealed a rather dark picture on how Fauci handled the COVID-19 pandemic. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who not long ago confronted Fauci on whether the latter funded gain-of-function research into the Wuhan Institute of Virology, did not hesitate to flex on Twitter:

How I imagined what happened behind Rand Paul's screen.

Furthermore, on June 4, Judicial Watch obtained 280 pages of documents from the Department of Health and Human Services under another FOIA request. This FOIA request looked more into the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases's (NIAID) (of which Fauci heads) relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Spoiler alert: It was chummy.

This news raised a lot of people's eyebrows on Fauci's role in handling the pandemic. Even before these emails were published, Fauci flip-flopped on whether to wear masks or not to wear masks (more on one of his emails on this later). In addition, in April 2020, he dismissed the lab leak hypothesis only to reverse that stance 13 months later. And then, the once cracked down and prohibited topic was no longer banned on social media sites like Facebook.

These developments had me wonder if Fauci is the 21st century Lysénko.

Who is Lysénko?

Trofím Denísovich Lysénko was an agronomist albeit a poorly educated one. During the 1920s and 1930s, he grabbed a lot of attention from the Soviet Union because he claimed to have the knowledge of increasing crop yields significantly. The one problem? He was a Lamarckist.

A Lamarckist is someone who believes in Lamarckian evolution. Back when evolutionary biology was still being studied, there were to hypotheses: Lamarckian vs. Darwinian evolution. The Lamarckian hypothesis asserts that the giraffes' necks are long because they stretch their necks in order to reach the top of the trees. The acquired long necks via stretching are passed down to offspring. The Darwinian hypothesis claims that the giraffes' necks are long because some giraffes have longer necks than others. As a result, the individuals with longer necks survive and pass down their trait to their offspring while the giraffes with short necks do not. Today, we accept the Darwinian hypothesis thanks to direct observation of phenomena like antibiotic and pesticide resistance.

Unfortunately, when it came to something high stake like feeding a large population, Lysénko's "science" led to disaster. When actual biologists criticized and questioned Lysénko's claims, the Soviet Union sent them to labor camps where they would die. While Lysénko was by definition unscientific, he was politically savvy by portraying himself as a simple peasant's son who cared for the people and the biologists as bourgeois "fly-lovers".

What Did Fauci's Emails Show?

One of the most significant emails were the ones related to the lab leak hypothesis. It turns out that Fauci was aware of the hypothesis since February 2020. Remember, two months later, he came out rejecting the possibility of COVID-19 leaking from a lab. However, there were multiple emails, including one from a virologist, claiming that the virus was man-made and not naturally occurring.

In January 31, 2020, virologist Kristian Anderson sent a message to Fauci that the virus's genome was "inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory" and some of its sequences appeared to be engineered (p. 3187).

In February 1, 2020, Fauci sent an urgent email to Hugh Auchincross, telling him to read a paper on SARS gain of function (p. 3221). Later that day, Auchincross replied back stating that the experiments from the paper were performed before the NIH's gain of function pause. He also told Fauci that he would ask if the NIH had any ties to the work abroad (p.3206).

In March 10, 2020, independent virologist Adam Gaertner claimed to Fauci that the virus was created. He provided the alleged full procedure which included specific pH levels, chemicals, incubation temperature, and volumes (p. 2286).

In January 31, 2020, Agence-France-Presse science journalist Issam Ahmed gave Fauci the link to a now-retracted Indian paper that alleged that the SARS-Cov-2 virus contained HIV features (p. 3123). In February 2, 2020, Fauci called the paper "outlandish" (p. 3147). That very same day, the paper was withdrawn (the date is on the right-hand side).

However, later that same month, scientists from Nankai University discovered HIV-like mutations on the virus. Just last month, Dr. Angus Dalgleish and Dr. Birger Sørensen gave a pre-print of their analytic study to the Daily Mail. They found that the SARS-Cov-2's amino acids were positively charged which made it very easy for the virus to cling onto the negatively charged human cell receptors. The scientists noted that it was very rare to find three positively charged amino acids in a row in nature and four in a row would be "extremely unlikely". In the Daily Mail article, the scientists talked about how a lot of science journals rejected their research. However, their paper is set to be published on the Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics.

Lastly, in April 19, 2020, President of EcoHealth Alliance Peter Daszak sent an email to Fauci thanking him for publicly denouncing the lab leak hypothesis. Fauci later thanked Daszak for his "kind note" (p. 1150).

In May 25, 2021, Fauci admitted that the NIH earmarked $600,000 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology with EcoHealth Alliance as the middle man. A chart obtained through Judicial Watch's FOIA request revealed that from 2014-2019, NIAID invested a total of $826,277 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology on bat coronavirus emergence. Fauci denied that the money was put towards gain-of-function research. However, his emails with Hugh Auchincross along with other virologists hypothesizing that the virus was engineered suggest that he acknowledged the possibility that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was performing gain-of-function research.

What is also suspicious was the conflict of interest. Daszak was the person who conducted a 3-hour "investigation" at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and determined that the lab did nothing wrong. He was also used by Facebook fact-checker, Science Feedback, as an authority figure to "debunk" the claim that SARS-Cov-2 was man-made and not natural. Speaking of Facebook, have I mentioned that there are plenty of emails of Fauci conversing with Mark Zuckerberg, too?

Closing Thoughts

Is Fauci our 21st century Lysénko? A little bit of yes and a little bit of no.

Lysénko was a complete dunce as he believed in an evolutionary hypothesis that was not true. Fauci, on the other hand, is actually educated in medicine. That said, Fauci has made a career out of being a bureaucrat when you would expect a physician to have made a living from treating patients. And if you were to ask PCR inventor, Kary Mullis, well...

I do see vague similarities between Lysénko and Fauci in terms of playing politics. But again, the devil is in the details. Lysénko played politics by painting himself as a man from humble beginnings and painted dissenting biologists as bourgeois "fly-lovers". He had his critics "disappear" via labor camps. Fauci played politics via rejecting the lab leak hypothesis publicly even though privately, he acknowledged it as a viable possibility. The president of the non-profit organization that played as the middle man between the NIH and Wuhan Institute of Virology thanked him for "debunking" the hypothesis and Fauci thanked him back. The same day Fauci called the Indian paper nonsense, the paper was retracted, but other scientists found similar results. You can argue that the latter example resembles Lysénko disappearing his critics.

Fauci is nowhere close to being as villainous as Lysénko, but there is plenty of room to argue that he was not transparent and forthright. He is paid by taxpayer money to help the United States on health-related issues. Rejecting the lab leak hypothesis while privately acknowledging the possibility is irresponsible. He should have called for investigation into China and the Wuhan Institute of Virology's role in SARS-Cov-2 (and not the Daszak kind). His emails have brought many questions that need to be answered and Fauci has a lot of explaining to do.