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Fauci, Paul clash on virus origins, trade charges of lying
CGTN
Top American infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci responds to accusations by Senator Rand Paul as he testifies before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee about the origins of COVID-19, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., July 20, 2021. /AP

Top American infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci responds to accusations by Senator Rand Paul as he testifies before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee about the origins of COVID-19, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., July 20, 2021. /AP

Dr Anthony Fauci, the United States top infectious disease expert, confronted Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul on Tuesday in testimony on Capitol Hill about U.S. funding for research at a Chinese lab.

Paul suggested that Fauci had lied before Congress when in May he denied that the National Institutes of Health funded so-called "gain of function" research – the practice of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential impact in the real world – at a Wuhan virology lab. 

"I have not lied before Congress. I have never lied. Certainly not before Congress. Case closed," Fauci told Paul before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, saying a study the senator mentioned referenced a different sort of virus from the one responsible for the coronavirus outbreak.

"Senator Paul, you do not know what you're talking about, quite frankly," Fauci said. "And I want to say that officially. You do not know what you're talking about."

"If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you," he added.

It was the latest in a series of clashes between Paul and Fauci over the origins of the virus that caused the global pandemic.

Earlier, Fauci told CNN during an interview on Saturday that "the most likely explanation is a natural evolution from an animal reservoir to a human."

Paul Offit, a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's vaccine advisory committee, echoed Fauci's remarks.

"I think the chance that this was created by laboratory workers – that it was engineered – is zero," Offit told CNN in a separate interview.

(With input from AP and Xinhua)

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