well—the role of international preparedness networks and military exercises in the critical period surrounding the outbreak.

That remains an allegation requiring considerably more documentary evidence before it could be treated as established fact; we did compile a massive amount of circumstantial evidence along the way. But asking the question led us to an enormous amount of previously obscure material. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1eHM!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd4ac0761-8697-4392-a10e-b24c62f0ab9d_1535x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Following the Scientific Trail

Coronavirus research did not begin in 2019.

For years, scientists had studied how coronaviruses infect cells, cross species barriers and potentially become more transmissible.

Researchers at UNC and elsewhere performed experiments involving modified coronaviruses. Scientists connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology collected and studied bat coronaviruses. American government agencies funded research intended to identify emerging pandemic threats.

Other scientists studied influenza and other pathogens.

The Erasmus laboratory in Rotterdam became famous more than a decade ago because of controversial experiments involving H5N1 avian influenza and mammalian transmission.

For citizen investigators, these programs demonstrated something important: governments and scientists had been deliberately studying the exact biological characteristics that would later dominate public discussion during COVID.

That did not prove that any particular program created SARS-CoV-2.

It did mean that questions about laboratory research were legitimate questions of public interest.

One molecular feature became especially controversial: the furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2.

Virologist and Nobel laureate David Baltimore famously described the feature as a potential “smoking gun” before later emphasizing that natural evolutionary explanations remained possible.

The scientific debate over that feature continues to be more complicated than either side’s slogans suggest.

For citizen journalists, however, it became another reason to investigate rather than accept categorical claims about origins. Fifty Stops, One Investigative Map

The Bioagent Odyssey eventually became geographic.

Fort Detrick represented biodefense.

Fort Belvoir represented another window into the military establishment.

UNC represented advanced coronavirus experimentation.

Rotterdam represented European infectious-disease research.

The Hague represented international institutions.

Geneva represented global public health.

Hamilton represented America’s continuing high-containment infectious-disease research.

Other universities, airports, laboratories, contractors, military installations and research facilities filled in the spaces between them.

Each stop supplied another piece of a much larger institutional map.

That map became the real product of the investigation.

Rather than asking only, “What happened in Wuhan?” we began asking: Who built the worldwide pandemic-preparedness system before Wuhan?

Who funded it?

Which laboratories exchanged samples?

Which scientists collaborated?

Which military organizations participated?

Which pharmaceutical companies positioned themselves to manufacture countermeasures?

Which exercises rehearsed the response?

And what happened when scientists or journalists challenged the preferred explanations?

Those questions are larger than Anthony Fauci. Fauci on Capitol Hill

That is why the congressional scrutiny of Fauci represents a milestone rather than an ending.

Fauci became the most recognizable public face of the American pandemic response. His leadership at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases placed him near the cen[...]

ter of debates over research funding, pandemic preparedness and government communications.

Congressional investigations have subsequently forced into public discussion issues that were once treated as fringe or inappropriate questions.

Documents, emails and testimony have expanded the public record concerning government discussions about possible origins and research relationships.

Citizen journalists cannot credibly claim sole responsibility for congressional investigations. Members of Congress, congressional staff, scientists, whistleblowers, nonprofit researchers, journalists and government investigators have all contributed.

But independent investigators helped keep questions alive during periods when asking them carried significant reputational cost.

That contribution matters.

Journalism is not simply predicting the final answer.

It is preserving questions long enough for evidence to catch up. The Women Still in Montana

For our group, the story therefore does not end with Fauci sitting before Congress.

Some of the same citizen investigators who participated in the original COVID-era work traveled to Montana to examine research associated with Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton.

Their concern is forward-looking.

What pathogens are being studied today?

What experiments are being conducted?

What safeguards exist?

How are potentially dangerous organisms transported?

Who provides oversight?

And what has actually changed since 2020?

Those questions deserve answers regardless of one’s preferred theory about COVID-19’s origins.

The pandemic demonstrated the extraordinary consequences of a biological event in an interconnected world.

Millions died globally. Economies closed. Schools shut down. Families were separated. Governments accumulated emergency powers. Public trust in health institutions, journalism and government suffered enormous damage.

Preventing another pandemic therefore requires something more durable than assigning blame to one official.

It requires transparency. Journalism as an Odyssey

There is another lesson in the story.

Modern journalism increasingly happens behind screens. Search engines, databases and leaked documents are indispensable tools.

But sometimes journalism still requires geography.

You have to go somewhere.

You have to stand outside the laboratory.

You have to drive across Montana.

You have to travel to Rotterdam.

You have to go to Geneva.

You have to knock on the door at Fort Belvoir.

You have to talk to the person who does not want to put something in an email.

You have to compare what officials say publicly with what people working inside institutions say privately.

That kind of reporting is expensive, exhausting and frequently inconclusive.

But occasionally fifty apparently disconnected locations become one map.

That is what happened during the Bioagent Odyssey. Every trail of money winding through another proxy place.

The congressional scrutiny of Fauci is therefore best understood not as the finish line but as one institutional checkpoint in a much longer investigation.

The essential question is no longer merely whether Anthony Fauci made mistakes.

It is whether the international biodefense and pandemic-preparedness system learned anything from COVID-19.

The laboratories still exist.

The military programs still exist.

The international organizations still exist.

The research continues.

And citizen journalists are still driving.

Past Fort Detrick.

Past Fort Belvoir.

Past Chapel Hill.

Across Rotterdam.

Through The Hague.

Into Geneva.

And now into Hamilton, Montana.

The camera is still running.

The notebook is still open.

And after six years on the road, perhaps the most important lesson of the Bioagent Odyssey is also the oldest lesson in journalism: When the official story does not answer the evidence, keep asking questions.
George Webb 's Intelligence [...]

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McDuff and Marcia's Friday Live Chat, July 31, 2026


"Fauci Faces Justice -- Or Does He?"

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How JFK's economic policies were Wall Street's biggest threat!

George’ Webb Task Force Orange Journal
New George Webb Book - Fauci And Me

<picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Kly1!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F33d90536-8bb9-40fb-abae-2bc8116689aa_1122x1402.png <svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line FAUCI AND ME

Two Lives, One Epidemic, Forty Years of Parallel Paths
George Webb’s Intelligence Network is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Book Treatment

In 1980, two Americans begin parallel journeys that neither knows will become intertwined for the next four decades. One enters the highest levels of government medicine and becomes the public face of America’s response to AIDS and later COVID-19. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!o2fL!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5c59a69c-6084-43b5-9b65-014f7015de7f_1122x1402.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line The other, shaken by the death of a close friend from HIV, embarks on a lifelong, self-directed investigation into immunology, biotechnology, and the institutions that shape modern medicine. Their paths never physically cross, but their careers increasingly become mirror images of one another—one operating inside the establishment, the other questioning it from the outside. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Zxo0!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fddcc3932-7eea-47df-bc64-9b28be674b70_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Overview

Fauci and Me is both memoir and investigative journey.

It begins not in Washington, D.C., but in an ordinary restaurant where George Webb and his wife learn that a favorite waiter has died from AIDS. The loss is intensely personal. Webb cannot understand why twentieth-century medicine appears so helpless against a virus that destroys the immune system. The experience launches an obsession that will occupy much of the next forty years. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bl8r!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F50a1bbb8-de25-46c4-9583-d9ecb807a091_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line The book follows these two trajectories in alternating chapters.

Fauci becomes America’s leading infectious disease official.

Webb becomes an independent investigator following the scientific revolution taking place across America’s biotechnology corridor.

Neither man knows the other.

Yet their lives repeatedly intersect through the same scientific institutions, the same technologies, the same funding networks, and eventually the same global pandemic. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nLuu!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F79104399-14b5-4e97-a1d0-8cd52673503c_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Themes

The book explores several central questions:

● How does scientific knowledge become public policy when obvious profiteering seems to be present from the beginning of an outbreak. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_Yzh!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F795b016d-0b50-4479-881a-c88211053c1d_1290x1841.jpeg

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line ● Why do some research paths receive enormous funding like Cau[...]

ci’s AZT while others struggle? <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rmF1!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6857e1aa-41a0-4c11-9dbf-1d7c66204a1a_1125x750.jpeg

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line ● What is the relationship between government, academia, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical companies when a corporate plant like Fauci is calling the shots? <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ZD0B!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc0b5522-4c1e-4dee-9ee8-1d0b62ab9a76_1125x1189.jpeg

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line ● Can citizen investigators contribute meaningfully to understanding complex scientific institutions when there is no check on uncontrolled authority like Fauci wielded without them. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FLAc!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa8eb0315-1ebc-41e1-994c-bd38707ff008_1290x1745.jpeg

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line ● What happens when two people study the same subject from opposite sides of the establishment? <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0Uh-!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8d456d34-284f-44be-935c-6ab3c973937a_1320x1594.jpeg

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Rather than presenting itself as a biography of Anthony Fauci, the book is fundamentally the story of one citizen’s decades-long effort to understand modern biomedical science. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!I3_S!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F13564c4a-1bd5-47a6-ab31-57e725f68a7d_1125x632.jpeg

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Structure

Part I — The Waiter

The story opens with loss.

A favorite waiter dies of AIDS.

For Webb, the event becomes a personal mystery.

How could modern civilization send astronauts into space yet remain unable to stop a virus?

He begins reading everything he can find about immunology.

The immune system becomes an intellectual frontier.

Across the country, Anthony Fauci is becoming one of the government’s principal physicians confronting the emerging AIDS epidemic.

Two journeys begin.
Part II — Learning the Language of Cells

While Fauci’s responsibilities expand inside NIH, Webb pursues an informal education through interviews and travel.

He visits leading research centers.

He studies:

● immune cell signaling

● T-cell biology

● genome sequencing

● computational biology

● emerging biotechnology

The Human Genome Project transforms biology.

Webb sees opportunities for understanding disease through genetics and systems biology.

His reporting takes him to institutions pioneering high-throughput sequencing and computational approaches to biology.

Part III — The New Biology

America’s biotechnology revolution unfolds.

Webb visits researchers, entrepreneurs, laboratories, and supercomputing centers.

Among the scientists whose work influences his understanding are pioneers in genomics and systems biology, including Leroy Hood and others working at the intersection of biology, engineering, and computation.

The promise is enormous.

Perhaps medicine can finally understand—not merely treat—the mechanisms underlying immune dysfunction.

Meanwhile, Fauci continues to guide national infectious disease research through changing administrations and evolving epidemics.

Part IV — Two Views of Medicine

This section contrasts two fundamentally different perspectives.

From [...]

inside government, Fauci sees the challenge of directing research, advising policymakers, and responding to public health emergencies.

From outside government, Webb asks whether scientific institutions adequately reward dissent, alternative hypotheses, and independent inquiry.

The contrast becomes the emotional center of the book.

Not hero versus villain.

But insider versus outsider.

Institution versus investigator.

Part V — Convergence

For decades, the two stories remain separate.

Then COVID-19 arrives.

The questions Webb has spent years asking about biotechnology, biodefense, research funding, and global preparedness suddenly move from scientific journals onto front pages around the world.

As Fauci becomes one of the most recognized physicians in history, Webb and a network of citizen journalists begin publishing investigations into pandemic preparedness, government decision-making, and the origins of SARS-CoV-2.

This section distinguishes clearly between documented events, publicly available evidence, and the author’s own investigative hypotheses where definitive conclusions remain contested.

Part VI — The Mirror

The climax is not a courtroom.

It is a realization.

For forty years two men have devoted enormous portions of their lives to infectious disease.

One believed institutions were the best vehicle for protecting society.

The other increasingly believed institutions required constant scrutiny by independent investigators.

Neither could fully tell the story without the other.

Tone

The tone combines:

● investigative memoir

● scientific travelogue

● history of biotechnology

● personal reflection

● institutional reporting

Rather than relying on polemics, the narrative emphasizes interviews, travel, firsthand observation, scientific history, and the author’s evolving understanding over four decades.

Why This Book Matters

Fauci and Me is ultimately not a book about Anthony Fauci.

It is about how one ordinary citizen spent forty years trying to understand extraordinary science.

It asks whether expertise belongs exclusively to institutions or whether determined independent researchers can also make meaningful contributions to public understanding.

The story spans the AIDS crisis, the genomics revolution, the rise of biotechnology, and the COVID-19 pandemic—using the parallel lives of two men to examine how science, policy, journalism, and public trust became intertwined in modern America.

Whether readers agree with every conclusion or not, the book invites them to consider how scientific debates unfold, how evidence accumulates, and how the relationship between government experts and citizen investigators has evolved in an age when information is more accessible than ever before.
George Webb 's Intelligence Network is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!-365!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F114ee422-bc8c-4a30-a08b-cc610528810e_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line After forty years of studying HIV and its origins, the same key actor from HIV, Anthony Fauci, conducts a military live exercise called Coronavirus. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PXLp!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd3ec94d5-b016-41aa-9f02-387b241fad5f_1402x1122.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line The first time I wrote about HIV I was a freshman in college in 1978. At that time, it was only a mystery disease in South Africa, and the disease had not been named. I wrote a speculative paper postulating that the Apartheid Regime was using a bioagent potentially to hold onto power. To this day, the [...]

incidents of HIV in South Africa, Africa, three times greater than anywhere else in the world.

George’ Webb Task Force Orange Journal
Fauci And Me - Introduction

<picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!yj7P!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc1394d86-d3d6-468c-a969-3166bc31e99c_1536x1024.png <svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Introduction Fauci and Me The Long Road to Asking Better Questions

Some books begin with certainty.

This one begins with questions.
George Webb's Intelligence Network is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Not the questions asked inside congressional hearing rooms or on television talk shows years after the COVID-19 pandemic changed the world, but the quieter questions that begin with a notebook, a highway, and the unsettling feeling that an official explanation does not fully account for the available evidence.

Journalism, at its best, is not an exercise in certainty. It is an exercise in persistence.

For me, that persistence became an odyssey spanning decades. My unknowing parallel life with Fauci started with me looking into the mystery disease breaking out in the Apartheid Regime of South Africa when I was a freshman at Miami University in 1978. The mystery disease was taking out military-age men in the rebelious parts of South Africa. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!oDcN!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe39abcea-1e6c-4fc9-90cf-090e85760019_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, before congressional hearings, before intelligence assessments, before arguments over laboratory safety, gain-of-function research, and pandemic preparedness entered everyday conversation, I found myself asking another question altogether:

How do modern biological mysteries begin? Why do the mystery diseases coincide with military regimes trying to hold on to Apartheid power? <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ynCO!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4b722981-5385-458e-a8d0-5e3df2388179_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line That question first emerged during another epidemic. Perhaps the HIV pandemic in South Africa all too conveniently relied on the CIA’s help from Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney for a solution to the Apartheid Regime’s problems with the majority population? <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5UwV!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa1685021-4ec2-4969-bff0-401f26fe0af1_1024x1536.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Why did the HIV explosion in South Africa occur at the height of rebel resistance against the Apartheid Regime? It just seems like a military exercise against living population. This was my first encounter with a “military live exercise”. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0ioR!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff2d8e2d6-fae1-499b-93c6-ce11f8d54261_1024x1536.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Later years and trials would prove my working theory to be correct. A South African Mangele named Wouter Basson was charged with creating a “Black Bomb”, a biological weapon that would target only black people in South Africa, Rhodesia, and Namibia - all Rothschild strongholds of diamonds, gold, and a myriad of other mining treasures. <picturehttps://substackcd[...]

n.com/image/fetch/$s_!xTY6!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5b6439e1-ae2c-44ef-8e8f-cfddfb9136bd_1024x1536.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Like millions of Americans during the early years of HIV/AIDS, I watched people become ill while scientists struggled to understand an entirely new disease. The epidemic challenged medicine, public health, politics, and journalism simultaneously. Researchers raced to understand the immune system, physicians confronted patients with few effective treatments, and government officials attempted to respond under extraordinary uncertainty.

In my early investigations, I believed the attack was on the critical MHC genes in the adaptive immune system. I still believe that today, forty years later. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!B0lp!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ace36d1-6aa4-4c5f-983a-8ea961104aa0_1024x1536.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Watching this military live exercise unfold in South Africa convinced me that biology was becoming the defining scientific frontier of the twenty-first century.

The immune system fascinated me, and I believed that this was the future of population warfare.

Not because I imagined becoming a scientist, but rather as a citizen scientist to expose these biological agents being used against civilian populations.

I never became a scientist, but I did become a citizen scientist.

But because I believed journalists increasingly needed to understand science well enough to ask informed questions.

That realization began an education that no university designed.

Instead of graduate seminars, I found laboratories. I interviewed every expert I could talk to at leading conferences like BIO in San Diego and other West Coast cities. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!So6k!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3cb10311-c85a-4062-9b55-ca71ce35dd1b_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Instead of formal professors, I found researchers willing to explain difficult concepts.

Instead of examinations, there were airports, conferences, interviews, research papers, and thousands of miles of highways.

I learned the language of immunology one conversation at a time.

T-cells.

Major Histocompatibility Complex proteins.

Immune signaling.

Genome sequencing.

Systems biology.

Computational biology.

Each new concept opened another door. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_asD!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F26771988-2a0b-4076-9301-45572b8bb416_1182x665.jpeg

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Thirty-five years later, I would almost die only steps from those original computation biotech CEO interviews in La Jolla, San Diego, as I outed National Resilience as the true purveyors of the Coronavirus vaccines in that military live exercise. George Webb in La Jolla, California, near the CIA’s National Resilience Lab.

At the same time, another public figure was embarking upon a very different journey.

Anthony Fauci was becoming one of America’s leading infectious-disease physicians.

As Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, he would eventually serve under seven presidents, helping shape federal responses to HIV/AIDS, SARS, influenza, Ebola, Zika, and finally COVID-19. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!4quo!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4334c07b-45a1-4945-a7f6[...]

-96922f5ae782_542x360.jpeg

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line In many ways, Fauci and Me tells the story of two parallel careers.

One unfolded inside government, with both HIV and Coronavirus unlocking emergency government funds for private profiteering.

The other open investigation unfolded on highways, bus terminals, airport lobbies, and burned shoe leather, working on open access for all science and citizen scientists.

One operated through federal institutions like NIH, which extorted funds for Fauci’sprofiteering cabal.

The other investigation worked through citizen journalism to promote citizen science, open access, and contribution.

Those paths rarely crossed directly, but there would be an intersection in March 2020 as our Potomac Group called out the Coronavirus military live exercise in real time. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!NBQa!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4a3e18e9-f501-49d2-b51b-4f91ae4402bb_807x974.jpeg

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Yet they repeatedly intersected around the same scientific questions.

How does disease emerge, and when does “disease” have telltale signs of lab manipulation and weaponization like the furin cleavage site in Coronavirus?

How should governments prepare, and what checks are there against the Fauci-type cabals?

What role should scientific research play in preventing pandemics, and how can citizen scientists keep the experts honest before another emergency shakedown occurs? <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!yqI_!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F581d7917-e423-439c-9b31-788ea19c5a60_930x843.jpeg

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line What risks accompany increasingly sophisticated biotechnology?

Those questions became even larger during the biotechnology revolution of the 1980s and 1990s.

The Human Genome Project transformed medicine from descriptive biology into information science.

Researchers began sequencing genomes at extraordinary speed.

Computational biology emerged as one of science’s most important disciplines.

Biologists increasingly collaborated with engineers, mathematicians, and computer scientists. Citizen scientists were not able to mount a defense against the Fauci cabal for HIV, but the decades of study prepared us for the Fauci modus operandi for the next military live exercise - coronavirus. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Hd0s!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd28d74a0-c9b4-4308-a860-64962050ed4f_724x1086.jpeg

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Citizen scientists called out Anthony Fauci’s Coronavirus live exercise real time in March of 2020.

Institutions such as the University of Washington, the University of California system, Stanford, Caltech, and many others became centers of innovation.

Scientists including Leroy Hood helped pioneer systems biology, demonstrating that disease could be understood not merely as isolated symptoms but as interconnected biological networks.

That transformation reshaped my own reporting.

Rather than treating biology as a collection of disconnected discoveries, I began thinking in systems.

Institutions formed networks.

Researchers collaborated across borders.

Funding crossed agencies.

Scientific papers linked laboratories separated by thousands of miles.

The geography of biology became almost as important as biology itself.

Years later, during COVID-19, that perspective would profoundly influence my reporting.

Rather than asking only where the outbreak began, I found myself asking broader questions.

How had the inte[...]

rnational pandemic preparedness system developed?

Which laboratories collaborated?

How were biological samples exchanged?

Which agencies funded research?

Which institutions specialized in emerging infectious diseases?

Which organizations coordinated preparedness exercises?

Those questions led me across the United States and Europe.

Fort Detrick.

Fort Belvoir.

Chapel Hill.

Rotterdam.

Geneva.

The Hague.

Hamilton, Montana.

Each destination offered another piece of a much larger institutional map.

The map eventually became more important than any single destination.

Along the way I interviewed scientists, former employees, physicians, engineers, military veterans, government officials, and ordinary citizens.

Some conversations confirmed established understanding.

Others raised additional questions.

Many led nowhere.

That is the nature of investigative reporting.

Most leads fail.

A few reveal unexpected connections.

Still fewer change the direction of an investigation entirely.

The COVID-19 pandemic transformed these long-standing interests into an urgent global story.

Almost overnight, virology became front-page news.

Terms previously confined to scientific journals entered ordinary conversation.

PCR.

Spike proteins.

mRNA.

Variants.

Neutralizing antibodies.

Furin cleavage sites.

Laboratory safety levels.

The public suddenly found itself immersed in subjects that previously occupied only specialists.

At the same time, disagreement became unavoidable.

Scientists debated origins.

Governments released differing assessments.

Journalists attempted to interpret rapidly changing information.

Congress launched investigations.

Inspectors General issued reports.

Freedom of Information Act requests uncovered internal emails.

Peer-reviewed publications challenged one another.

Public confidence in scientific institutions became increasingly polarized.

This book does not claim to settle every scientific controversy.

Instead, it tells the story of an investigation.

It describes why certain questions appeared important to me, how those questions evolved over time, where the reporting led, and why I believe citizen journalism contributed something valuable to the broader public conversation.

Readers may agree with some conclusions and disagree with others.

That is entirely appropriate.

My hope is not that every reader reaches identical conclusions.

My hope is that readers appreciate the importance of continuing to ask difficult questions while distinguishing carefully between documented evidence, inference, and speculation.

One lesson became increasingly clear throughout this journey.

Scientific understanding evolves.

Public narratives evolve.

Evidence accumulates.

Questions once dismissed sometimes receive renewed attention.

Other hypotheses lose support as additional evidence emerges.

Good journalism must evolve alongside the evidence rather than becoming permanently attached to any single narrative.

That principle guided my work from the beginning.

It continues to guide it today.

The title, Fauci and Me, therefore should not be misunderstood.

This is not simply a book about Anthony Fauci.

Nor is it solely a book about COVID-19.

It is a book about two very different ways of approaching the same historical era.

One represents official institutions.

The other represents independent investigation.

Between those two perspectives lies the complicated, unfinished story of one of the most consequential public-health crises in modern history.

The camera is still rolling.

The notebook remains open.

The road continues.

Welcome to Fauci and Me.
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George’ Webb Task Force Orange Journal
Fauci And Me - A Technical Preface

<picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CdqP!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F27898182-69eb-4f1a-8cbe-f1bfd3d5d106_1536x1024.png <svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line The Genes That Decide What Belongs From South Africa to HLA, MHC and the Death of My Friend By George Webb

My interest in the genetics of immunity did not begin in a laboratory.

It began with a question.

In 1978, I was a young man looking at apartheid South Africa and wondering how far a government might go to preserve a political system built around racial separation. I was interested in the intersection of military power, biology and population. I did not possess the vocabulary I would acquire decades later. I didn’t know enough immunology to talk intelligently about antigen presentation, HLA polymorphism or MHC haplotypes. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!XVUj!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc8ba69a-66fb-4839-ad7a-7ef1d5907c3a_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line (This Preface is meant to provide the reader with a deeper understanding of my investigation into HIV and AIDS, but this technical explanation is not necessary to read “Fauci and Me”. Skip this Preface if you find it too technical).

But I understood the question. Could biology be used politically?

That question stayed with me.

Years later, the documented history of apartheid South Africa would reveal that this was not an absurd subject to investigate. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission examined the apartheid government’s secret chemical and biological warfare program, Project Coast. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!MIr1!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3c72b7df-e275-482f-bf3a-70ed93628aee_768x1024.jpeg

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line George Webb at the Rhodes Statue in Company Gardens in Cape Town, South Africa.

The historical record places Project Coast’s formal beginnings in the early 1980s; former defense minister Magnus Malan testified that he approved it in 1981. The TRC subsequently investigated experiments involving humans and animals conducted between 1981 and 1994. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!pO3r!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5ec3c003-1be0-4608-97ba-83289c828876_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line I have gone through the process of procuring a liver for a good friend to deliver life from the jaws of death since my initial reaction that South African transplant experiments were being categorized as “acquired immune deficiency”. I have internalized this techspeak and nomenclature. Was organ transplant testing part of Project Coast testing in Cape Town? Were early HIV cases blood rejection cases? <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!q8Qo!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffa05da26-1d9a-4db6-b1a9-02bf646d3f06_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line I want to be precise about the investigation into what was revealed to be Fauci’s HIV and AIDs chronology and how it mapped to the South African experience.

I am not saying that Project Coast existed in 1978 or that I knew about it then. The evidence we have places it later.

What I am [...]

saying is that in 1978 I had already become interested in the broader question of whether biology could become an instrument of state power.

At the time, I couldn’t have imagined where that question would eventually lead me. Read more

George’ Webb Task Force Orange Journal
Fauci And Me - Chapter One - The Convenient Emergence

<picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!n5Wy!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F884e756f-8590-49e3-a370-ef39ead66c32_1024x1536.png <svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Chapter One The Convenient Emergence South Africa, AIDS, and the Question That Would Follow Me for Forty Years

History rarely announces that something important is beginning.

There is no bell. No narrator. No title card.
George Webb's Intelligence Network is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Usually there are only fragments.

A strange illness.

A laboratory report.

A government under pressure.

A few scientists asking questions.

And somewhere, usually far from the cameras, somebody collecting blood.

That was the pattern that first caught my attention in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when I began following reports from southern Africa. I was a freshman at Miami University in 1978. I wasn’t an immunologist. I wasn’t a virologist. I wasn’t employed by an intelligence agency.

I was simply curious. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WaoC!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F23858e5d-3827-4ded-987c-c61d00f557ec_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line And South Africa gave me plenty to be curious about.

Apartheid was ultimately doomed, although nobody could say exactly when it would fall. A white minority government was attempting to maintain political control over a much larger Black population. Resistance movements were growing. South African forces were fighting beyond the country’s borders. Angola and Namibia had become theaters in a much larger Cold War.

Then biology entered the picture.

South Africa established a secret chemical and biological warfare program called Project Coast. That is not speculation. It is part of the historical record.

Wouter Basson, the physician who headed the program, would eventually stand trial on dozens of charges associated with his activities. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard evidence concerning poisons, bacteria and other unconventional weapons developed during the apartheid period.

That history matters because it established something I could never forget: A modern government really had been willing to investigate biology as a political and military weapon.

That fact does not prove that apartheid South Africa created HIV.

It does something subtler.

It makes the question of biological warfare in that historical setting legitimate.

And it taught me an investigative lesson that would become important again four decades later: When a new biological threat emerges during a period of extraordinary political pressure, examine the biology—but also examine the institutions surrounding it. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!uKaL!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0d962d9a-91c9-406c-b5f0-7d4075a25fe4_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line The Disease That Didn’t Fit

AIDS was formally recognized in the United States in 1981.

Young men were appearing with diseases physicians ordinarily expected only in severely immunocompromised patients. Pneumocystis pneumonia. Kaposi sarcoma. Opportunistic infections.

Something was destroying—or disabling—a critical part of the immune system.

Eventually HIV was identified as the cause of AIDS.

Modern phylogeneti[...]

c evidence provides a detailed evolutionary history: HIV-1 descended from simian immunodeficiency viruses, with the pandemic HIV-1 group M tracing to an SIV lineage circulating in chimpanzees in southeastern Cameroon. Molecular-clock studies place that emergence decades before AIDS was recognized in 1981.

That is the scientific consensus.

But my interest was developing along a different track.

I was fascinated by what the virus did. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!e3YB!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6205c3ca-e893-45b8-89cc-fec2438484a5_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line The human immune system had an extraordinary ability to distinguish self from foreign material. T cells, antigen presentation and what I would later learn to call the Major Histocompatibility Complex formed an elaborate biological identification system.

A virus that could progressively dismantle that defense system seemed almost unimaginably consequential.

My working question became: What happens when the biological machinery responsible for recognizing foreign material stops functioning properly?

That question sent me toward transplantation biology, HLA markers, T cells and eventually genomics.

It also sent me back toward South Africa.

Because another revolution was happening simultaneously.

Scientists were getting increasingly good at identifying human biological differences from blood. Blood Becomes Information

Before the Human Genome Project, a blood sample could tell researchers only a fraction of what one can reveal today.

But that fraction was already powerful.

Blood groups.

Disease-associated markers.

HLA types.

Inherited traits.

Population differences.

The technology was primitive by today’s standards, but the direction was obvious.

Blood was becoming information. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!M7Mn!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F70543260-bffb-4f02-aa0b-661cba30b0a0_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line And information about populations inevitably interested governments.

I began looking at biological sample collection differently.

A vial of blood wasn’t merely a diagnostic specimen.

It was a biological record of the person who supplied it.

As marker technology improved, that record became richer.

Then came sequencing.

Then computational biology.

Then enormous genomic databases.

Then inexpensive whole-genome sequencing.

What had been a handful of markers became millions of data points.

That progression became central to my investigation. My original introduction describes this as the beginning of my interest in blood collection, genetic markers and the eventual transformation of biology into information science.

But another question remained.

What happens when governments possessing that capability become desperate?

South Africa provided an uncomfortable historical example.

Project Coast demonstrated that the apartheid military really did pursue chemical and biological capabilities.

It did not establish that Project Coast created HIV.

That distinction is essential.

But it was enough to make me keep looking. The First Parallel

Forty years later, another biological mystery arrived during another extraordinary political moment.

It was 2019.

Donald Trump was preparing to seek reelection.

The American economy was strong. Political polarization was extreme. Impeachment dominated Washington.

Then, thousands of miles away, a cluster of unexplained pneumonia appeared in Wuhan.

Within months the world stopped.

Airports emptied.

Businesses closed.

Schools closed.

Governments invoked emergency authorities.

Congress autho[...]

rized extraordinary spending.

And suddenly another obscure piece of molecular biology became politically important.

The furin cleavage site. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QJ2T!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4b8415e-507d-4f12-975e-d53326e19dd8_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line SARS-CoV-2 possesses a multibasic furin cleavage site at the junction between the S1 and S2 portions of its spike protein. Furin cleavage helps prepare the spike protein for the membrane-fusion process involved in cellular entry. SARS-CoV-2’s site distinguishes it from the closest known sarbecoviruses that lack an equivalent site.

To most people, that was molecular trivia.

To me, it was a flashing light.

Not because a furin cleavage site proves laboratory engineering.

It doesn’t.

Furin cleavage sites occur naturally in multiple virus families, and evolutionary mechanisms including mutation, insertion, deletion and recombination can produce major changes in viral genomes.

The unanswered question was narrower: How did this particular virus acquire this particular feature?

And that question reminded me powerfully of the questions I had asked during AIDS. Millions of Years—and One Remarkable Moment

Evolution does not work according to election calendars.

Viruses do not know who occupies the White House.

A nucleotide does not vote Republican or Democrat.

That is precisely why coincidences between biological events and political events attract my attention.

Not because coincidence establishes causation.

Because coincidence generates a question.

The sarbecovirus lineage behind SARS-CoV-2 represents an evolutionary history stretching far beyond human political history. Yet SARS-CoV-2 emerged possessing a consequential cleavage feature at exactly the historical moment when humanity had acquired extraordinary capabilities for manipulating viruses—and when the United States was entering one of its most consequential elections.

That juxtaposition became impossible for me to ignore.

Again, the responsible question was not: Did somebody engineer a virus to stop a president from being reelected? <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UY8z!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3657013a-7442-4b71-ba6b-3c5a9b8487e2_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line There is no evidence establishing that proposition.

The investigative question was: Given the political consequences of the pandemic, the existing research capabilities, and the unusual genomic feature, what evidence would distinguish natural emergence from laboratory-associated emergence?

That is a very different question.

And it is answerable, at least in principle.

Laboratory notebooks.

Sequence databases.

Grant proposals.

Sample inventories.

Experiment records.

Research collaborations.

Virus passage histories.

Emails.

Funding documents.

Those are not conspiracy theories.

Those are evidence. Two Crises, One Investigative Method

South Africa taught me not to look at biology in isolation.

COVID taught me the same lesson again.

The parallels were not proof that the two events shared an origin.

They were methodological.

In southern Africa: Political instability → biological research → military programs → population sampling → emerging disease → enormous institutional consequences.

Four decades later: Advanced biotechnology → pandemic preparedness → coronavirus research → emerging disease → emergency government powers → enormous institutional consequences. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!R5QY!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-me[...]

dia.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F109c453a-b359-4826-922a-e5ac59a825ee_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Those sequences do not establish intentionality.

But they tell an investigative journalist where to look.

Follow the samples.

Follow the laboratories.

Follow the scientists.

Follow the grants.

Follow the military programs.

Follow the patents.

Follow the emergency contracts.

Follow the people who possessed the capability before the emergency made that capability valuable.

And above all: Follow the chronology.

Because chronology cannot tell you why something happened.

But it can tell you what was possible before it happened. The Chimpanzee Problem

My skepticism about HIV’s emergence eventually focused on the conventional zoonotic story.

The modern evidence for an SIV origin of HIV is substantial. Scientists have found closely related viruses in wild chimpanzees and gorillas, mapped their geographic distribution and reconstructed multiple cross-species transmissions through phylogenetics. HIV-1 group M—the lineage responsible for the global pandemic—is traced to SIVcpz in central chimpanzees.

That evidence deserves to be stated plainly.

But another fact fascinated me even more.

SIVcpz itself has an evolutionary history.

Research indicates that the chimpanzee virus is a recombinant derived from SIV lineages associated with monkeys. In other words, the evolutionary story itself involves cross-species transmission, recombination and adaptation before the lineage eventually reached humans.

That is fascinating biology.

It also reinforces a principle that would become central to Fauci and Me: Viruses have histories. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!qVo5!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe7aecbff-63b7-48df-bb13-2ef9d271edf1_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Those histories leave fingerprints.

Mutations.

Insertions.

Deletions.

Recombination.

Adaptation.

Geography.

Host changes.

And increasingly, laboratories leave histories too.

Passage records.

Freezer inventories.

Genetic constructs.

Sequencing files.

Grant applications.

Emails.

Databases.

The journalist’s job is to compare the two histories. The Question Behind the Question

By 2020 I had spent decades watching biotechnology become increasingly powerful.

The tools had changed almost beyond recognition.

In 1980, scientists hunted for a few markers.

By 2020, researchers could synthesize DNA, alter viral genomes, construct infectious clones, perform serial passage, manipulate receptor binding and sequence an entire viral genome faster than earlier researchers could characterize a handful of genes.

That technological transformation changed the nature of investigative journalism.

The question was no longer simply: Could nature produce this?

Nature can produce extraordinary things.

The better question became: Could humans produce it too? <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hsA-!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5e8a5b91-bd84-412f-8d60-66e153afd7e0_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line And if both answers are yes, then there is only one responsible path forward:

Look for evidence capable of distinguishing them.

That principle applies equally to HIV and SARS-CoV-2.

It doesn’t require believing that either virus was engineered.

It requires refusing to decide the answer before examining the evidence. Fauci and Me

This was where my path and Anthony Fauci’s path began moving toward one another.

Fauci approached emerging disease from inside America’s biomedical est[...]

ablishment.

I approached it from outside.

He had laboratories.

I had notebooks.

He had NIH grants.

I had airline tickets, rental cars and conference badges.

He could call scientists into meetings.

I cornered them in hallways.

He participated in the institutions making policy.

I wanted to know who funded those institutions, who collaborated with whom, what experiments they performed and what they knew before the public knew it.

HIV was the first great epidemic through which those two approaches developed.

COVID would bring them into direct collision.

And the bridge between those eras was biotechnology itself.

AIDS taught the world that an invisible sequence of nucleotides could transform civilization.

The Human Genome Project taught us how to read those sequences.

Synthetic biology taught us how to change them.

COVID forced us to confront the question that naturally followed: Once humanity learned to rewrite biology, how could the public distinguish an accident of evolution from an accident—or product—of experimentation? <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DSXk!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F912639e5-8f47-4d6c-a8b4-4bd99ae37dd2_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line That became my question.

Not because I knew the answer.

Because by then I knew enough to understand how important the answer could be.

South Africa had taught me the first lesson.

Governments under extraordinary pressure sometimes do extraordinary things.

Project Coast proved that much.

HIV taught me the second.

The smallest biological changes can have enormous historical consequences.

And SARS-CoV-2 taught me the third.

A tiny stretch of genetic material—the furin cleavage site—could become the center of a global argument about where a pandemic came from.

Three stories.

Three eras.

One question running through all of them: When biology and political power converge at precisely the right historical moment, who is willing to follow the evidence backward?

That is where Fauci and Me begins.
George Webb's Intelligence Network is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.