Former NIH Director Collins contradicts Fauci on COVID origins conference call: House subcommittee

Former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins on Thursday "directly" contradicted former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci on a crucial question involving Fauci's Feb. 1, 2020 conference call with scientists to discuss the novel coronavirus, according to the House panel whose focus is COVID-19.

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released the full transcript of its interview with Collins and a staff memo with "key takeaways" Thursday, shortly before its hearing with NIH Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak on the agency's grant oversight and possible blunders involving the EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Collins said Fauci asked him to participate in the call, in which scientists who initially thought the virus looked "potentially" engineered or not fully natural came to change their minds and then write the "Proximal Origins" paper dismissing the lab-leak theory.

Fauci denied doing this in a March 27, 2023, letter from his lawyer David Schertler, the subcommittee staff memo says. It has yet to release the transcript of Fauci's "do not recall" January interview, which the GOP majority said will happen before Fauci's June 3 hearing.

Collins emphasized, as have subcommittee Democrats, that Jeremy Farrar, then-director of the scientific research charity Wellcome, organized the secret call. Farrar left Wellcome to become the World Health Organization's chief scientist last year. 

The former NIH director also conceded that the lab-leak theory, which is backed by the FBI and Department of Energy, is not a conspiracy theory "at this point," he has yet to see "any evidence" backing the six-foot social distancing rule set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in March 2020, and he did not know of any "vetting or certifying process of foreign labs that receive U.S. dollars."

Collins said he relied on staff with "subject matter expertise" to ensure foreign labs follow required biosafety standards, but the subcommittee found NIH staff often lack that expertise, the memo said. "Concerningly, Dr. Collins testified that he was unaware of a single country that is prohibited from receiving NIH grants."

He refused to disavow his private directive to Fauci to issue "a quick and devastating published takedown" of the anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration, which promoted "focused protection" for those at high risk from COVID and normalcy for others.

"I meant that this is a dangerous approach that could do great harm," Collins said in the interview. "I am looking for a response from credible experts to get that response out there quickly before this becomes somehow a U.S. policy, which seemed like a potential serious risk."