5 controversies surrounding former NIH Director Francis Collins
2. The Great Barrington Declaration: 'Fringe epidemiologists'
Collins, who called masks "life-saving device[s]" and scolded people for not wearing them, urged Dr. Anthony Fauci and others to do a "great and devastating takedown" of the Great Barrington Declaration's assertions, according to an Oct. 8, 2020, email that was later published.
The declaration, authored by Bhattacharya as well as Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff and Oxford’s Sunetra Gupta, argued that the broad lockdown policies were causing significant harm to public health, and called for a return to normal for low-risk groups.
Though many of its assertions have since been proven correct, Bhattacharya and his colleagues were repeatedly smeared, defamed and censored.
"This proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists . . . seems to be getting a lot of attention – and even a co-signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt at Stanford. There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises," Collins wrote in his October 2020 email to Fauci. "Is it underway?"
Fauci responded that the takedown was underway, and the declaration was dismissed in media stories while Facebook censored mentions of it.
