Congress Forces NIH to Reverse Policy, Continue Funding Fauci’s “Unsafe” Infectious Disease Centers
HHS official expresses alarm at universities playing politics with Americans’ safety.
3 minute read
The lobbyists always win.
Last summer, the National Institutes of Health sent out notices to shut down a Tony Fauci initiative launched in 2020 called the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases or “CREID” after deeming them unsafe for Americans and not a good use of taxpayer funding.
Well, university lobbyists have struck back—managing to slip language into the congressional appropriations bill that forces NIH to spend $18.2 million to fund CREID centers once again.
A senior official with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) who did not wish to be named said they are unsure how university lobbyists managed to insert this demand into the funding bill, and expressed anger that Congress and universities were, as they saw it, playing politics with Americans’ safety. “The NIH is committed to never again funding dangerous pandemic activities,” said the HHS official. “The New CREID program will not fund the collection of dangerous pathogens from places like bat caves in China.”
Two researchers who were awarded the Fauci CREID grants were Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research and Peter Daszak of the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance.
Months before Fauci signed off on Andersen’s CREID award, Andersen and other researchers published a paper in Nature Medicine titled “Proximal Origin” that dismissed the possibility of a Wuhan lab accident. House Republicans charged that Fauci helped orchestrate Andersen’s “Proximal Origin” paper. House Democrats, however, published a report arguing that Jeremy Farrar, now chief scientist with the World Health Organization, “led the drafting process of [Andersen’s] paper” and helped to organize it.
In a recent interview with The DisInformation Chronicle, virologist and former CDC Director Robert Redfield said Andersen’s “Proximal Origin” paper is scientific fraud that should be retracted. The group BioSafety Now has also demanded that Nature Medicine retract the paper, calling it “a product of scientific misconduct.”
In the final days of the Biden Administration, HHS debarred Peter Daszak and the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance from receiving federal funds.
Just 10 days ago, Andersen was still complaining on Bluesky about the loss of his CREID grant that the NIH deemed “unsafe for Americans.”
“We will absolutely abide by the President’s executive order to not fund dangerous gain-of-function research,” said the senior HHS official.
As previously reported at The DisInformation Chronicle, the White House is finalizing Trump’s plan to deal with dangerous gain-of-function virus research as laid out in a May 2025 executive order. The new policy will take a risk-based approached to determine whether a pathogen study will be funded. Scientists who fail to disclose dangerous research could be barred from federal programs as could their universities.
Dear Readers: University lobbyists have been gaming the federal funding system for decades, playing the White House and Congress off each other to put more money in the pockets of college administrators. If you’re interested in learning more, take a look at this recent deep-dive I wrote for RealClearInvestigations: “The Trump Administration’s Fight To Fund Scientists.”
The trouble with executive orders is the next administration can easily reverse it. I think lobbyists should be banned. It’s a system full of capture resulting in unscientific information being pushed as scientific. The system is fraught with corruption.
Paul: When you say "funding bill," is this what you are referring to: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7148