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The latest bombshell revelation about gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab comes amid a crackdown on “misinformation and disinformation” by the Albanese Government.

After years of bureaucratic denials, a top health official has finally admitted that United States taxpayer funds were spent on gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the weeks and months leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The admission was made by National Institutes of Health (NIH) principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak during a congressional hearing last Thursday, and raises the spectre that — accidentally or otherwise — the most disruptive pandemic in modern history was manmade and taxpayer-funded.

“Dr. Tabak, did NIH fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through EcoHealth [Alliance]?” Representative Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz) asked during the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing.

“It depends on your definition of gain-of-function research,” Tabak replied. “If you’re speaking about the generic term, yes, we did.”

🚨The National Institutes of Health admits to funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China🚨@RepDLesko: “Did NIH fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through EcoHealth?”

Dr. Tabak: “If you’re speaking about the generic term, yes, we did” pic.twitter.com/CnbFx2TUzQ

— Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (@COVIDSelect) May 16, 2024

With close ties to the Chinese Communist Party, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has long been suspected as ground zero for the virus.

As previously reported by The Daily Declaration, US intelligence agencies conceded in a declassified report last June that the lab leak theory was as plausible as a natural origins hypothesis.

Both the FBI and the US Department of Energy view a leak from the Wuhan lab as the “most likely” scenario behind the chaos of the Covid era.

Former Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Dr Robert Redfield and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe have also put on record their assessment that the virus first emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Gain-of-Function Denials Contradicted

After making the bombshell admission, Tabak went on to deny that the controversial research — in which viruses are modified to make them more infectious — poses any “threat or harm to anybody”.

However, Tabak’s denial contradicts previous admissions he made about the gain-of-function research being funded in Wuhan, as reported by the New York Post:

In an October 2021 letter to Congress, Tabak had acknowledged NIH funded a “limited experiment” at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that tested whether “spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model.”

He did not describe it as gain-of-function research — but disclosed that EcoHealth “failed to report” the bat coronaviruses modified with SARS and MERS viruses had been made 10,000 times more infectious, in violation of its grant terms.

The NIH scrubbed its website of a longstanding definition for gain-of-function research the same day that the letter was sent.

NIAID scrubbed the definition of gain-of-function research overnight. The change was made when grant reports made it unambiguous that Fauci funded research to make coronaviruses more dangerous in Wuhan, including research that increased the viral load by 10,000 times.… https://t.co/lWzaRZR3yz pic.twitter.com/zMqtaHcR78

— Emily Kopp (@emilyakopp) January 10, 2024

The research carried out at the lab created enough concern among health bureaucrats that, last July, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) barred the Wuhan Institute of Virology from receiving federal grants for the next 10 years.

Last Tuesday, news also broke that the HHS cancelled the next three years worth of grant funding for EcoHealth Alliance — the research organisation through which US funds were diverted to the Wuhan lab.

Albanese’s Gain-of-Function Censorship

The latest revelation about the Wuhan lab leak scandal comes amid a crackdown on “misinformation and disinformation” by the Albanese Government.

According to the exposure draft of Labor’s Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023, reports on events like the Wuhan lab leak could be hidden from Australian citizens thanks to harsh financial penalties that would be imposed on social media companies that fail to censor verboten content.

If passed, the controversial Bill will censor any online content deemed by authorities to be “false” or “misleading” and that is “reasonably likely to cause or contribute to” the “disruption of public order or society” — definitions that would plausibly apply to allegations of a manmade global pandemic.

“Professional news content” and “content that is authorised by the Commonwealth or a State” would be exempt from the legislation.

The Daily Declaration began reporting on the lab leak scandal at a time when Australia’s national broadcaster the ABC was still insisting that the lab hypothesis was “misinformation” and a Donald Trump-inspired “conspiracy theory”.

Moreover, it was revealed last July through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request submitted by Senator Alex Antic that the Department of Home Affairs flagged over 4,000 social media posts for removal by Big Tech platforms — including posts that promoted the now-vindicated Wuhan lab leak theory.

The Department of Infrastructure has since announced that “the Australian Government will consider a number of changes to the [Misinformation] Bill” after receiving 2,500 public submissions and a further 20,000 confidential comments, the majority of which expressed strong opposition to the proposed legislation.

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