‘Absolute Hubris’: Rand Paul Slams Fauci For Saying 'I Represent Science'
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Chief US infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci has been accused of supporting dubious experiments with bat coronaviruses in China's Wuhan laboratory, where the first outbreak of COVID-19 was detected. In particular, Sen. Rand Paul and Sen. Ted Cruz have repeatedly called on Fauci to step down and face prosecution.
Republican Senator Rand Paul criticized Fauci on Sunday for saying that he “represents science,” calling it “astounding and alarming.”
The US top infectious disease adviser said earlier in the day that criticism against him has “a distinct anti-science flavor to it” because if his opponents “get up and criticize science, nobody’s going to know what they’re talking about.”
"But if they get up and really aim their bullets at Tony Fauci, well people can recognize that there’s a person there, so it’s easy to criticize, but they’re really criticizing science because I represent science," Fauci said.
Senator Paul tweeted the same day that "it’s astounding and alarming that a public health bureaucrat would even think to claim such a thing, especially one who has worked so hard to ignore the science of natural immunity."
The absolute hubris of someone claiming THEY represent science. It’s astounding and alarming that a public health bureaucrat would even think to claim such a thing, especially one who has worked so hard to ignore the science of natural immunity. https://t.co/rcDezphVRR
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) November 28, 2021
Speculation that the National Institute of Health (NIH) was illegally funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology sparked an outcry from a number of lawmakers. They accused Fauci of sponsoring experiments on bat coronaviruses and called on him to resign.
At congressional hearings in May, Fauci claimed the NIH "never financed or finances such research," but later, the NIH admitted that the government allocated funds for gain-of-function research in several scientific organizations, including the Institute of Virology in Wuhan.
