by\u00a0Jim H\u1d0fft\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Newly appointed FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary pulled no punches as he directly accused the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of funding the lab responsible for creating the virus that sparked the COVID-19 pandemic and claimed the lives of over 20 million people globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking to NewsNation\u2019s Connell McShane, Dr. Makary blasted the former NIH leadership for pouring taxpayer dollars into unaccountable pet projects, including the now-infamous lab that engineered the virus that triggered a global pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nDr. Makary:<\/strong>
The way it used to be. We\u2019re planning to change our health agencies for a generation or longer. Look at the NIH. When J. Bhattacharya came in there, it was a mess. Fourteen percent of the grants were descriptive studies on health equity.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnd the NIH had just funded a lab that brewed up a virus that killed 20 million people worldwide. So they\u2019re getting back to studying root causes, a cure for cancer, debilitating neurodegenerative diseases, and they\u2019re going to do good work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Connell McShane:<\/strong>
Right, but you have to do it with fewer people. Is that a challenge with the cuts, or is that not really what it\u2019s made out to be either?<\/p>\n\n\n\nDr. Makary:<\/strong>
The FDA is strong, and it\u2019s going to continue to be strong. The cuts were consolidations. There were no layoffs to scientific reviewers or inspectors at the FDA.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere was consolidation of the twelve travel offices at the FDA. And so we\u2019re going to institute teamwork and break up the fiefdom culture within the agency. It\u2019s an interesting conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier this year, Trump\u2019s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)\u00a0issued a new analysis<\/a>\u00a0on the origins of the COVID-19 virus, which favors the theory that COVID escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOne of the things that I\u2019ve talked about a lot is addressing the threat from China on a number of fronts, and that goes back to why a million Americans died and why the Central Intelligence Agency has been sitting on the sidelines for five years in not making an assessment about the origins of COVID. That\u2019s a day-one thing for me,\u201d CIA Director John Ratcliffe told Breitbart.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
This further gives credibility to the findings by the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic\u2019s final report last<\/a> year, concluding that \u201cCOVID-19 most likely emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n