Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary again promoted a conspiracy theory about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic on Wednesday, accusing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of funding the lab that created the virus.
Makary was asked by NewsNation’s Connell McShane about the longevity of the Trump administration’s changes to federal health agencies such as the FDA.
“We are planning to change our health agencies for a generation or longer,” Makary responded.
“Look at the NIH, when Jay Bhattacharya got in there it was a mess,” referring to the former director of the medical research agency. “[Fourteen] percent of the grants were descriptive studies on health equity and the NIH had just funded a lab that brewed up a virus that killed 20 million people worldwide.”
The Trump administration has favored the lab leak theory even replacing the COVID.gov website that provided resources and information on the virus in April with a page promoting the conspiracy.
The theory is that the coronavirus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, which was funded by the NIH. Most scientists believe that the virus occurred naturally in animals and then spilled over to humans.
Conservatives and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have also favored the lab-leak theory.
“CIA assess with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting,” an agency spokesperson told NBC News.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
