The Biden administration has suspended federal grants issued to EcoHealth Alliance, the infectious disease research group caught up in a controversy over its work in China, and plans to bar it from receiving future funding.

A scientists with close ties to China and the U.S. government is now saying that risky experiments he proposed—which some experts believe could have led to the creation of SARS-CoV-2—may have been done, deviating from earlier statements.

Another scientist involved in the proposal also says he doesn’t know if the work was done.

“To the very best of my knowledge ... the work hasn’t been done,” Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, told a congressional panel this week.

In 2015, Ralph S. Baric, arguably the world’s most accomplished coronavirologist, published groundbreaking research with Shi Zhengli, the leading coronavirus researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The National Institutes of Health appears to be struggling to hide its dirty laundry on COVID-19 origins against a rash of leaks, congressional probes, and Freedom of Information Act requests, even when officials are determined to thwart sunlight.

The ongoing exposure of their communications and actions isn't the only thing likely worrying federal scientists. 

Former White House coronavirus advisor Anthony Fauci doesn't believe the lab leak explanation of COVID-19's origins is a conspiracy theory. He admitted as much during a closed-door grilling session before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Monday. Legislators did not release a transcript of his testimony, but Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R–Ohio), the chairman of the subcommittee, published some highlights on X (formerly Twitter).

A Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) whistleblower made bombshell claims against the U.S. intelligence agency on Tuesday relating to the origins of COVID-19.

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence announced that members heard testimony from a CIA whistleblower who alleged that the CIA "offered six analysts significant monetary incentives to change their position on COVID-19's origin."

“What happened to Oppenheimer damaged our ability as a society to debate honestly about scientific theory,” wrote Kai Bird, author of the biography on which Christopher Nolan’s new film is based. “Yet too many of our citizens still distrust scientists and fail to understand the scientific quest, the trial and error inherent in testing any theory against facts by experimenting. Just look at what happened to our public health civil servants during the recent pandemic.”