Former CDC director claims that COVID-19 emanated from UNC-Chapel Hill

The former director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has made a direct accusation that COVID-19 was started in a lab at UNC-Chapel Hill by one of its researchers and not a lab in Wuhan, China.

Dr. Robert Redfield made the claim on the Third Opinion podcast late last week.

He said the virus was ‘intentionally engineered as a part of a biodefense program’ and that the United States’ role in it was substantial.

“When you look at the accountability for China, their accountability is not in the lab work and the creation of the virus,” he told the podcaster. “Their accountability is not following the international health regulations after they realized that they had a problem and allowing people like me, at the CDC to come in and to help them within 48 hours like they were obligated to based on the treaty (The US) funded the research, both from NIH (National Institutes of Health) the State Department USAID and the Defense Department. All four of those agencies helped fund this research.”

He went on to say that the ‘scientific mastermind behind the research’ is Dr. Ralph Baric at UNC-Chapel Hill, who he says was very involved in this research.

“I think he probably helped create some of the original viral lines, but I can’t prove that, but he was very involved,” Redfield said. “I think there is a real possibility that the virus’s birthplace was Chapel Hill.”

Redfield, the CDC director under former and President-elect Donald Trump, had originally supported the idea that the virus came from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Baric has been researching coronaviruses for three decades and has authored hundreds of papers. He received the UNC System’s 2021 Oliver Max Gardner Award, which recognizes faculty who have “made the greatest contribution to the welfare of the human race.” The award, named for former North Carolina Gov. O. Max Gardner, is the highest honor the UNC System confers on faculty. 

At the time, UNC Board of Governors Chairman Randy Ramsey said, “Dr. Baric has provided life-saving coronavirus treatment options for the people of our state, our nation, and the world.”

But, rumblings of Baric’s possible involvement in the virus’s creation have been circulating almost since its known beginning.

In 2020, Kari Debbink, a professor at Bowie State University, received a death threat for a rumor that she helped create the virus in Baric’s lab while she was pursuing her doctorate at UNC. She said the information was false.

Baric was named in different conspiracy theories after a 2015 paper he co-authored with many other scientists, including one associated with the Wuhan lab, which showed that coronaviruses in bats could directly infect humans rather than evolving in another animal first. The first theory that emerged about the origins of COVID-19 was that it first appeared in a bat from a wet market in China.

In 2021, Baric signed on to an open letter that appeared in Science demanding an investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

That same year, US Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY, also pointed the finger at Baric at a congressional hearing.

“For years, Dr. Ralph Baric, a virologist in the U.S., has been collaborating with Dr. Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Virology Institute, sharing his discoveries about how to create super-viruses,” Paul said. “This gain-of-function research has been funded by the NIH [National Institutes of Health]. The implication was clear: intentionally or unwittingly, Baric was complicit in the creation of SARS-CoV-2, notwithstanding the total lack of evidence.”

Soon after, “Ralph Baric gain of function” became a popular online search phrase and included online threats, according to Time.com.

He later told MIT Technology Review, “We never created a supervirus. That’s a figment of his (Paul) imagination and obviously being used for political advancement.”

Paul, who also had a beef with Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had also criticized “gain-of-function” research, which Baric uses. This research involves experiments that alter viruses or other organisms’ genetic makeup to gain new abilities or functions. In viruses, this can mean making them more transmissible or perhaps more deadly.

In 2014, the federal government put a moratorium on some gain-of-function research, but Baric’s work was not banned.

Carolina Journal contacted UNC-Chapel Hill’s media relations for a comment but did not hear back before publishing this article.

But CJ did hear back from Woody White, who sits on the UNC Board of Governors.

“I have read today’s story in the Daily Mail,” he told CJ. “It raises important questions about UNC system institutions’ participation with foreign nations and the balancing act necessary to ensure that academic research maintains operational security and fully considers the vast array of national interests that are more complex in today’s world. I feel confident that the rigor within the UNC System strikes this balance appropriately, but I look forward to hearing more from our System leaders.”