Bending Modernity to Their Will: The Far-Reaching Influence and Deceit of Fauci and Morens

As the COVID-19 pandemic's dust settles, public scrutiny on decision-makers' actions has grown sharper. One particularly troubling case involves Dr. David Morens, a senior scientific advisor at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and a long-time associate of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Dr. Fauci and Dr. Morens have co-authored numerous articles and papers over the past two decades, consistently shaping public health discourse and policy.

With imminent testimony before the House Select Committee on COVID-19, it's crucial to unpack the allegations against Morens, which include attempts to evade transparency and protect Dr. Fauci, among others, thus undermining the public's trust in our health institutions.

Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), Chair of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, recently issued a subpoena to compel Dr. Morens to testify publicly on May 22, 2024. This move follows a damning revelation from new email exchanges which suggest deliberate efforts to obstruct investigations.

In an email from April 20, 2024, Dr. Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth Alliance, outlined a strategy to delay Morens’ testimony: “Each day of delay helps. They’re trying to book David in for a public hearing between mine (May 1st) and Fauci’s (June 3rd). David’s lawyers are trying to negotiate and delay his til after Tony.”

Dr. Morens' legal team subsequently employed this tactic, suggesting dates they knew would be impractical given the Subcommittee's schedule. This calculated maneuver appears designed to shield Dr. Fauci from immediate scrutiny and obstruct the Subcommittee's efforts to uncover the truth.

This is not the first time Dr. Morens has faced a subpoena. In June 2023, emails showed that Morens used personal accounts to dodge FOIA requests, openly admitting he would delete communications unfavorable for public release. Following this revelation, NIH placed him on administrative leave.

Recent testimony before Congress further illuminated Morens’s conduct. In a poignant and surprisingly honest exchange on May 16, 2024, Congressman James Comer questioned Lawrence Tayback, the acting director of NIH, about Morens' email practices. Comer read aloud Morens’ email to Dr. Daszak: “I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I am FOIAed, but before the search starts, so I think we are all safe. Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to Gmail.” Tayback confirmed that these actions are inconsistent with NIH’s document retention policies.

Moreover, when asked whether the NIH FOIA office teaches employees how to evade transparency, Tayback unambiguously stated, “I certainly hope not.”

Emails revealing Morens’s intent to avoid 'smoking guns' and his coordination with Daszak to craft responses to FOIA releases indicate a broader pattern of sidestepping accountability, which Tayback admitted would be concerning and inconsistent with NIH policies.

Compounding these investigations, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has initiated formal debarment proceedings against EcoHealth Alliance based on findings from the Select Subcommittee's report. Effective immediately, EcoHealth faces a suspension of taxpayer funds, impacting all active grants. The May 15, 2024 memorandum from HHS underscores the severity of EcoHealth's compliance failures, emphasizing the need for exacting oversight in public health research.

Deepening this disillusionment with the key decision makers during the pandemic is the ideological framework that Fauci and Morens have consistently promoted over two decades of co-authorship. Their collaboration began with largely technical papers on infectious diseases, yet over time, their recommendations expanded significantly in scope and ambition.

In 2004, in a piece entitled: “The challenge of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases,” Fauci and Morens tentatively suggested enhancing public health tools like surveillance, diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines. These early writings seemed to show cautious optimism for tackling infectious diseases without breaching individual rights or governance norms.                

By 2007, their tone had noticeably shifted. In an article on the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, they warned against complacency and hinted at the necessity for heightened vigilance. In their 2012 work, "The Perpetual Challenge of Infectious Diseases," they moved even further, declaring eradication—rather than just mitigation—as the new goal, emphasizing a persistent and robust response to infectious threats.

Their evolution was cemented in a 2016 article on the Zika Virus. In it, they posited that human behaviors and modern societal structures were significant contributors to the emergence of infectious diseases.

…in our human-dominated world, urban crowding, constant international travel, and other human behaviors combined with human-caused microperturbations in ecologic balance can cause innumerable slumbering infectious agents to emerge unexpectedly. In response, we clearly need to up our game…

The suggestion here is that human actions need strict regulation to prevent future outbreaks, a policy evolution that would have significant impacts just four years down the line.

The culmination of these ideas appeared starkly in their widely-cited 2020 “Cell Magazine” article amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, Fauci and Morens argued for transformative changes in human behavior and infrastructure to live "in greater harmony with nature." They contended that human behaviors fundamentally disrupt the "human-microbial status quo," leading to disease outbreaks.

This article was a watershed, revealing their vision of a restructured society to prevent pandemics—an ideological stance that has drawn criticism for its potentially authoritarian overtones.

Fauci and Morens' advocacy for "rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence" was more than a scientific proposal; it was a call for a societal overhaul.

They seem to pine for yesteryear without all the hustling and bustling: “Since we cannot return to ancient times, can we at least use lessons from those times to bend modernity in a safer direction?”

Nothing epitomizes the U.S. Government’s response to the pandemic like the loaded phrase: “bend modernity in a safer direction.” The hubris is quite stunning.

Their recommendations, veiled in the language of public health, pointed towards a future where individual freedoms might be sacrificed for perceived collective safety.

The gravest concern lies in the apparent collusion to control narratives around COVID-19's origins. Emails reveal Morens and Daszak vigorously defending the natural origin theory over lab-accident hypotheses, deploying aggressive legal threats to squelch dissent.

As Morens' planned testimony approaches, the public and policymakers must focus on uncovering the full extent of his actions and intentions. His history of evading transparency is not merely a matter of individual accountability but a systemic issue undermining public trust in health institutions. The recent debarment of EcoHealth Alliance reiterates the urgent need for stringent oversight and transparency at all levels.

The testimony of Dr. Morens promises to be a watershed moment in the quest for accountability post-pandemic. Rebuilding trust will require a steadfast commitment to transparency, rigorous scrutiny, and adherence to principles that align public health policies with democratic values.