New Twitter boss Elon Musk revealed that former employees of the social media company managed a fawning Slack channel titled “Fauci Fan Club” — a reference to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert.
Musk tweeted the claim in a thread that was highly critical of Fauci, who was accused by the mogul of lying about so-called “gain-of-function” research that some suggest may have played a role in the spread of the coronavirus.
“Despite these glaring issues, Twitter nonetheless had an internal Slack channel unironically called ‘Fauci Fan Club’,” Musk tweeted late Tuesday. He did not elaborate as to how many employees participated in the Slack channel.
Since taking over Twitter, Musk has been eager to show that the company’s prior management had a left-wing bias that promoted liberal narratives and banned conservative voices.
Musk on Tuesday responded to a tweet thread by venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who posted a meme that accused Fauci of lying.
In a series of tweets, Musk linked to a Newsweek article titled “Fauci Was ‘Untruthful’ to Congress About Wuhan Lab Research, New Documents Appear to Show.”
The Newsweek story linked to a September 2021 article by The Intercept that found that the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is headed by Fauci, provided funds to research so-called “gain-of-function research of concern.”
“Gain of function” is a process in which scientists who study viruses make them more pathogenic or transmissible in order to gain more knowledge about their behavior so as to prevent future pandemics.
The NIH granted funding to a nongovernmental organization, EcoHealth Alliance, which conducted research in China that studied the potential for bat-specific viruses to infect humans, according to The Intercept.
Scientists at the NIH have denied that the NIH-funded studies in China posed biosafety hazards.
The controversy over “gain of function” stems from the debate over whether the coronavirus originated in a lab in Wuhan, China.
Initially, mainstream scientists held the view that the virus was likely to have originated in a wet market in Wuhan, where exotic animals such as bats are sold to humans.
But experts have not been able to rule out the possibility that the coronavirus spread as a result of a lab accident in which scientists allowed the pathogen to leak.
Since Musk took over Twitter, he has released to journalists documents known as “The Twitter Files” — a look into how the social media company’s previous management decided which content to limit on its platform.
The latest installment by journalist David Zweig is titled “How Twitter rigged the COVID debate.” It accuses the site of “censoring info that was true but inconvenient to U.S. govt. policy” and of “discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed.”
