{"id":1135977,"date":"2021-12-21T00:19:45","date_gmt":"2021-12-21T05:19:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1135977"},"modified":"2021-12-21T00:19:47","modified_gmt":"2021-12-21T05:19:47","slug":"outgoing-nih-director-francis-collins-knocks-lab-leak-theory-huge-distraction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/outgoing-nih-director-francis-collins-knocks-lab-leak-theory-huge-distraction\/","title":{"rendered":"Outgoing NIH Director Francis Collins Knocks Lab Leak Theory: &#039;Huge Distraction&#039;"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Foutgoing-nih-director-francis-collins-knocks-lab-leak-theory-huge-distraction%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1135977&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Francis-Collins-640x335-1.jpeg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p class=\"subheading\">Outgoing National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins joined his subordinate, Dr. Anthony Fauci, in dismissing the coronavirus lab leak theory as little more than a \u201chuge distraction.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Joining Bret Baier on <em>Fox News Sunday<\/em>, Collins finished his term as NIH director by saying there was \u201cno evidence\u201d to support the Wuhan lab leak theory and apologized for it becoming a distraction.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"gmxrevmore\" class=\"H\"><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m really sorry&nbsp;that the lab leak has become such a&nbsp;distraction for so many people&nbsp;because frankly, we still don\u2019t&nbsp;know,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/media\/outgoing-nih-director-wuhan-lab-leak-theory-omicron\">Collins said<\/a>,&nbsp;who insisted on the animal-to-human transition theory.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is no evidence really to say. Most of the scientific community, myself included, think that is a possibility, but&nbsp;far more likely, this was a&nbsp;natural way in which a virus&nbsp;left a bat, maybe traveled through&nbsp;some other species and got to&nbsp;humans,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Collins said that the Wuhan lab leak theory will not be entirely proven until China opens up the lab for a proper investigation. As to those who continue pushing the theory, Collins said that history will judge them harshly:<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<blockquote readability=\"8\">\n<p>We in this country have somehow&nbsp;gotten all fractured into a&nbsp;hyperpolarized politicized&nbsp;view that never should have&nbsp;been mixed with public&nbsp;health. It has been ruinous and&nbsp;history will judge harshly&nbsp;those people who have&nbsp;continued to defocus the&nbsp;effort and focus on&nbsp;conspiracies and things that&nbsp;are demonstrably false.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201cShame&nbsp;on all us that we\u2019ve gotten into&nbsp;this kind of pickle,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>In early October of this year, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/politics\/2021\/10\/04\/report-francis-collins-nih-director-resign-coronavirus-pandemic\/\">Collins resigned<\/a> as head of the NIH&nbsp;just weeks after documents exposed that he made \u201cuntruthful\u201d comments about U.S. federal funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.<\/p>\n<p>Just weeks before this announcement, Richard Ebright of Rutgers University accused Collins of making&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/health\/2021\/09\/08\/expert-documents-show-fauci-funded-wuhan-lab-created-novel-coronavirus-with-enhanced-pathogenicity-for-humans\/\">false public statements<\/a>&nbsp;about National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) grants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which have since been proven to fund the study of \u201cchimeric SARS-related coronaviruses\u201d which \u201ccould infect human cells.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ebright said bluntly that Collins had not told the truth when asked about this research:&nbsp;\u201cassertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Collins insisted that controversy over gain-of-function \u201cabsolutely\u201d had nothing to do with his resignation.<\/p>\n<p>Later in October,&nbsp;a letter from NIH to&nbsp;House Oversight Committee Ranking Member James Comer (R-KY)&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/politics\/2021\/10\/20\/nih-contradicts-fauci-admits-funding-gain-of-function-research-at-wuhan-lab\/\">showed that<\/a>&nbsp;the institute did fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through a grant awarded to Eco-Health Alliance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Outgoing National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins joined his subordinate, Dr. Anthony Fauci, in dismissing the coronavirus lab leak theory as little more than a \u201chuge distraction.\u201d Joining &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1135977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1135977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1135977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1135977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1135977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}