© U.S. Mission in GenevaBaylor College of Medicine National School of Tropical Medicine President Peter Hotez funded research on a chimeric virus that has come under Congressional scrutiny.
A prominent scientist who has
denounced a congressional investigation into gain-of-function research helped fund Wuhan Institute of Virology gain-of-function work flagged by congressional investigators.
Peter Hotez, dean of the Baylor College of Medicine National School of Tropical Medicine, has been
a fierce critic of potential hearings next year into a possible lab origin of COVID-19 and whether the National Institutes of Health prematurely discredited the hypothesis.
Hotez decried the hearings as
nothing less than "a plan to undermine the fabric of science in America" in a
viral tweet thread last week. Hotez also dismissed as an "outlandish conspiracy" the possibility that a lab accident sparked the COVID-19 pandemic.
However,
Hotez's own 2012 to 2017 NIH grant for the development of a SARS vaccine had the stated aim of responding to any "accidental release from a laboratory," in addition to a possible zoonotic spillover of the virus.
The $6.1 million NIH grant
also raises the possibility of "deliberate spreading of the virus by a bioterrorist attack.""SARS outbreaks remain a serious concern mainly due to possible zoonotic reintroduction of SARS-CoV into humans, accidental release from a laboratory or deliberate spreading of the virus by a bioterrorist attack," the grant's description reads.
It's not clear why Hotez has dismissed a possible lab release of SARS-CoV-2 as preposterous,
after having conducted research for years to prepare for a possible accidental or deliberate release of SARS-CoV.
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