Former NIH Head Secretly Helped With Paper Dismissing Theory COVID-19 Came From Lab

Dr. Francis Collins made the admission in a newly disclosed email.

Dr. Francis Collins speaks in Washington on Sept. 9, 2020. Michael Reynolds/Getty Images

Then-National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Francis Collins, at about the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, acknowledged that he secretly assisted with a paper stating that the virus that causes COVID-19 “is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” according to newly released missives.

“This is work that Tony, Jeremy, Larry, and I helped with, but are appropriately not mentioned explicitly in the paper,” Collins said in the March 6, 2020, email to NIH officials, which was released by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on June 11.

“Tony” refers to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime head of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases through late 2022. “Jeremy” refers to Jeremy Farrar, at the time the director of the Wellcome Trust. “Larry” refers to Dr. Lawrence Tabak, an NIH official.

“Note the conclusion: ‘The analysis of public genome sequence data from SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses found no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or otherwise engineered,’” Collins wrote in the email.

SARS-CoV-2 is the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The first COVID-19 cases appeared in Wuhan, China, in 2019, near a laboratory that was conducting enhanced experiments on coronaviruses funded by the NIH.

Collins’s email is a response to an email from Kristian Andersen, one of the authors of the paper, titled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2.” Andersen and other scientists said in the paper, published on March 17, 2020, in Nature Medicine, that they had analyzed data and concluded that the virus came from nature.

To date, no natural source has been identified for the virus. The Trump administration maintains that the virus came from the Wuhan lab.

The paper does not mention any contributions from Collins, Fauci, Tabak, or Farrar, who made at least one critical change to the document, according to emails released by lawmakers in 2023. It thanks American virologist Michael Farzan “for discussions” and the Wellcome Trust “for support.” Nature did not return a request for comment. Collins did not respond to a request for comment.

Collins told lawmakers in 2024 that his role “was for information, not ... to edit,” that he never edited or suggested edits to the paper, and that, to his knowledge, neither did Fauci or Farrar. He also said he is not a virology expert.

Change in Stance

In early drafts of the paper, the authors stated that it was possible that the virus came from a lab. In private messages, since made public, the authors also said that characteristics of the virus indicated that it was manmade. They have defended the changes in their stances as being driven by evidence.

The newly released emails show that Andersen, who has said the paper was “prompted“ by Collins, Fauci, and Farrar, had written to the trio.

“Thank you again for your advice and leadership as we have been working through the SARS-CoV-2 ‘origins’ paper,” he said.

He told them that he welcomed comments, suggestions, and questions about the paper, which had just been accepted for publication.

The P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in Hubei Province, China, on April 17, 2020. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

Collins said in a previously released email to Fauci, Tabak, and others in April 2020 that he was wondering whether the NIH could “help put down this very destructive conspiracy,” linking to an article alleging that the COVID-19 pandemic started in the lab in Wuhan.

“I hoped the Nature Medicine article on the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 would settle this,” he said. “But probably didn’t get much visibility. Anything more we can do?”

About the email, Collins told lawmakers in 2024, “I meant that we should do what we can to get the truth out there, as opposed to statements that were reckless and speculative that were not based on evidence.” He said the possibility that the virus came from the lab, whether it originated there or not, was not a conspiracy theory.

Fauci Shared Another Paper

Fauci, who has denied allegations that “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” was written to disprove the lab origin theory, met on multiple occasions with intelligence officials in 2020 and 2021. James Erdman III, a CIA operations officer, told Paul and other senators in May that Fauci had provided a list of experts to whom the intelligence community (IC) should talk, and that the list included the paper authors.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testifies during a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing about the federal response to monkeypox, on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 14, 2022. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

“Dr. Anthony Fauci influenced the IC’s analytic process and COVID origin’s findings by leveraging his position to ensure the IC consulted with a conflicted list of curated Subject Matter Experts ... public health officials, and scientists,” Erdman said.

Fauci has not returned emails seeking comment on Erdman’s testimony and the missives that Paul just released.

One of those emails showed that Fauci wrote to Beth Cameron, a National Security Council official, on July 8, 2021, a day after he took part in a council briefing.

“The article accessible from the link in the subject line above just came out as a ‘preprint’ yesterday,” Fauci wrote. “It is from a group of highly qualified virologists. Please show it to your team. It summarizes what I said yesterday.”

The article, titled “The Origins of SARS-CoV-2,” includes Farrar and Andersen as coauthors. The authors said there was “currently no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 has a laboratory origin,” while there was evidence supporting links to animal markets in Wuhan.

Fauci “was pushing the natural-origin story while secretly getting classified briefings on the actual origins,” Paul wrote in a post on X.

“The American people were told one story,” Paul said in another post. “These documents—and a CIA officer’s sworn testimony—tell another.”