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A deputy of Dr. Anthony Fauci was required to sign a Beijing-approved confidentiality agreement “tailored to China’s terms” before joining a World Health Organization effort in China to collect data on the novel coronavirus, according to an email obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Dr. Cliff Lane, who serves as deputy director for clinical research at the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was asked by a WHO technical officer to sign a confidentiality form and a disclosure of interest (DOI) approved by Chinese authorities, according to a Feb. 15, 2020 email obtained by Judicial Watch and first reported on by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF).
A deputy of Dr. Anthony Fauci was required to sign a Beijing-approved confidentiality agreement “tailored to China’s terms” before joining a World Health Organization effort in China to collect data on the novel coronavirus, according to an email obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Dr. Cliff Lane, who serves as deputy director for clinical research at the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was asked by a WHO technical officer to sign a confidentiality form and a disclosure of interest (DOI) approved by Chinese authorities, according to a Feb. 15, 2020 email obtained by Judicial Watch and first reported on by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF).
“The forms this time are tailored to China’s terms so we cannot use the ones from before,” Mansuk Daniel Han, a technical officer at WHO’s headquarters in Switzerland, wrote to Lane.
The DCNF reports that Han had asked Lane to complete a DOI along with the confidentiality form.
While it remains unclear what restrictions Beijing included in its confidentiality forms, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton believes the email signals that Fauci’s National Institutes of Health folded to China’s effort of controlling information about the virus.
“These new emails show WHO and Fauci’s [National Institutes of Health] gave special accommodations to Chinese communist efforts to control information about COVID-19,” Fitton said.
As the Daily Caller‘s Chuck Ross notes:
The Chinese government has maintained a tight grip on scientists both inside and outside China studying the virus.
Chinese officials have been accused of silencing doctors, whistleblowers and journalists who tried to alert the public about the virus in December 2019.
Beijing also delayed a World Health Organization team that visited Wuhan last month to investigate the origins of the virus. On Jan. 4, WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the setback “disappointing.”
The team was able to visit Wuhan last month, but some scientists on the mission said Chinese authorities had refused to turn over raw data on early coronavirus patients in Wuhan.
As we highlights at the end of 2020, the Chinese government has indeed been working diligently to squash investigations outside of its control as health officials around the world struggle to assemble a ‘natural origin’ theory for COVID-19. An Associated Press investigation labeled the hunt for valid information regarding the virus in China as “a black hole of no information because of political sensitivity and secrecy.”
A bat research team visiting recently managed to take samples but had them confiscated, two people familiar with the matter said. Specialists in coronaviruses have been ordered not to speak to the press. And a team of Associated Press journalists was tailed by plainclothes police in multiple cars who blocked access to roads and sites in late November.
More than a year since the first known person was infected with the coronavirus, an AP investigation shows the Chinese government is strictly controlling all research into its origins, clamping down on some while actively promoting fringe theories that it could have come from outside China. –Associated Press
China’s clear reluctance to be transparent has even sparked a rebuke from the Biden Administration.
“They’re about to come out with a report about the origins of the pandemic in Wuhan, China, that we have questions about because we do not believe that China has made available sufficient original data into how this pandemic began to spread both in China and then eventually around the world,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said of the WHO during a Feb. 21 interview.
When the DCNF reached out to the WHO for a comment on the email, they received no response.
