The recent indictment of former senior NIAID official David Morens has ripped the lid off the COVID-era corruption machine. Now, against the backdrop of the United States Senate investigation on COVID origins, North Carolina taxpayers and families also deserve to know whether their flagship public university played any role in the research that may have sparked the entire disaster.
Ralph Baric, a world-renowned virologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, by all accounts collaborated for years with Shi Zhengli at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology on bat coronaviruses capable of infecting humans. NIH grants under Anthony Fauci helped fund that work — including controversial gain-of-function experiments that many experts now believe helped create the conditions for the pandemic.
As a state-supported institution — with Chapel Hill as North Carolina’s flagship campus — UNC owes its citizens full transparency. There are reports of public information requests being either ignored or stonewalled. Who was paid what, and why? Where did the money flow in from, and where did it finally land? What was the actual result of the research conducted in Chapel Hill — a scientific breakthrough in a bottle, or harm to millions?
Leaving the investigation in the hands of the United States Senate is not enough.
The North Carolina attorney general, as the state’s chief law enforcement officer, has both the authority and the duty to investigate any potential money trail, grant misuse, or dangerous research conducted on state property that may have contributed to the worst public-health crisis in a century.