research. but senator rand paul says top nih officials including dr. anthony fauci are parsing words. >> he has been sort of kind of going around the subject and he never fully explains why it is not gain of function. i think his explanation is this. it was inadvertent. we didn't know they would gain function. that's what a gain of function experiment is. >> nih explained the bat coronavirus viruses studied under the grant are far distant from sars covid 2 and couldn't possibly have caused the covid-19 pandemic. any claims to the contrary are false. although the research in question is unrelated to covid-19 it raises concerns about operations in general at the wuhan institute of virology. nih director collins says he believes the virus that causes covid-19 developed naturally in animals and eventually spread to humans but he says without