A Lab-leak Proponent Is In Line For Fauci’s Old Job

Steven Quay, a pharma executive known for his books making the case Covid came from a Chinese lab, is on the verge of getting Anthony Fauci’s old job.

The post atop the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases comes with control over $6.5 billion in health research funding. Two people aware of the decision told POLITICO that Quay’s selection is still undergoing final vetting. POLITICO granted the two — one a senior HHS official, the other outside government — anonymity because the hire isn’t yet final.

In choosing Quay, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has picked a like-minded critic of the scientific establishment and of Fauci, who is facing a contempt vote in a Senate committee Thursday for refusing to answer questions about Covid’s origins and the pandemic response at a hearing last week.

Quay was an early proponent that Covid came from a Chinese lab, co-authoring the 2021 book “The Origin of the Virus: The hidden truths behind the microbe that killed millions of people.” He followed that up this year with “The Code as Witness: How the Covid Genome Reveals its Lab Origins and How to Prevent Future Outbreaks.”

Quay has also alleged a cover-up involving U.S. scientists. "Unfortunately, one reason we are having these hearings is that the public statements of many virologists have not been congruent with their private conversations,” he told a June 2024 Senate panel looking into Covid’s origin. He went further in his written testimony, stating his view that “this is a form of academic fraud that should not go unpunished.”

Quay, a physician and pathologist, would be the first NIAID director coming from the drug industry, instead of from academia or the leagues of scientists at its parent agency, the National Institutes of Health. Quay also does not have formal training in infectious diseases.

When the National Institutes of Health made an open call for applicants last year, Quay applied. NIH staff reviewed applications and did not advance him to the interview stage, according to one of the people familiar with the process. But Kennedy selected Quay over those finalists who were interviewed, and the NIH signed off on his hiring last week.

Quay declined to comment. HHS spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment.

Quay’s views on the pandemic’s origins figure to further inflame the roiling partisan debate over whether Fauci played a role in it.

At the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing with Fauci last week, Chair Rand Paul of Kentucky and other Republicans accused the former White House Covid adviser of funding research they believe contributed to the virus’s creation. Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Democrats on the panel defended him.

Fauci, who previously received a pardon from President Joe Biden for the period covering the pandemic and years before it, said the Republicans aimed to catch him in a perjury trap.

Paul bolstered the lab-leak theory of Covid-19’s origin in advance of the hearing by releasing Fauci’s diary, which revealed that in the pandemic’s early days a group of virologists Fauci convened had mostly found the theory plausible.

Republicans on the panel questioned why some in the group soon after released a paper making the case that the virus emerged from nature.

The scientists involved have said they came to that conclusion after further studying the virus. Its features initially struck them as odd, but they later came to the conclusion that they were in line with other viruses of natural origin.

Republicans at the hearing noted National Institutes of Health funding for the EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S. research organization that worked with the Chinese lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in the city where the virus first emerged. Its work studying coronaviruses is at the center of the lab leak theory.

Many proponents of the lab-leak theory believe EcoHealth and the Wuhan lab were conducting so-called gain-of-function research in which viruses are made more deadly or transmissible in order to study how to combat them. Fauci had defended the rationale for that research amidst concerns in Congress and among scientists that it could be dangerous.

The Health and Human Services Department in 2024, when Biden was president, suspended funding for EcoHealth and its president, Peter Daszak. HHS said they had not complied with oversight rules.

EcoHealth and Daszak have said their work did not cause the pandemic. Fauci has backed that view, telling a House subcommittee investigating the pandemic in 2024 that the viruses EcoHealth was studying in China were “far removed” from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the pandemic. It was, Fauci said, “molecularly impossible for those viruses to have evolved or been made into SARS-CoV-2.”

Fauci has also said previously that he believes there is no definitive evidence to prove whether the virus emerged from nature or a lab.

The World Health Organization, an arm of the United Nations, released an expert report last year that favored a natural origin. “The weight of available evidence…suggests zoonotic spillover…either directly from bats or through an intermediate host,” the report said.

The WHO said Chinese authorities refused to cooperate with its experts.

U.S. agencies, including the CIA, FBI and Energy Department now lean toward the lab leak theory, but many scientists believe natural spillover, from an animal to a human, is more likely.

Ashish Jha, who led the Covid response effort for Biden in 2022 and 2023, told CNN on Sunday he believes the circumstantial evidence points most likely to a lab leak.

Quay would take over an agency that has lacked permanent leadership since Kennedy fired its director, Jeanne Marrazzo, last year. Marrazzo was hired in 2023 to run the agency after Fauci’s retirement at the end of 2022. Marrazzo sued HHS, Kennedy and other government officials last year in federal district court in Maryland alleging her firing was retaliation for her complaints about HHS decisions related to vaccines and foreign research collaborations.

Quay is the founder of several drug companies, most recently of Atossa Therapeutics, a Seattle-based firm developing a breast cancer drug.

He is the preferred candidate of White Coat Waste, a conservative advocacy group that hopes to end taxpayer-funded experiments on animals. The group has criticized Kennedy’s leadership for continuing “Fauci-era” animal protocols.

Quay laid out his vision for handling high-risk research in a June op-ed in The Washington Post. He argued that the government should establish a third-party panel to review high-risk research, introduce “watermarks” into engineered pathogens to trace them to their origin labs and better enforce containment efforts.

Paul has proposed legislation that would establish a presidentially appointed panel to vet research grants thought to pose a potential risk to public health.

The Health Department announced last week it would halt what it considers dangerous gain-of-function research.

In July, Quay also said in a post on X that NIAID should focus on “faster therapeutics” and “transparent governance of risky pathogen research.” He also suggested that NIAID should emphasize research on combating antibiotic-resistant bacteria that cause infections.

John Powers III, a career scientist, currently serves as acting NIAID director. He succeeded Jeffery Taubenberger, also an acting director, who stepped down in May.

Having held the role for nearly four decades, Fauci served administrations of both parties, and the position during that time was not considered a political appointment. It does not require Senate confirmation.

Tim Röhn is the senior editor of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network.