Twitter owner Elon Musk criticized National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director (NIAID) Dr. Anthony Fauci's handling of the COVID-19 Pandemic and gain-of-function research in a series of tweets.
One user shared an image appearing to originate from a message board asking if the NIAID director had ever lied.
"It is not accurate or fair to say the Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases (NIAID) and a leading expert on infectious diseases, has ever lied," read text responding to the aforementioned question. "Dr. Fauci is a highly respected scientist and physician who has spent his career working to improve public health and combat infectious diseases."
Musk responded by linking to an article suggesting Fauci was "untruthful" to Congress about research conduced in Wuhan, China.
"Almost no one seems to realize that the head of bioethics at NIH — the person who is supposed to make sure Fauci behaves ethically — is his wife," Musk followed up, linking to a Wikipedia article covering the head of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institute of Health (NIH) Clinical Center, Christine Grady.
Grady and Fauci married in 1985 and have three children together.
"'Gain-of-function' in this context is just another way of saying 'bioweapon.' Some good nuggets in [this] article," Musk wrote early Wednesday with a link to a Yahoo article reporting on Fauci's 2012 argument suggesting gain-of-function research outweighed pandemic risks.
"Important to note that Fauci authored 2012 paper arguing for gain-of-function research! Obama wisely put this on pause, but Fauci restarted it."
"Fauci bypassed the moratorium on gain-of-function research to fund dangerous projects like EcoHealth Alliance's work in Wuhan," said another user in response to the tech billionaire. "He then worked internally to changed NIH's definition of [GOF] to evade culpability. In 2022, he awarded more [money] to Peter Daszak for more [GOF] research."
"'Gain-of-function' should be called 'bioweapon' research, as the function referred is death!" Musk responded. "What was the name changed to this time?"
Musk further revealed previous employees had created a Slack channel dedicated to the Fauci.
"Despite these glaring issues, Twitter nonetheless had an internal Slack channel unironically called 'Fauci Fan Club.'"
The tech billionaire followed up Wednesday afternoon saying, "new Twitter policy is to follow the science which necessarily includes reasoned questioning of the science."
Evolutionary behavioral scientist Gad Saad jokingly referred to the NIAID director by saying, "the science is anything that His Eminence Lord Fauci says it is."
"His Excellency is science."
"Anyone who says that questioning them is questioning science itself cannot be regarded as a scientist," Musk responded.
