By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Virologist Ralph Baric, Ph.D., who collaborated with Dr. Anthony Fauci and researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology during the COVID-19 pandemic, has lost his National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants and been placed on leave by the University of North Carolina (UNC), RealClearInvestigations reported Tuesday.

Baric is considered a “pioneer” of gain-of-function research, which increases the virulence or transmissibility of viruses and is used to develop vaccines targeting that virus.

Baric performed extensive research involving coronaviruses similar to SARS-CoV-2, which was responsible for the COVID-19 outbreak.

As of today, the NIH RePORTER database lists two grants connected to Baric, both with an end date of April 30. It’s unclear whether this refers to an original or amended end date for the grants.

Last year, the federal government cancelled three Baric grants as part of sweeping cuts to federally funded research. However, after 23 states appealed, a federal court issued a temporary — and later permanent — injunction stopping the cuts. The government appealed but later voluntarily dismissed its appeal.

While the case remains active, it’s unclear if the reported end of Baric’s NIH grants is connected to this case.

‘Many questions’ about Baric’s research and ‘few answers’

In 2018, Baric applied for a federal grant for research involving the insertion of a spike protein into a bat coronavirus.

The proposal was rejected. But SARS-CoV-2 has remarkably similar characteristics, leading some analysts to suggest that Baric played a role in creating the virus, which then possibly leaked from the Wuhan lab, where he was working with Chinese scientists.

Baric later played a “central role” with Fauci and other public health officials and researchers in promoting the theory that COVID-19 evolved in nature. Meanwhile, privately, he questioned the safety of “risky” gain-of-function research, RealClearInvestigations reported.

Baric has faced congressional investigation — and UNC has received repeated Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests — in relation to his coronavirus research on bats.

According to RealClearInvestigations, UNC has “refused to cooperate” with NIH officials and has stonewalled FOIA requests related to Baric’s work, while “politicians and the FBI have sought to protect” Baric.

A spokesperson for UNC declined The Defender’s request for comment, citing the university’s policy on personnel matters. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), NIH’s parent agency, did not respond to a request for comment.

Gary Ruskin, executive director of U.S. Right to Know, a watchdog group that has filed FOIA requests concerning Baric with UNC, said, “There are many questions about his close collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and few answers.”

SARS-CoV-2 remarkably similar to virus Baric proposed studying in 2018

RealClearInvestigations reported that questions about the safety and risks of gain-of-function research led to calls for its regulation or termination.

In 2014, the federal government published guidelines governing the research. Within weeks, a series of accidents and near-accidents proved the guidelines ineffective.

As a result, the Obama administration paused of gain-of-function research. The pause remained in effect until 2017.

The scientist “most affected by the pause” was Baric, who continued to insist that such research was safe and posed no risk to humans, according to RealClearInvestigations.

While Baric publicly said he would comply with the ban, RealClearInvestigations reviewed documents indicating that by 2016, Fauci and scientists linked to Baric launched a “secret lobbying campaign” to overturn the pause.

In early 2017, just before Donald Trump’s inauguration, the White House issued revised guidelines lifting the pause, pending review of new and existing projects. In 2018, Baric and Wuhan Institute of Virology researcher Shi Zhengli, Ph.D., submitted the DEFUSE proposal to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Although DARPA — an agency which, according to RealClearInvestigations, is “known for funding high-risk, high-reward projects” — rejected the proposal, scientists have suggested that this doesn’t mean the research didn’t take place.

According to RealClearInvestigations:

“Virologists have pushed back, asserting that the DEFUSE proposal was never funded, so the research never took place. However, this argument has been received with widespread skepticism. Research labs have multiple streams of funding, and scientists often do many of the proposed experiments to get initial results before submitting grants.”

The DEFUSE proposal included a study involving “taking the backbone of a bat virus and inserting a spike protein with a furin cleavage site,” which “allows viruses to infect the cells of human lungs.” The tests would be performed on mice that were genetically modified in Baric’s lab to develop lungs more similar to those of humans.

“A year after DARPA denied this proposal to create chimeric bat viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a novel bat virus with a furin cleavage site began infecting humans in Wuhan. No other closely related virus has this furin cleavage site,” RealClearInvestigations reported.

In 2021, the research attracted public attention when a military officer leaked it online, fueling allegations that the research led to the creation of SARS-CoV-2 and its subsequent leak and outbreak. Virologist Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the research likely occurred.

In a 2024 deposition, Baric faced questions from the U.S. Congress about the DEFUSE proposal. He claimed that he “had forgotten” about the proposal, having “moved on” because it didn’t receive DARPA funding.

Baric and Zhengli’s ties date back at least four years before the COVID-19 outbreak. In 2015, they were among the co-authors of research published in the journal Nature Medicine that a “SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence.”

Baric privately suggested that COVID may have resulted from a lab leak

In a January 2020 presentation to congressional staff, Baric raised the possibility of an “accidental release” of the virus in the vicinity of the Wuhan laboratory, noting that the lab performed work on bat viruses that were similar to SARS-CoV-2.

But later that month, NIH officials and scientists linked to Baric “began an intensive campaign” to discredit the lab-leak theory as a “conspiracy theory.” In February 2020, Baric again delivered a presentation to congressional staffers — containing several of the same slides as in January 2020, but no mention of a lab accident.

RealClearInvestigations reported that, by this time, rumors began circulating publicly that COVID-19 was engineered and had spread due to a lab leak. A February 2020 New York Post story suggested that the virus “may have leaked” from the Wuhan lab. Facebook subsequently blocked the article for promoting “false information.”

According to RealClearInvestigations, Baric played a key role in censoring content suggesting a lab leak. Baric was linked to a March 2020 letter published in The Lancet calling lab-leak claims a “conspiracy theory.” While 27 scientists co-signed the letter, Baric’s name wasn’t among them.

Documents showed that Peter Daszak, Ph.D. — the former president of EcoHealth Alliance, who had financial ties to the Wuhan lab — wrote to Baric, suggesting he not sign the letter, “so it has some distance from us and therefore doesn’t work in a counterproductive way.”

RealClearInvestigations reported that Baric’s name was also not included among the authors of the infamous “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” paper published in Nature Medicine in March 2020.

The paper — drafted by several virologists with significant input from Fauci — was widely cited as evidence of COVID-19’s natural origin and was used to discredit proponents of the lab-leak theory.

Documents showed that Baric and Zhengli later provided secret edits to another 2020 paper, “No credible evidence supporting claims of the laboratory engineering of SARS-CoV-2,” which also refuted claims of a lab leak and was widely cited in the mainstream media. In 2025, the journal acknowledged Baric’s role in the paper.

‘There’s a real possibility that the virus’s birthplace was Chapel Hill,’ North Carolina

While Baric’s role in drafting these papers formed a key part of later congressional investigations into the origins of COVID-19 — including a congressional report on the virus’s origin — RealClearInvestigations suggested that the investigation “seems to have been designed to distract from dangerous research and to insulate Baric.”

The report “omitted any mention of dangerous gain-of-function research funded by the NIH, and gave no notice of virus studies conducted in the United States, even though Baric is the top researcher in the field.” Instead, the report’s authors blamed China exclusively for the COVID-19 outbreak.

A key figure in the investigation and report was then-Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), described by RealClearInvestigations as a “strong supporter of pandemic preparedness and virus research.” Burr was a key figure in the approval of former President Joe Biden’s 2022 request for $88.2 billion in pandemic and biodefense funding.

Burr, who retired in 2023, a few months after the publication of the congressional report, subsequently became a member of the board of READDI, a biotechnology company that Baric co-founded. In 2023, the NIH awarded READDI a $65 million grant to develop antivirals.

Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright, Ph.D., said such “conflicts of interest have broadly impacted Congress’s oversight and investigatory role in relation to all things COVID.”

Analysts who reviewed Baric’s work have suggested that he bears significant blame for the development and outbreak of COVID-19.

During a 2024 interview, Redfield said, “There’s a real possibility that the virus’s birthplace was Chapel Hill,” referring to UNC’s location.

Last month, Columbia University economics professor Jeffrey Sachs, Ph.D. — who led a 2022 Lancet commission investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic — said Baric’s research likely created SARS-CoV-2.

Researchers have faced obstacles obtaining further information about Baric’s work. Ruskin told The Defender that U.S. Right to Know has filed 16 FOIA requests with UNC — only to receive a paltry six pages of documents. Litigation is still ongoing.

Ebright said UNC has been reluctant to release more information about Baric’s research because he “has been a major revenue producer for UNC, receiving $208 million in grants and contracts from Fauci’s unit at NIH and millions of dollars more in grants and contracts from the U.S. Department of Defense.”

“If it becomes accepted truth in the public that Baric’s research started the pandemic, UNC could face a mountain of legal liability,” investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker — author of the RealClearInvestigations report — told The Defender.

Growing calls for charges, indictments over COVID origins

Other researchers linked to Fauci or to the Wuhan Institute of Virology have faced increasing troubles in the past year.

On Tuesday, a federal grand jury indicted Dr. David Morens, a former senior adviser to Fauci, for allegedly using his personal email account to hide communications about the origins of COVID-19. The indictment led to calls for more charges and indictments.

In 2024, HHS suspended all funding for the EcoHealth Alliance for failing to properly monitor its coronavirus experiments.

On his way out of office last year, Biden preemptively pardoned Fauci for any official acts he carried out dating back to 2014. Legal experts have suggested that Fauci can still face state-level charges or be subpoenaed to testify before Congress.

In July 2025, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) suggested Fauci could be forced to testify under oath, as part of the senator’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

In September 2025, Paul invited Fauci to testify before Congress after releasing several 2020 emails showing Fauci instructed colleagues to delete messages. Paul’s investigation also found that Baric communicated with “members of the U.S. intelligence community … well before the outbreak of the global pandemic.”

In a post on X today, Paul once again called for Fauci to be indicted. He said the deadline to prosecute Fauci is May 11.

I’ve said it from the beginning: lying to Congress is a felony. Destroying federal records is a felony. Advising others to destroy federal records is a felony. Fauci did all three. His adviser was just indicted. Fauci is next. The deadline to prosecute Fauci is May 11. The DOJ…

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) April 29, 2026

Related articles in The Defender

• Sen. Rand Paul Demands U.S. Intelligence Records on Fauci, Baric and COVID Origins
• ‘Profound Abuse of Trust’: Former Fauci Aide Indicted for Conspiracy to Hide Government Records on COVID Origins
• Trump Administration Investigating Publisher of COVID Origins Paper for Corruption, Citing Influence by Fauci
• Trump Pauses Federally Funded Gain-of-Function Research in U.S, But for Only 120 Days
• New White House Website Declares COVID Escaped From Wuhan Lab
• ‘For Safety of Citizens Worldwide’: HHS Suspends Government Funding for EcoHealth Alliance

The post Virologist at Center of Coronavirus Research Loses NIH Grants, University Places Him on Leave appeared first on Children’s Health Defense.

 

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