[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
ACADEMIC MALPRACTICE:
EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS, THE GOVERNMENT
AND PEER REVIEW
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 17, 2024
__________
Serial No. 118-101
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability
Available on: govinfo.gov,
oversight.house.gov or
docs.house.gov
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY
JAMES COMER, Kentucky, Chairman
Jim Jordan, Ohio Jamie Raskin, Maryland, Ranking
Mike Turner, Ohio Minority Member
Paul Gosar, Arizona Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Columbia
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts
Michael Cloud, Texas Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia
Gary Palmer, Alabama Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
Clay Higgins, Louisiana Ro Khanna, California
Pete Sessions, Texas Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
Andy Biggs, Arizona Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York
Nancy Mace, South Carolina Katie Porter, California
Jake LaTurner, Kansas Cori Bush, Missouri
Pat Fallon, Texas Shontel Brown, Ohio
Byron Donalds, Florida Melanie Stansbury, New Mexico
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Robert Garcia, California
William Timmons, South Carolina Maxwell Frost, Florida
Tim Burchett, Tennessee Summer Lee, Pennsylvania
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Greg Casar, Texas
Lisa McClain, Michigan Jasmine Crockett, Texas
Lauren Boebert, Colorado Dan Goldman, New York
Russell Fry, South Carolina Jared Moskowitz, Florida
Anna Paulina Luna, Florida Rashida Tlaib, Michigan
Nick Langworthy, New York Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Eric Burlison, Missouri
Mike Waltz, Florida
------
Mark Marin, Staff Director
Mitchell Benzine, Subcommittee Staff Director
Marie Policastro, Clerk
Contact Number: 202-225-5074
Miles Lichtman, Minority Staff Director
Contact Number: 202-225-5051
------
Select Subcommittee On The Coronavirus Pandemic
Brad Wenstrup, Ohio, Chairman
Nicole Malliotakis, New York Raul Ruiz, California, Ranking
Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa Minority Member
Debbie Lesko, Arizona Debbie Dingell, Michigan
Michael Cloud, Texas Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
John Joyce, Pennsylvania Deborah Ross, North Carolina
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Robert Garcia, California
Ronny Jackson, Texas Ami Bera, California
Rich Mccormick, Georgia Jill Tokuda, Hawaii
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on April 17, 2024................................... 1
Witnesses
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Holden Thorp, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief, Science Journals, American
Association for the Advancement of Science
Oral Statement................................................... 4
Written opening statements and the written statements of the
witnesses are available on the U.S. House of Representatives
Document Repository at: docs.house.gov.
Index of Documents
----------
Statement for the Record, by Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr.; submitted by
Rep. Wenstrup.
Republican Staff Report, July 12, 2023; submitted by Rep.
Wenstrup.
Documents are available at: docs.house.gov.
ACADEMIC MALPRACTICE:
EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS, THE GOVERNMENT
AND PEER REVIEW
----------
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Accountability
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:32 p.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Brad Wenstrup
(chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Wenstrup, Miller-Meeks, McCormick,
Ruiz, Dingell, Ross, Garcia, and Tokuda.
Also present: Representative Moskowitz.
Dr. Wenstrup. The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus
Pandemic will come to order. I want to welcome everyone.
And without objection, the Chair may declare a recess at
any time.
I now recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening
statement.
I ask for unanimous consent for Mr. Moskowitz from Florida
and a member of the full committee to participate in today's
hearing.
Today, the Select Subcommittee is holding a hearing to
examine the relationship between scientific journals and the
government. This is not a hearing to see how the government can
be more involved in the journal editorial process but to make
sure that the government does not involve itself or influence
this process.
Academic, scientific, and medical journals are an
incredibly important tool to spread research to the masses.
There is no denying the awesome power of these periodicals, as
well as their editors, that they hold over the medical and
scientific communities. After the COVID-19 pandemic, we see
that, and it affects the world for that matter. I utilize
journals in my practice on almost a daily basis. They are an
important component to the practice of science and medicine,
and because of that, there can be no place for politics or
inappropriate government influence.
Journals and, subsequently, their editors are telling the
world about research that has been conducted, yet it is
important to note they are not necessarily always the arbiters
of truth. They provide a forum where scientific claims are
made, defended, and debated by peer review, as it should be.
However, we saw a breakdown of that during the pandemic. Rather
than journals being a wealth of information and opinions about
this novel virus, of which we knew so little, they helped
establish a party line that literally put a chilling effect on
scientific research regarding the origins of COVID-19 and
scientific communications.
As I have stated time and time again, this Subcommittee was
established so we can collectively take a look back on the
pandemic and see what we can do better for the next time. We
invited the editors-in-chief of the Lancet, Nature, and
Science. Only the editor of Science has had the courage to come
and help us be better, and we are very thankful to Dr. Thorp
for being here today, and I appreciate the frank and
professional conversation we had before today.
The purpose of this hearing is to demystify the publication
process. Editors hold an extraordinary amount of power within
the journals in publication process, a process that is a black
box to most of the public. They act as an umpire to judge the
scientific research that is being published. Like an umpire, it
is vital that they know about the sport and rules of play, but
they themselves should never be in the competition. That is
what appeared to have happened during COVID-19, and it is
important to separate opinion versus scientifically proven fact
and to highlight the varying hypotheses that may exist.
The publications of papers like, ``Proximal Origin,'' which
this Subcommittee has exposed as lacking in scientific
integrity as well as being prompted by Dr. Fauci and Dr.
Collins, and the Lancet letter, where the Lancet did not even
bother to check for conflicts of interest, it set a precedent
from two of the most prestigious journals in the world that the
natural origin of COVID-19 was the only theory plausible,
period, the end. That is not the case, and anyone else who had
even the inkling of another plausible scientific thought was
immediately labeled a conspiracy theorist. How is that
acceptable in the scientific community when the entire crux of
the field is open for debate?
There is value in giving science a fair hearing. It should
be the most pure and honest form of debate. We are holding this
hearing to help shed light on the journal process so everyone
can have a greater understanding of how business is conducted
or maybe should be conducted. And, again, I want to express my
disappointment that Dr. Skipper from Nature and Dr. Horton from
Lancet declined to participate today, but I, again want to
reiterate our appreciation to Dr. Thorp, standing up, showing
integrity to testify before this Select Subcommittee today, and
I look forward to a strong on-topic discussion.
I would now like to recognize Ranking Member Ruiz for the
purpose of making an opening statement.
Dr. Ruiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the
witnesses for your participation today in our hearing. There
are things I agree with the Chairman and there are things that
I disagree with, but we are still friends.
Scientific journals play an important role in informing the
public about the world around us, critical issues facing our
Nation, and advances in science and medicine. In fact, I have
been published a couple of times myself in these peer-reviewed
journals in medicine. Since their inception, these journals
have placed objectivity at the forefront of their efforts to
study, review, and publish articles that advance our research
enterprise, and when a once-in-a-generation pandemic struck our
Nation in 2020, this was no different. But despite the
Majority's claims in the press release announcing this hearing,
the Select Subcommittee has not uncovered any evidence that
directly implicates Drs. Fauci and Collins in a cover-up of the
pandemic's origin or collusion with scientific journals to
suppress the lab leak hypothesis.
Under the guise of investigating COVID-19's origins, the
Majority has continuously advanced a conspiratorial narrative
against our Nation's public health officials, relying purely on
speculation. Their probe into federally funded research has
spanned more than a half a million pages of documents, more
than a dozen transcribed interviews, and multiple hearings, and
yet it has failed to substantiate any of their claims about
Drs. Fauci and Collins or even bring us closer to understanding
how COVID came to be. Instead, it has only further politicized
an issue of great importance to our public health and national
security, which is not without consequence.
In fact, we are already seeing growing divides when it
comes to trust in our Nation's institutions and how that
influences people's behavior when it comes to protecting their
health. Rebuilding the American people's trust in public health
is critical to our ability to prevent, prepare for, and respond
to future pandemics. And the way we go about that is not by
continuing to manufacture distrust in our Nation's institutions
by amplifying harmful and often outright false information
about public health, or by jumping to conclusions about how
this virus emerged when its origins are still inconclusive.
Instead, it is by having honest conversations that are rooted
in fact about what we can do better in the future.
So, as we begin today's hearing, I want to take a moment to
address some of the allegations that have been levied by the
Majority over the course of this probe and what the facts of
the case have actually told us.
First, my Republican colleagues have alleged that Drs.
Fauci and Collins orchestrated the proximal origins paper to
suppress the lab leak theory, despite all evidence to the
contrary. Documents and testimony made available to this
committee have repeatedly shown that British scientist, Dr.
Jeremy Farrar, played the lead role in organizing and
shepherding the paper through publication. And second, my
Republican colleagues have alleged that Drs. Fauci and Collins
orchestrated a ``takedown of the Great Barrington
Declaration.'' Dr. Collins testified before this committee that
he had privately called for ``a quick and devastating published
takedown of its premises out of concern for the public's
health.'' Documents and testimony provided to this committee
have never shown that Dr. Collins pressured an NIH employee or
a scientific journal to ``take down the Great Barrington
Declaration.'' This committee seems to be forgetting that there
is a difference between government speech, which the Supreme
Court has previously ruled government entities have a right to
do, and government coercion, which my Republican colleagues are
accusing public health officials of without a shred of
evidence.
That aside, I have to say I am worried that today's hearing
is setting a dangerous precedent that if Congress doesn't like
what you publish, you will be hauled in before a congressional
committee to answer for it, until they prove their
conspiratorial narrative. The fact is Congress should not be
meddling in the peer review process, and it should not be
holding hearings to throw around baseless accusations,
especially when there is so much work we can and should be
doing to prevent and prepare for future pandemics. Every minute
wasted on spurious conjecture, every sentence spoken amplifying
false information, and every hearing spent on unsubstantiated
allegations comes at a cost, and at the end of the day, it will
be the American people who will pay the biggest price. I yield
back.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Today's witness is Dr. Holden
Thorp. Dr. Thorp is the editor-in-chief of the Science Family
of Journals of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science. He became the editor in October 2019. He currently
holds faculty appointments in chemistry and medicine at George
Washington University.
Pursuant to the Committee on Oversight and Accountability
Rule 9(g), the witness will please stand and raise his right
hand.
Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony that you
are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, so help you God?
Dr. Thorp. I do.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Let the record show that the
witness answered in the affirmative.
The Select Subcommittee certainly appreciates you for being
here today, and we look forward to your testimony. Let me
remind the witness we have read your written statement, and it
will appear in full in the hearing record, and thank you for
that. Please limit your oral statement to 5 minutes.
As a reminder, please press the button on the microphone in
front of you so that it is on, and the members can hear you.
When you begin to speak, the light in front of you will turn
green. After 4 minutes, the light will turn yellow. When the
red light comes on, your 5 minutes has expired, and we would
ask that you please wrap up.
Now I will recognize Dr. Thorp to give an opening
statement.
STATEMENT OF HOLDEN THORP, PH.D.
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, SCIENCE JOURNALS
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE
Dr. Thorp. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Wenstrup,
Ranking Member Ruiz, and members of the Select Subcommittee,
thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I am Holden
Thorp, editor-in-chief of Science and the Science Family of
Journals. The Science Family of Journals is published by the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the
largest multidisciplinary nonprofit scientific societies in the
world whose mission, in short, is to advance science and serve
society.
Let me begin by saying how extraordinarily proud I am of
the Science Journal's work, including in the first year of the
pandemic where we worked around the clock. Further, I am proud
of the role that the scientific enterprise plays in society.
The journal, Science, is unlike most other scientific
publications in that it has three components, each of which
operates independently. Each issue of Science covers scientific
news, offers commentary about science, and publishes peer-
reviewed research in many disciplines. As editor-in-chief, my
role is different for each section. For the research journal, I
oversee a staff of expert editors in different specialties. For
news, I oversee award-winning coverage that is led by an editor
and journalists who enjoy the same freedoms as any other media
outlet in our country. And as part of our commentary section
called Insights, I am an opinion writer who appears on the
magazine's editorial page roughly every other week.
The peer review process is central to the scientific
enterprise. For each paper we handle at the journal, we abide
by a rigorous, multi-step peer review process that begins with
staff editors who assess papers. These staff editors consult
with expert colleagues and a board of external scientists. If a
paper is determined to be potentially suitable for the journal,
it is further evaluated by multiple reviewers who are
researchers in related fields. This ensures that all aspects of
a given study receive appropriate scrutiny. We also have a
careful process to ensure that the reviewers do not have a
conflict of interest. Most studies that make it beyond these
evaluations are revised and re-reviewed to ensure that all
reviewer concerns have been adequately addressed. Then a paper
is reviewed again by our staff editors who clarify language and
images to make sure they are consistent with the evidence that
has been presented.
If a paper makes it all the way through all of this, then
it is summarized, shared with more than 8,000 reporters under
embargo, and posted on our website. And then, upon publication,
it is maintained by us in perpetuity for any corrections and
adjustments that happen after publication, according to our
well-established process. This process was applied consistently
to the nearly 9,000 research papers submitted to the Science
Family of Journals related to SARS-CoV-2. It is applied to
every research paper on every topic.
Regarding the paper at the center of this discussion, ``The
Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,'' it was never submitted to
Science. In fact, I had no knowledge of this piece published in
Nature Medicine, nor the related letter in The Lancet, until
they were published. However, I want to call attention to three
publications in our journal, Science, that are relevant to
today's discussion.
The first is a letter published in our commentary section
in May 2021 from prominent researchers in the area of COVID-19
origins, led by virologist, Jesse Bloom. This letter called for
a thorough investigation of a lab origin of COVID-19. When we
published it, I wrote that, ``Good science requires that the
laboratory escape be rigorously investigated before being ruled
out. China should allow for a dispassionate examination of the
data and allow scientists to do what they are trained to do.''
The publication of this letter turned the tide in the
discussion of COVID origins toward considering the possibility
of a lab origin, and I stand firmly by this sentiment today.
I also want to highlight two papers from virologists
Michael Worobey and Jonathan Pekar, published in our research
section in 2022. These papers present geospatial and genetic
information that support, but do not conclusively prove, the
theory of natural origin. They were initially posted on the
internet as pre-prints in a process many scientists use before
submitting to a journal. They were widely read and reported
prior to their submission to Science. Once they were submitted
to Science, they were reviewed in accordance with the same
process I just described. At the end of that process, they were
edited under my supervision to ensure that their language was
consistent with the extent to which the evidence supported
their conclusion of natural origin. To be clear, and to state
up front, no government officials from the White House or the
NIH prompted or participated in the review or editing of the
Worobey papers by us.
In closing, I want to recognize the scientific community
and my colleagues at the Science Family of Journals for their
roles during the COVID-19 pandemic. We did not get everything
right during COVID--no one did--but in 18 months, the
scientific community identified the virus, determined how it
spread, developed therapies that have had major life-saving
impacts. Scientists, the scientific method, and peer review are
national treasures, and I am thankful every day for all three,
and, of course, scientists are not and never will be perfect.
We are human. But the scientific method enables us to reach
beyond our individual limitations by requiring evidence and
constant self-correction. It helped us end the pandemic, and it
contributes to a strong and prosperous America.
Thank you for having me today, and I look forward to taking
your questions.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you, Dr. Thorp. I now recognize myself
for questions, and I want to start with the empty chairs in the
room. We also invited Dr. Skipper from Nature and Dr. Horton
from Lancet, both of which publish a significant amount of
federally funded research. Dr. Thorp, you are here. You showed
up. Do you think your colleagues should have as well?
Dr. Thorp. I do. I am disappointed that they are not here.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Before we get into some more
substance questions regarding some of the public statements,
and, again, we are trying to look at process here and how we
can do things better in the future. But the first is, after our
first hearing on the origins back in March 2023, you tweeted,
``One side has scientific evidence. The other has a mediocre
episode of 'Homeland.' '' We have heard from scientists,
foreign affairs experts, intelligence experts, that a lab leak
is possible. Even recently with Dr. Fauci, he said it is not a
conspiracy theory. The tweet appears to contradict your
testimony today. Would you still put the same thing out today
or have you learned something or why was that put out at the
time?
Dr. Thorp. No. As I said in my written testimony, I was not
as careful expressing my personal opinions on my personal
Twitter page as I should have. That does happen on social media
from time to time. I have gotten off Twitter, and I highly
recommend that because in addition to making my life better, I
don't have to take my blood pressure medicine anymore, so my
doctor is very happy I got off of Twitter also. I apologize for
that. That was flippant, and I shouldn't have done that.
Dr. Wenstrup. Well, I appreciate that. So let me ask
another question. In an editorial published November 12, 2021,
you were discussing the recently revealed DEFUSE proposal, the
one where EcoHealth, UNC, and the WIV proposed inserting furin
cleavage sites into novel coronaviruses. You wrote,
unequivocally, these experiments were not conducted. How did
you know that they weren't?
Dr. Thorp. Yes. Well, opinions that I express on the
opinion page are very clearly marked as opinion, as you alluded
to in your opening statement. We publish opinions in Science
because we like to provoke discussion about them, and every 2
weeks I have to come up with 720 words of my opinions to put on
there, and that was a topic that people were certainly
interested in. I was not aware, especially, of the information
that your committee has since obtained about that grant, and I
understand why you would be so interested in all of that. At
that time, I was going from what was reported in news stories
that were around. That is what opinion journalists do. We read
news stories, and we write commentary based on those opinions.
So, at that time, I concluded that it was a proposal that
wasn't funded and there are many proposals that are not funded
in Science. And so, something that was not funded, I didn't see
as significant as some people did. I understand how you could
see it was circumstantial evidence to support some of the
things that you are looking for, and I was critical of both the
way that Dr. Collins and Dr. Daszak handled the revealing of
that proposal. And I certainly wasn't aware or something that I
agree with you, it is very important that you have only
recently uncovered, and that is that Dr. Daszak may have had
other plans other than what was in the proposal.
Now, I think it is also true that the viruses that they
were talking about were not close enough to COVID that those
experiments themselves could have led to the pandemic, but it
is certainly true that they were discussing all of those things
in that proposal. And no one that I mentioned in that editorial
was happy with me after I wrote that because I criticized both
parties.
Dr. Wenstrup. Yes. I mean, when you say one thing in your
proposal, but in your private comments, you are talking about
doing something different, it raises an eyebrow.
Dr. Thorp. Yes. I was not aware of that at that time.
Dr. Wenstrup. Neither were we.
Dr. Thorp. Yes.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Dr. Thorp, in your opening
statement, you walked through the editorial process, and I
greatly appreciate that. I thought it was a great statement you
put forward, and I appreciate your candor. You mentioned two
COVID origins papers that were pre-printed and eventually peer
reviewed and published in Science. What is the standard
practice for pre-prints? Are they submitted to Science and then
published online or vice versa? Take me through that.
Dr. Thorp. Yes. This is very important for your committee,
and it is a very important part of my life, so I appreciate you
giving me the opportunity to walk through it. We used to live
in a simpler world where pre-prints didn't exist, but they have
made all of this in some ways better and in some ways much more
difficult. So, it is common for scientists now to take the
version of the paper that they are likely to submit to a
journal and put it on what we call a pre-print server, and on
that pre-print server, anybody who wants to can look at it.
The primary purpose of it is to get the information in the
paper out to the scientific community so that other scientists
can benefit from what they have discovered. And that part of
it, you know, I really like because our process can take a long
time sometimes, and it is a reasonable criticism of scientific
publishing that we tie things up too long while we are doing
all of those procedures that I described to you. So, the pre-
print is a mechanism for solving that problem. However, it
creates a lot of complications because the media can cover
those pre-prints. The pre-prints can get into the public
discourse very easily. And this was certainly true with Worobey
and Pekar, as those papers are improved during the scientific
process and even afterwards because sometimes we have to adjust
papers after the fact. None of that is in the record that is on
the pre-print.
And this is one of the main reasons why journals are
important because not only do we evaluate and improve the
version itself, but then afterwards, we are responsible for any
comments and criticisms and adjustments in the paper that have
to be made after the fact. So, the benefits of the pre-print
are that the journals aren't holding up the world from getting
scientific information. The drawback is it makes the whole
thing noisier. And so, there are a lot of people in my line of
work who long for the day when we didn't have pre-prints
because it made our jobs easier in that respect.
Dr. Wenstrup. I appreciate that. Before I go to the Ranking
Member, I just want to point, these two papers were the subject
of a front-page spread in The New York Times. And one author
quoted saying, ``When you look at all of the evidence together,
it is an extraordinarily clear picture that the pandemic
started at the Huanan market.'' But that is not what the paper
ended up showing, and you pointed that out in your opening
statement. I appreciate that, and it seems that these studies,
much like ``Proximal Origin'' and Lancet letter, were used to
stifle debate.
I now recognize the Ranking Member for 5 minutes of
questions.
Dr. Ruiz. For 14 months, under the guise of investigating
the origins of the novel coronavirus, the Select Subcommittee
has relentlessly probed our Nation's scientific community and
researchers. Last year, we spent hundreds of hours scrutinizing
the drafting and publications of the ``Proximal Origin'' paper,
demanding thousands of pages of internal documents from
researchers involved in the paper, conducting transcribed
interviews with these researchers, subpoenaing their private
communications, and calling two of them to testify at a public
hearing. And through the fall and winter, the Select
Subcommittee conducted a dozen transcribed interviews of
current and former NIH and NIAID scientists.
We have undertaken all of this work, but to what end? Has
targeting these researchers and probing the publications of the
proximal origin paper meaningfully advanced our efforts to
prevent and prepare for future pandemics, or has it been about
fishing for evidence with the goal of advancing a predetermined
partisan narrative targeting Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins and our
Nation's scientists and public health officials?
Dr. Thorp, what work is the scientific community associated
with your journals doing to better understand the origins?
Dr. Thorp. Yes. So, I think there are still people out
there doing research on trying to understand the origin of
COVID. But I think one thing that I would love to explain to
folks is that during this phase of the pandemic, at the
beginning, most of us were focused on, or I was much more
focused on things that could get us out of the pandemic than
understanding where it came from.
Now, that doesn't mean I don't agree that it is important
to know where COVID came from. But a lot of this that was going
on was going on at a time when scientists were working around
the clock, rearranging their lives, dealing with the
disruptions that they had from COVID, and our journal, we were
all at home on our computers going through thousands and
thousands of COVID papers, looking for papers that would help
us get the vaccine or new drugs.
Dr. Ruiz. I agree. I understand that. But now looking in
hindsight, would you agree with the statement that both the
scientific and the intelligence communities, maybe you might
not know about the intelligence communities as much, but there
have been some published reports from different agencies, that
the thing we can say with certain is that there is no
certainty.
Dr. Thorp. Yes. I agree with that.
Dr. Ruiz. You agree with that. So, there is no certainty
without thinking whether this is a lab leak, and there is no
certainty if this is a zoonotic transmission.
Dr. Thorp. That is correct.
Dr. Ruiz. That both are still plausible, and we need to
research to determine which one it is. But given the barriers
of China noncompliance with our investigations, shouldn't we be
preparing on both fronts to determine how can we prevent a
zoonotic or how can we prevent a lab leak?
Dr. Thorp. Yes.
Dr. Ruiz. Thank you. Thank you. I just needed a yes. So,
when I joined the Select Subcommittee as Ranking Member, you
know, I hoped that we could work on the challenging, but
critically important mission of identifying forward-looking
solutions to prevent and prepare for future pandemics. This
included taking a serious look at whether SARS-CoV-2 emerged
from a natural zoonotic transfer or from a research-related
incident so that we could propose substantive policies to
prevent the emergence of the next deadly novel airborne virus.
But instead of examining this question seriously and
consistently and objectively, this Select Subcommittee has so
far only leveraged it to target our Nation's scientists, Dr.
Fauci, Dr. Collins, and to vilify our Nation's public health
officials. And in order to prove their theory that Dr. Fauci
and Dr. Collins suppressed the truth, which is dependent on the
lab leak theory, they must push and prove that, in fact, it was
leaked from a lab, and there is no alternative, or else the
entire narrative is false. And in doing so, you know, the
Select Subcommittee has undermined the critical mission of
preventing and preparing for future pandemics.
Dr. Thorp, what actions should Congress be taking to close
off both natural-and research-related incident pathways for
novel viruses to emerge?
Dr. Thorp. Yes. Well, I think that laboratory safety is
incredibly important. In fact, I co-chaired and wrote the last
National Academies of Sciences' study on chemical laboratory
safety, which has many principles in it that would also apply
to biological laboratory safety. And it is a riveting reading,
and I would be delighted to send it to you if you want to read
it. So that is half of it. And on the other half, if it is true
that it came from the wildlife trade, we have published many
papers talking about how understanding the extent and
regulation of the wildlife trade in China is very, very
important, and I could refer you to a number of papers about
that.
Dr. Ruiz. So, you know, what is more, as a result of
unproven conspiratorial accusations, like those suggesting Dr.
Fauci and Dr. Collins covered up the origins of COVID-19
pandemic, trust in science and our Nation's public health
institutions have suffered. The Pew Research Center found that
fewer than 3 in 10 Americans have a great deal of confidence in
scientists to act in the public's interest. So, while
manufacturing of distrust is largely happening along party
lines, it will hurt us all and our public health in the long
run, whether you are Republican, Democrat, or Independent. And
we are already seeing the consequences. For example, threats
against scientists and public health officials have surged in
the wake of these accusations, which could have long-term
impacts on our ability to cultivate a strong and growing work
force to protect our public health.
Dr. Thorp, have you observed an increase in threats against
scientists and researchers since the COVID-19 pandemic, and
does this trend undermine our efforts to prevent and prepare
for future pandemics?
Dr. Thorp. I have only heard about it secondhand, but I
have many people that I work with in the scientific community
that I know who have endured that, and I find it very
unfortunate.
Dr. Ruiz. It is very unfortunate. And as a physician and
public health expert, I am deeply troubled that the
Subcommittee has prioritized its time and resources on
advancing this extreme partisan narrative over fulfilling our
obligations to the American people to mitigate future public
health threats. So, I once again urge my colleagues on the
other side of the aisle to stop the conspiratorial accusation.
There has been no evidence directly linking Dr. Fauci or Dr.
Collins. Instead, let's work on forward-looking solutions that
can prevent and prepare for the next pandemic. Thank you.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mrs. Miller-Meeks from Iowa
for 5 minutes of questions.
Dr. Miller-Meeks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
Dr. Thorp, for testifying before this Select Subcommittee
today.
This hearing could not come at a better time, especially
with the coronavirus pandemic in the rearview mirror. And
during the pandemic, we saw clear collusion, non-
conspiratorial, between certain stakeholders and government
entities, such as, one example, how the American Federation of
Teachers and Randi Weingarten were heavily involved in the
drafting of the CDC school closure guidance with how we
discussed and talked about infection-acquired immunity, which
is a real thing, but even public health people were denying
that it existed. We have evidence of that from this Select
Subcommittee.
Collaboration and collusion between non-medical entities
like the AFT and the government have real-world consequences.
It is no secret that keeping children out of the classroom had
devastating impacts on their mental health and education
markers, including reading and math scores. It has also forced
parents to stay home with their children to participate in
remote learning, rather than being able to go to work and
support their families. In this scenario, there was no peer-
reviewed or medical backing, but rather, sheer political
interest that occurred at the expense of children, parents,
teachers, and the country writ large.
Part of doing medical research and going through the peer
review process means changing, correcting, or eliminating
portions of your work. It is also important to recognize the
reality that authors and those in the medical community should
be comfortable defending their work and be able to explain
rationale behind those findings. And Dr. Thorp, I think you may
have already explained this, but can you please detail the
review process for publications?
Dr. Thorp. Yes. If a paper is submitted to a peer-reviewed
journal, first we decide if we are going to have it reviewed,
and we do that in collaboration with some advisors that we
have, and then we send it out and it goes through successive
rounds of review and revision by experts. And only after it
survives all of that do we then prepare it for publication
where we check over it, and then if there are concerns raised
about the paper after that, we mediate the discussions about
those and decide if there are other things that need to be
done.
Dr. Miller-Meeks. Having gone through that process for
publication, I can----
Dr. Thorp. Congratulations.
Dr. Miller-Meeks [continuing]. echo that it is arduous.
Have you ever notified the government of certain articles or
topics that your journal was reviewing, and have you ever felt
pressured by a government to publish or any government to
publish or not publish certain articles?
Dr. Thorp. I have never done that for a research article,
but my opinion pieces go to 8,000 reporters 4 days before they
are published. And a lot of times, if we think that somebody
might get a question about something that is in one of my
opinion pieces, we let them know ahead of time so that they
will have a complete answer if they get asked. And since I
wrote about a lot of government officials during this period,
and I still do in all administrations and in all countries
around the world, I do from time to time let them know ahead of
time that there is an opinion piece coming that they might get
asked about.
Dr. Miller-Meeks. Well, thank you. And since you mentioned
opinion pieces, I think that there was research that was
suppressed due to groupthink, and how does your journal combat
groupthink as it is currently magnified by peer review?
Dr. Thorp. Well, thankfully, we rely on a peer-review
process that awaits evidence, and scientists are opinionated
people, just like everybody else, but we also know, and we
could have done a lot better job at explaining this, that
science is a work in progress. And so, when we see new data, we
change the way we are thinking. And I obviously did that many
times during the pandemic and so did everybody else, and in the
future, we need to do a much better job telling people that.
And I think it is something that we take for granted because
that is what makes science fun. That is why we do it because it
changes, and we need to do a much better job of helping the
public understand that. And I have written many opinion pieces
for the scientific community on that topic.
Dr. Miller-Meeks. Yes. As you correctly pointed out,
science is not consensus of opinion. And I just want to say,
since the time I came into Congress in 2021, I have talked
about why the origins of COVID-19 were important, not partisan,
not conspiratorial, but one, laboratory safety. The world has a
right to know that the correct type of research is being done
in the correct lab safety environment; No. 2, immediate
disclosure of viruses or bacteria that may lead to a pandemic;
and No. 4, the ethics of the type of research that is being
done in those laboratories. To say that there was no certainty
and no outcome from these hearings, I am proud of the work this
Select Subcommittee has done. We are talking about this topic
today because people dared to question the narrative that was
being proposed, and trust suffers because of censorship,
because of a lack of debate within the scientific community.
And so due to the work of this Select Subcommittee, I think
that we have advanced people that have disparate voices, people
that dare to challenge the current narrative, which we have
seen in science time and time again.
And I will bring up peptic ulcer disease is not caused by
type A personality, but a bacteria, and thank goodness people
were willing to challenge the medical narrative. But if
disparate voices know that they will be heard, they will not be
censored, and that absolutely, 100 percent will lead to better
preparation for the next pandemic. With that, I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mrs. Dingell in Michigan for
5 minutes of questions.
Mrs. Dingell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Over the course of
this hearing, we have had several baseless claims about
wrongdoing by Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins. Of course, these
claims are nothing new. They were predetermined since the
outset of this Congress and debunked through Republicans' own
probe, but that doesn't stop people from recycling them, even
in the absence of evidence. To date, nearly half a million
pages of documents and more than a dozen transcribed interviews
of current and former Federal officials and researchers, all at
taxpayers' expense, have failed to reveal a cover-up of COVID-
19's origin or any other wrongdoing by Dr. Fauci or Dr.
Collins.
As Select Subcommittee Democrats have repeatedly said, and
as the paper's authors, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins, all
testified, neither Dr. Fauci nor Dr. Collins suppressed the lab
leak theory or orchestrated the Proximal Origin paper, nor did
they organize the February 1, 2020 conference call. Rather, Dr.
Jeremy Farrar organized that call and played a leading role in
shepherding ``Proximal Origin'' through publication. Those are
crystal clear facts acknowledged in Republicans' own materials.
In fact, Republican questioning during Dr. Fauci's transcribed
interview explicitly recognized that they were nitpicking words
and believed that Dr. Fauci was testifying truthfully when he
said he made no edits to revisions to Proximal Origin. And for
the record, the Select Subcommittee Democrats would appreciate
it if the Republicans would release that transcript.
As for the Great Barrington Declaration, we know how
disastrous immediately lifting community mitigation measures
would have been at a time when the COVID-19 death toll had just
surpassed more than 1 million nationwide. That is what Dr.
Collins recognized when he privately called for a takedown of
the declaration's premises. Dr. Collins never pressured an NIH
employee, or a scientific journal for that matter, to censor
the declaration, and Republican claims to the contrary are just
not true. For the record, we would also appreciate the release
of Dr. Collins' interview transcript. And as for the
Republicans claims about Dr. Fauci's and Dr. Collins'
censorship of views suggesting COVID-19 does not have a natural
origin, let's critically examine Republicans' star document.
Dr. Thorp, on May 12, 2021, you emailed Dr. Fauci and Dr.
Collins, and informed them that the Science would be publishing
a letter calling for an investigation of COVID-19 origins that
is ``transparent, objective, data driven, inclusive a broad
expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly
managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest.'' In
response, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins thanked you for your email,
reiterated their complete support for a thorough investigation
into COVID-19's origins, and acknowledged that it was
unfortunate that legitimate scientific questions were being
politicized against NIH. First question. Dr. Thorp, is it an
accurate summary of your email exchange with Dr. Fauci and Dr.
Collins?
Dr. Thorp. It is.
Mrs. Dingell. Two, did Dr. Fauci or Dr. Collins tell
Science not to publish that letter, even when understanding
that it might be twisted against them by proponents of
misinformation?
Dr. Thorp. No, they told me the opposite of that.
Mrs. Dingell. Was it your understanding that Dr. Fauci and
Dr. Collins both supported an independent and thorough
investigation into COVID-19 source?
Dr. Thorp. They both said that in those emails.
Mrs. Dingell. Thank you, Dr. Thorp, and I do agree this
committee should be doing very good work. I don't take any
doctor at his word, unfortunately. Some doctors here probably
would like to give me lectures sometimes, but we got to tell
the truth and get to the bottom of it, and we got to protect
the public. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Ms. Ross of North Carolina
for 5 minutes of question.
Ms. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and it is a delight to
see you, Dr. Thorp, and thank you so much for your service to
the state of North Carolina. And then, of course, through your
current work, you and your family have done so many wonderful
things for our state, so I am thrilled to see you today.
Dr. Thorp. It was an honor to do it all. Thank you very
much. Good to see you again.
Ms. Ross. Good to see you. So, I am going to take a little
different tack. I want to note that the approach that my
Republican colleagues have taken today is a little bit
surprising. The Select Subcommittee heard transcribed interview
testimony from both Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins nearly 4 months
ago. And I want to remind everybody here and then just inform
you because you may not know this, that none of their takeaways
for the press at that time point to specific testimony that
demonstrated academic malpractice by either Dr. Fauci or Dr.
Collins.
The Chairman sent invitations to the witnesses noting a
plain fact. Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins communicated with
scientific journals during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is to
be expected. It is completely unsurprising. And after all, Dr.
Fauci and Dr. Collins were scientists before, during, and after
the pandemic, and it would be unreasonable to suggest that they
should have paused their scholarly inquiries during a time of
great scientific uncertainty. Government actors querying
academia on issues that are academic in nature isn't
malpractice or unlawful. It is just doing their jobs. In fact,
government speech is a feature of our constitutional democracy,
even in this context. As the Supreme Court has explained, ``A
government entity has the right to speak for itself. Indeed, it
is not easy to imagine how the government could function if it
lacked this freedom.''
The question we really need to be asking ourselves today is
simple. The evidence available to the Select Subcommittee
provides a straightforward answer. Did Dr. Fauci or Dr. Collins
coerce scientific journals to censor or suppress certain views
on questions related to COVID-19? Now, the question of coercion
was one recently heard by the Supreme Court in Murthy v. Biden,
and a clear majority of the Court was skeptical of the claims
in that case. In fact, Justice Kavanaugh agreed that if the
government were to ``regularly call up the media, that alone is
not dispositive of government coercion.''
Even then, Republicans present today have only demonstrated
a handful of communication by the government to scientific
journals. Dr. Thorp, are you aware of any threats made by Dr.
Fauci or Dr. Collins to compel your journal or any other
journal to publish or to withhold publication of a particular
work related to COVID-19?
Dr. Thorp. No, I am not.
Ms. Ross. Well, here is the thing. Nothing, none of this
really matters unless journals dispute what has been said today
and say that there was censorship. Dr. Thorp, I would like to
give you a moment to respond to allegations of censorship. Why
is it important that journals publish competing views on
scientific questions that remain reasonably open to debate?
Dr. Thorp. Yes. Well, as I said and what I posted when I
posted the letter from Jesse Bloom calling for the
investigation of the lab origin in Science, there are
compelling national interest reasons. But it is also true that
what makes science great is when scientists argue passionately
with each other, go to conferences and lab meetings and argue
about things and debate things, and then rely on the peer
review process and the process of exposing the information to
wide groups of people, who, in today's world, can comment on
social media and on websites and all over the place to
eventually lead to this conclusion. And we get there in this
messy, human, glorious process. That is what makes my job so
interesting.
Ms. Ross. And can you just tell us how your journal's
editorial process safeguards against undue influence?
Dr. Thorp. Well, our editors make their own decisions based
on their expertise as to what papers they are going to publish
only after consulting widely with people who have no conflicts
of interest in evaluating the paper, and only after they are
revised extensively to make sure that a group relies on them.
And then when they are published, we take responsibility for
mediating any discussions after the fact that may require us to
adjust the paper.
Ms. Ross. Well, thank you so much for your time, and I
yield back.
Dr. Thorp. Good to see you.
Ms. Ross. Good to see you.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize, Mr. McCormick of Georgia for
5 minutes of questions.
Dr. McCormick. Thank you, Dr. Chair. Appreciate you and
appreciate you for showing up today, Mr. Thorp. I think it
takes a lot of guts and balance. I have watched what you have
written. And you and I don't always agree on everything, but
one thing I really agree on is the fact that we give fair,
qualitative analysis of something. This is science to some
degree, and sometimes scientists have disagreements, but it is
OK to debate that publicly without squashing one side or the
other. Thank you for being here when others declined.
Dr. Thorp. Well, it was not that hard to get here on the
Orange Line.
Dr. McCormick. I appreciate that. For people who don't know
who are watching, that means he is a local. With that said, it
is interesting to me when we watch the debate over different
things, some people have discredited things like Cochrane
Review, which, when I was going through medical school, we are
having actually journal studies, in journal club, and talking
about what studies meant the most. Cochrane Review was the gold
standard. Would you agree that that is one of the more
important reviews that we have in scientific research and
analysis of medical studies?
Dr. Thorp. I am not a physician, so I am not sure I know
exactly what you are referring to.
Dr. McCormick. OK. I will kind of go through the Cochrane
Review because Cochrane Review is something we use when you
have a whole bunch of experts go over meta analysis of all
kinds of studies and come up with the most scientifically
proven theories, whether it be on vaccinations, whether it be
on medical treatments. It could be on mask wearing. It could be
on any myriad of different scientific studies based on what
works best in medicine. It can be with specialties like cancer
or with virology or epidemiology, all the different things that
you have written on. Cochrane Reviews is comprehensive. It is
not focused on one direction or another. It is to gather all
the different studies and see which ones were done
scientifically versus which ones were just done with a bias.
Dr. Thorp. While you are explaining that, I remembered what
you are talking about, so thank you for that.
Dr. McCormick. Absolutely. And in my opinion, it is very
much the gold standard. It was always held as the golden
standard. It wasn't political. As a matter of fact, when I was
going through medical school and residency, I don't remember
politics ever once being measured inside of a scientific
discussion until now. This unfortunate evolution of COVID
became politicized, and, of course, now we can't even have a
good scientific discussion because everything is based on what
politics you fall. And if the President, whether it be Democrat
or Republican, chooses one side, of course, you have to choose
the other side, and that is the unfortunate downstream
evolution of this debate.
There was one time, as a matter of fact, we had a
President, I believe, it was Garfield, who was treated by
several physicians who didn't wash their hands because at the
time, that wasn't science. And yet a guy named Lister said you
should wash your hands, but nobody paid attention, and we
contaminated the President and he died. That is the evolution
of science.
When it comes to this meta analysis, one of the things that
we would have had was a study on mask wearing for example. And
during the middle of this, I am an ER physician, treating
thousands of patients for COVID. I said, you know, if you look
at this scientifically, if you look at this even from a
commonsense standpoint, if you are wearing a mask at school but
you are constantly taking it off, putting it on, putting it on
desks, and all the things that kids do, you are probably not
helping things. And of course, we did meta analysis, we did a
Cochrane Review, and it was shown scientifically not to help at
all. Matter of fact, it was a dead even wash, and yet it has
been politicized, and people say, well, that is not real
science. And ironically, the same thing goes for the way that
we looked at treatments for this COVID disease and the way we
talk about medications and isolation and everything else has
been politicized.
Could you comment on how the politicization of this disease
has actually inhibited a good scientific solution for future
debate on medical procedures?
Dr. Thorp. Yes. Well, first of all, I just want to say we
published a huge study in Bangladesh on mask wearing that is
not completely in agreement with that Cochrane Review, but it
also has plenty in there for people who don't want to force
people to wear masks because they are only partially effective,
and everybody could read that if they wanted to. But I think
the politicization of COVID, you know, if we look back on it,
is something that we all probably wish we hadn't experienced
and hadn't contributed to the extent that we did. And I think
the scientific community contributed to that sometimes, and I
think politicians contributed to it as well, and it would have
been nice to have a calmer path through the whole thing. But
thankfully, science works in a way that got us to a lot of
things that did work.
Dr. McCormick. Let me ask you one final question. I am
running out of questions. I spent way too much time lecturing
instead of asking the question. Do you think that politicians
are better suited to make policy on healthcare than doctors and
healthcare professionals?
Dr. Thorp. I think that politicians should make policy
based on anything with the best information that they can get.
Dr. McCormick. I would make the counter argument that maybe
politicians stay out of the way of physicians making decisions
so we can actually get the best results and not have one-size-
fits-all. Thank you. With that I yield.
Dr. Thorp. Yes.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Mfume of Maryland for 5
minutes of questions.
Mr. Mfume. Mr. Chairman, thank you, and I thank the Ranking
Member. One of the things that this hearing clearly proves is
that we are sometimes all over the place more than we need to
be. And to the extent that we can do Monday morning
quarterbacking, we all have perfect records, but that is just
not the way life goes. And it did not go that way for COVID, so
here we are, once again, both sides of the aisle trying to
figure out an approach that creates a template and the proper
history for anybody that comes behind us should we ever be
faced with something like this again.
Dr. Thorp, I want to thank you for being here. I, believe
it or not, I have followed you from way back at GW through the
days at UNC, and I have had a chance to note some of your
writings and I have agreed with you in most instances. I think
the right word that I continue to get for you as I talk to
people, ``a straight shooter.'' And I spent some time as the
executive director of the National Medical Association, and
then after that over at the National Institute on Health
Minority Disparities at NIH. And then just before I returned to
Congress, spent 9 years at Research America, where, you know,
being the largest research organization in the Nation, we get a
chance to hear all the views that are academic and otherwise.
But through all of that, that straight shooter tag has
stayed the same about you. There are people who believe
strongly in the fact that you bring a sense of balance, even
though they don't always agree. Dr. Shirley Malcom comes to
mind as one of the persons that continues to exalt you to talk
about she believes how fair you are, if I can use that term,
and I think I am hearing some of that from some of the members
of the committee today.
I just want to do a couple of quick things. In July 2021--
make that May 2021--Science published a letter from a group of
scientists calling for a full investigation of both theories
for the origin of COVID-19. Could you take a second to describe
how the letter was considered, No. 1, by the team at Science
and what effect it had, if any, on your approach to those
questions?
Dr. Thorp. Yes. So, we had not gotten papers like the two
that your committee is very interested in that my colleagues
are not here to talk about that were in their journals. So, as
I said, we were much more focused on the facts that would help
us get out of the pandemic, and we respected our colleagues at
the other journals who published those two papers and really
didn't think that much of it. So, we were all of the view that,
or most of us, that it was a natural origin, and there was an
opportunity for us to focus on other things.
And then 1 day, we get this letter from a lot of people
that we respect, including people who are on both sides of this
debate, saying that there should be a further investigation. We
were pretty surprised. I mean, I was thinking about the vaccine
and the drugs, to be honest with you. And so, we got that
letter, and it was from serious people, and we debated it. And
we thought, wow, this is a big change, but if these folks are
all on board with this, this is really, really important, and
we debated it. Not everybody who works for me agreed that we
should publish it, and so in the end, and this doesn't happen
that often because most of the time, my folks make their
decisions on their own, but it went all the way up to me, and I
made the final decision to publish that letter.
And I got a lot of grief from people who said I was
promoting conspiracy theories and all of this stuff, and you
can find all of that on social media and elsewhere. But in the
end, we decided to publish that paper, that letter. We promoted
it to the 8,000 reporters. It was widely covered, and it was a
big event in turning the tide toward the consideration of a lab
origin.
Mr. Mfume. And then about 13 months later, in July or June
2022, the Science Family of Journals published a research
article supporting the zoonotic spillover theory, and it
appears that article went through several revisions before and
since the publication. Could you take another moment then to
share with the Subcommittee what unfolded at Science across the
timeline and how it illustrates the role of scientific
publishing and that process?
Dr. Thorp. Yes. That story is a long story, and it is not
over. So those papers were pre-prints. As has already been
discussed today, they were widely covered in the media, so we
knew a lot about them. And one other advantage of pre-prints is
that we get to see all the discussion that happens when the
pre-prints are out there before they are submitted to us, and
that is, in a sense, an additional layer of review.
So, when they came to us, and they were roughly in the same
form that they had been in, when they were pre-prints, they
were revised, and there were significant concerns raised, which
happens with every paper. The authors had the opportunity to
address those concerns. We thought their concerns were that
they were doing a sincere job of addressing them, so the paper
was sent back to the reviewers. More concerns were addressed.
And one of the things that happens that is also really
important when we are doing this, is we are not just deciding
what is in the paper that you see when you go on the website,
but we are also deciding what is in this enormous PDF file
called supporting information. And then data, many, many more
terabytes of data or megabytes or gigabytes of data that are
posted and the amount of data that were supporting the paper,
the number of references in the paper, many rewrites happened
all of that time. And we knew that those papers were going to
continue to be controversial because the people who believed in
the lab origin were going to try to criticize it. And we have
gone through many rounds of people writing to us and us getting
more advice about things that we are going to post on the
paper. And, you know, you might say, why did you do that, you
signed up for so much work, but we just felt like that was a
really important service for us to provide to the world to
maintain that.
Mr. Mfume. Thank you. My time has expired, but let me just
say it has really troubled me to watch the vilification of Dr.
Fauci and Dr. Collins over the last couple of years. And I
think we have been on the record at least many times on this
side of the aisle about how that sort of stuff does not help us
at all. I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Ms. Tokuda from Hawaii for 5
minutes of questions.
Ms. Tokuda. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know,
unfortunately, today's hearing does nothing to better prepare
our Nation for future public health threats, protect the
American people's health, or enhance our understanding of
COVID-19's origins. Instead, it is simply a continuation of
this majority's unsubstantiated attempts to villainize, as has
just been mentioned, our Nation's public health officials by
advancing an extreme narrative against them that hinges solely
on speculation. While the Majority has attempted to score
political points with these probes, they have not only wasted
critical time that could have been spent preventing and
preparing for future pandemics, but they have also further
politicized the question of COVID-19's origins and the COVID-19
response more broadly.
Unfortunately, since the start, as we know of the COVID-19
pandemic, we have seen a concerning rise in distrust of public
health officials amongst Americans. A recent survey from the
CDC found that about a quarter of Americans say they trust the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's health
recommendations not very much or not at all. The public's trust
in our Nation's public health institutions is critical if we
are to handle future pandemics and be prepared for them, and
our ability to work together in times of emergencies to quickly
save lives and reduce harm.
As vaccination rates of childhood and routine immunizations
decline across the country, I have serious concerns as a mother
that we are heading down a very dark path. Over the last year,
my Republican colleagues have wielded the power of the majority
of this committee to amplify extreme views on vaccines. They
have invited experts who have pushed questionable advice, and
they have continued on their crusade against our Nation's
public health officials. These efforts to foster and capitalize
on distrust and public health for partisan gain will only
further harm our ability to keep current threats at bay and
prevent future crises.
Dr. Thorp, I would like to ask you a few questions about
this, if you will. From your perspective as the editor-in-chief
of a leading scientific journal, how does growing distrust in
our Nation's public health institutions hamper our ability to
protect ourselves from current and future public health threats
and pandemics?
Dr. Thorp. Yes. Well, it is unfortunate, and I think that
the danger of it is that, as has been said in this room, we are
spending time having those debates instead of working out what
is going on, and I think if we could all get to a place where
there was more trust, that would be a good thing. And I think
my take on that, which I write about a lot in my column, is
that, as I have said, scientists need to do a better job of
explaining how science works, that it is not just facts that
fall out of the sky and don't change. Science is a work in
progress. We have well-defined processes for coming to
conclusions. And we are not perfect, and sometimes we have to
change the way we are thinking about things. And, again, those
are the things that make my job enjoyable and interesting and
compelling, and the science needs to do a much better job of
helping people understand that. Science is what we know now,
and it always has been.
Ms. Tokuda. Right, and we need to make good decisions on
policies based on real and accurate science. And if I may
followup on that, and we are talking about trust here, would
you say that the proliferation of health misinformation,
whether circulated online, as we have seen, or amplified here
in Congress itself, plays a role in exacerbating this distrust
in our public health institutions?
Dr. Thorp. I do, yes.
Ms. Tokuda. Thank you. So clearly, we need to make sure
that we are not doing harm. We need to take a Hippocratic Oath
ourselves to make sure that when it comes to future pandemics,
we are ready and prepared to make good decisions. And
hopefully, that will be the continued work of this
Subcommittee. Thank you. I appreciate your perspective on these
matters, and, Mr. Chair, I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. I now recognize the Ranking Member
for the purpose of a closing statement, if you would like to
make one.
Dr. Ruiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Thorp,
for being here. Again, I truly appreciate your time and your
frankness in your answers, and in your ability to communicate
and help understand not just the process, but the importance of
ensuring that politics does not get infused into the scientific
peer-reviewed articles that should be based on science and
methodology, and so that we can better elucidate the
accurateness of the information. And the more research we do,
the better. The more we are able to have debates based on
scientific evidence, the better. The more that we challenge
current opinions, or current data, the better because if the
data stands for itself, then it will stand for itself for a
very long time until more data shows that there is another
opportunity to do that.
And so I encourage the scientific community to continue to
do the research on both, you know, whether this was a lab leak
or a zoonotic transmission, and move toward also policy
recommendations to help bolster our surveillance systems around
high-risk geographic zones for potential zoonotic transmission,
as well as developing international bodies that can promote lab
safety and have more transparency in a multilateral aspect and
then build a system where we can move forward in rapid response
where we contain a novel virus at the host country before it is
transmitted throughout the world and becomes a pandemic.
You know, we want to work on that. We are ready to go. We
want to focus on that. Those are things that will work to help
prevent or mitigate the future pandemic. Those are things that
will help save lives. And 10, 20 years from now, when that next
potential pandemic happens, people are going to remember that
we did that. And we will talk about the policies that we
recommended, that we passed, that we can quantify potentially
and research the lives saved due to that, but I will tell you
what. They won't be thinking about 20 years from now when
people are dying, 1,000 to 3,000 a day, they are not going to
be thinking about Dr. Fauci or Dr. Collins and whether or not
they colluded or they suppressed the truth, which by the way,
there is significant--significant--data already showing that
they did not.
They are not going to give a damn, but we spent most of our
origins investigation trying to prove that they did and there
is collaboration and suppression because they knew it was a lab
leak theory. And the caveat is that in order to prove that, you
have to prove that there is lab leak theory. So, there is no
open mind in this. There is no let's consider both aspects. It
is focused on proving Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins suppressed the
truth, undue influence, as the press release said. So, I really
do, for the sake of our future, hope that we can have the prior
scenario that I said, where 20 years from now, people will be
thanking this Congress for the recommendations and the work
that we do to help better prevent and mitigate the future
pandemic through forward-looking solutions that will actually
save lives. I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you, and, again, Dr. Thorp, I am
grateful for you being here today.
When I was asked to chair this Select Subcommittee, there
were requirements and expectations of this committee. I am
trying to fulfill those. As you read through what is in the
official documents that it is hereby established for the 118th
Congress, a select investigative subcommittee of the Committee
on Oversight and Accountability called the Select Subcommittee
on the Coronavirus Pandemic. The Select Subcommittee is
authorized and directed to conduct a full and complete
investigation and study and, not later than January 2, 2025,
issue a final report to the House of its findings, including
the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, including, but not
limited to, the Federal Government's funding of gain-of-
function research and a government response. I said from the
beginning, this is an after-action review, lessons learned. Dr.
Thorp, we had that conversation: how can we do things better.
This virus was novel. We didn't know where it came from,
and we started investigating and looking into science. That was
our job. That is what we have been doing here. I don't think I
have once mentioned political party since we have been here. It
is about finding facts, et cetera. The purpose of today's
hearing was to have a frank discussion to examine the
relationship between scientific journals, the government, and
peer review. And I want to thank you again, as editor-in-chief
of Science, for being here today, as opposed to Nature and
Lancet, refused to appear.
Again, you know, we know how important academic,
scientific, and medical journals are to collect and disseminate
information to the public. There is a difference between a
hypothesis and a scientific fact. The definitions are
different. Those are the things we have to make clear. Probably
never before have either of these three journals been read by
non-scientists as they have during COVID, so it is important
that we get it right, that we are informing the public of what
this is, what it stands for, a theory, a hypothesis, a
scientific fact, an assumption versus a fact.
And so, we heard today transparency is essential in the
process. And it is a rigorous debate and the testing of
hypothesis, not just saying, forget it, let's just move on,
what are we going to do in the future. That is part of it.
Don't get me wrong. That is the main mission. One of my main
missions with this is to get it right and to have suggestions
or new laws, or whatever we need to do, to make sure that we
have a system that people in America can trust.
And as I said from the beginning, I wish this thing came
from nature because that is a heck of a lot less scary than
making something like this in the lab and having it escape. But
we have to look at all of it, and we have spent many hours
looking at the nature theory as well as the lab leak theory. To
suggest that we haven't is not true. So, we do these things, so
we know that the conclusion is published and withstood testing,
and yet still stand.
Doctors, professors, researchers, scientists utilize these
important journals because of the extensive information they
provide, and research conducted. And if they are in the arena,
they may have something more to add to it and send you a letter
on that or show you their science or what they are finding.
That is how it is supposed to work, so it is essential the
government doesn't put its thumb on the scale to sway any
outcome. We are trying to make sure that wasn't the case, or
was it? But research of all sides help guide government
decisions as well. We shouldn't necessarily be the ones doing
all the research, as Members of Congress, perhaps. Maybe we do,
but you have to look at all sides. So, from our investigations
here on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, we
know what happened during COVID-19. Dr. Andersen, who was one
of the authors of ``Proximal Origins,'' said Dr. Fauci prompted
this, for us to get together and write this. I didn't make that
up. It is not a lie. Those were his words that we have gotten
through our investigation.
I am going to tell you, I am going to submit for the
record, this is the interim majority staff report on the
``Proximal Origins of a Cover Up,'' it is entitled. The
evidence that I refer to is in here, and I am going to submit
it for the record in case not everyone on this committee has
had the chance to read it.
Dr. Wenstrup. So, a paper is published, and it appears
there was sometimes a predetermined outcome from the beginning.
You know, as doctors, we read all kinds of articles, and, you
know, a lot of times I want to go to the conclusion first and
then see if they already had the conclusion before they wrote
their piece and look at things objectively. So, we have to do
that sometimes, so it is hard to say that government officials
didn't have any influence, especially on Proximal Origin when
the record shows that those conversations took place, from
government officials, saying I am putting you guys together, I
want you to write this piece.
Now, just a few days ago, Dr. Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance
released some emails that included one from an advisor to Dr.
Fauci, Dr. Morens. The advisor wrote regarding the suspension
of EcoHealth grant that, ``Tony is now fully aware, and I
think, and it is, I am told, involved in some sort of damage
control.'' I didn't write that. I didn't make that up. That is
in that email. This is part of the things we are investigating
as we have been tasked to do.
As the Ranking Member pointed out today, mistrust in our
public health and public health officials is on the rise today,
and it is unfortunate, and I want to do everything we can to
change that. We need that. If the government wants to earn the
trust of Americans back, it can only be done through
transparency and reform, to acknowledge what we did wrong,
innocently or not, so that we can figure out a solution to do
better going forward. The government will never earn the trust
back from the Americans by deeming all information that it
doesn't like as misinformation, nor will it deserve that trust
if that is what our government is doing.
Our hearing today was not designed to influence scientific
journals. It is just the opposite, to better understand how
articles and letters are published in these journals and what
is the process so that the public can better understand the
information before them, better understand what the editing
process is and reviewed and later published so that they can
trust it and take it for face value. You clearly pointed out
today, there is a difference between an opinion and a
scientific fact because you have to write one every week.?
Dr. Thorp. Every 2 weeks.
Dr. Wenstrup. Every 2 weeks.
Dr. Thorp. You got any ideas for next week, let me know.
Dr. Wenstrup. I will give you a call. Anyway, Americans
deserve to see the work and the evidence that lead to the
conclusion so they can decide for themselves if the information
presented should be trusted or accurate, and with that, I yield
back.
And with that, and without objection, all members will have
5 legislative days within which to submit materials and to
submit additional written questions for the witnesses, which
will be forwarded to the witnesses for their response.
Dr. Wenstrup. If there is no further business, without
objection, the Select Subcommittee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:48 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]