The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is headed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has revoked over $180 million worth of agreements from the Department of Health and Human Services. The deal notably included around $170,000 granted for a museum exhibit on Dr. Anthony Fauci.
In a 48-hour period, DOGE terminated 62 contracts at HHS, the agency said on social media on Friday.
“These contacts were entirely for administrative expenses – none touched any healthcare programs. This included terminating a $168,000 contract for an Anthony Fauci exhibit at the NIH museum,” DOGE stated on X.
The post included a screenshot of the money allotted for the Fauci exhibit, suggesting that the funds were intended to be used between July 2024 and July 2025.
There were little details available about the proposed exhibit, but it was expected to highlight Fauci’s lengthy federal career, which started in 1968 at the National Institutes of Health and concluded with him assisting US President Donald Trump and his predecessor Biden during the COVID pandemic.
However, the controversial COVID limitations that Fauci helped put into place, such as mask wearing, social distance, and severe vaccination requirements that resulted in the forcible dismissal of military personnel, tarnished his legacy.
Charges against Fauci
Additionally, Fauci was charged with misleading Congress on the US funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan, China, laboratory where the virus is believed to have started and spread.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has “never and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Fauci stated during testimony at a Senate hearing in May 2021.
However, emails revealed that in February 2020, Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the NIH, Fauci, and Dr. Peter Daszak, the head of the organisation that granted funding to the WIV, EcoHealth alliance, acknowledged that Wuhan University researchers were conducting gain-of-function experiments to investigate bat viruses’ ability to become adapted to human infection before the Wuhan outbreak.
Fauci explicitly stated in one email that he was worried that COVID may have been modified genetically, and that his reservations were exacerbated over the fact that Wuhan was conducting gain-of-function experiments before the outbreak of the pandemic.
