Reading Room Production — page 332

[ v> trange thing dan From: "Spiro, David (NIH/FIC) [E]" < @nih.gov> To: "Sizemore, Christine (NIH/FIC) [E]" < @nih.gov> Subject: RE: Did you see this petition? Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2023 10:23:03 -0400 Importance: Normal Inline-Images: image001.png Yes, I did and I also watched portions of the hearing with Andersen and Garry. The House report is a skewed and doesn't take into account some of the details revealed in the hearing. After watching the hearing, I think Fauci and Collins were involved, I am not convinced that this was orchestrated by Fauci. Jeremy Farrar was the initiator of the article and Fauci sat in on a call. Andersen said that Fauci played a minimal role in the talks and that they changed their point of view based on analysis of the data. Given my review of the genomic data, this seems reasonable. I think the paper is most likely an honest assessment of data. Quickly done, no doubt but there was an emergency situation. What confuses me is why Fauci publicly pretended that he didn't know the investigators and I wonder if this is because he placed his thumb on the post-peer review process leading to an award of CREID centers for Garry and Andersen. The peer review took place in November, but the grants weren't awarded until April I believe. After the call for proximal origin. Andersen said that the peer review couldn't possibly have been tampered with, but you and I both know that awarding large cooperative agreements goes beyond peer review and the NIAID OD could have weighed in. The other strange thing was awarding a CREID center to Dascak after Trump specifically blocked an earlier grant to EcoHealth alliance. From: Sizemore, Christine (NIH/FIC) [E] @nih.gov> Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 9:20 AM To: Spiro, David (NIH/FIC) [E] @nih.gov> Subject: RE: Did you see this petition? Have you read that report from the committee that I sent recently? I would have agreed with you until I saw the actual emails and Slack channel conversations... I am still siding with you that it should not be retracted, also because that sets precedence. But what went on behind the scenes is pretty bad. From: Spiro, David (NIH/FIC) [E] @nih.gov> Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 9:01 AM To: Sizemore, Christine (NIH/FIC) [E] @nih.gov> Subject: RE: Did you see this petition? Hi, I don't agree with the petition. I think it is an important first analysis of the data available at the time and is part of a series of investigations by the authors and collaborators attempting to find the origin through genomic and epi analysis. The problem came with how the Dems and NIH leadership used it as a weapon to silence scientific debate. It is also an important historical record at this point. From: Sizemore, Christine (NIH/FIC) [E] @nih.gov> Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 8:29 AM To: Spiro, David (NIH/FIC) [E] @nih.gov> Subject: Did you see this petition? Petition to withdraw the Proximal Origins paper... What do you think? I am a bit torn here.... On one hand, if this were a paper that summarizes the state of knowledge about SARS-CoV2 as of Feb 2020 and speculates what the origins may be, and then it turns out, as is part of science, that there is more to it, I would not have a problem with the paper. But now that is has been shown that it was not a full