‘Fingerprints of you.’ NC scientist mentioned in indictment over COVID documents
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Indictment contains a stray mention of an unnamed North Carolina scientist.
- Indictment accuses Morens of hiding, destroying, and falsifying federal records.
- Email asks to keep any “fingerprints” of individuals off of a scientific journal article.
Buried in a recent federal indictment of a former top official at the National Institutes of Health, there is a stray mention of an unnamed North Carolina scientist.
The indictment accuses David Morens, former senior adviser to Anthony Fauci, of a conspiracy to conceal records related to the origin of COVID-19. Morens is accused of hiding, destroying and falsifying federal records related to an unnamed company that held an NIH grant to study the emergence of bat coronavirus in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. EcoHealth Alliance held the NIH grant referenced in the indictment.
Morens’ emails, sent largely on his personal Gmail account, are quoted throughout the indictment. One email, sent on or around May 16, 2020, is about a scientific journal article Morens was drafting “in part to benefit” the company, according to the indictment. The article appears to be related to the idea that COVID emerged naturally, and not as a result of a lab leak.
“We all agree that we want to keep off Of it any fingerprints of you, [North Carolina Scientist 1] and any [COMPANY #1] or grant colleagues,” Morens wrote in the email. “I need to keep this off of govt email and govt phone text.”
The indictment does not name the North Carolina scientist or identify their institution.
“We all agree that we want to keep off Of it any fingerprints of you, [North Carolina Scientist 1] and any [COMPANY #1] or grant colleagues.”
David Morens
One North Carolina scientist who has been at the center of controversy around the origin of COVID-19 is Ralph Baric, a professor of epidemiology at UNC-Chapel Hill. Baric is a global leader in coronavirus research and was instrumental in the development of COVID vaccines. He’s also been the target of unproven accusations that his research caused the pandemic, The News & Observer previously reported.
In 2015, UNC shared a news release about his research. It was titled “New SARS-like virus can jump directly from bats to humans, no treatment available.”
“For these past three decades, Dr. Baric has warned that the emerging coronaviruses represent a significant and ongoing global health threat, particularly because they can jump, without warning, from animals into the human population, and they tend to spread rapidly,” Baric’s bio on the UNC website reads.
Baric helped to develop the methodology that the Wuhan Insitute, with funding from EcoHealth, would come to use in their own research, according to an article in the MIT Technology Review. A 2024 congressional report on the “lessons learned” from the pandemic cites another scientist who refers to Baric’s research as a “how-to-manual for building the Wuhan coronavirus in a laboratory.”
Baric has raised alarms that some labs may not have been secure enough for the caliber of the diseases they studied. Baric joined 17 other scientists in a 2021 letter, published in Science, calling for a deeper investigation into the possibility of a lab leak.
In the MIT Technology review article, Baric is quoted as having said, before the pandemic: “We have no idea whether [these coronaviruses] could actually cause severe disease in a human, but you want to err on the side of caution. ... If you study a hundred different bat viruses, your luck may run out.”
The 2024 congressional report alleges that EcoHealth Alliance failed to report a “dangerous experiment” and that Morens used his position to help EcoHealth avoid oversight.
UNC has turned over records to state lawmakers about Baric’s laboratory.
Baric did not respond Thursday or Friday to a request for comment. The News & Observer received an automatic reply from his email that reads: “I am away from the office and will return May 4.”
UNC-Chapel Hill declined to comment on the indictment.
