Dr. Steven Quay in Line to Take Over Dr. Anthony Fauci's Old Job: Report

A Pharmaceutical executive who helped push the theory that COVID-19 came from a leak in a Chinese lab is in line to take Dr. Anthony Fauci’s old job, according to a new report.

Dr. Steven Quay — the CEO of Atossa Therapeutics, which is developing a drug to treat breast cancer — is poised to become the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, two people aware of the decision told Politico.

Fauci served in the role for nearly 40 years until he stepped down at the end of 2022 to “pursue the next phase of my career,” he said in a statement released in August of that year. Fauci became a household name during the COVID-19 pandemic as health officials scrambled to find the source of the outbreak and a vaccine to treat it.

One unproven theory that quickly circulated was that the virus, which killed more than one million Americans, was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology while scientists were researching bat coronaviruses.

Quay has written several books about COVID-19, including The Code As Witness, which argues that the virus originated in a lab, rather than in nature.

Quay had applied to be the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, but initially did not advance to the interview stage, according to one of the people familiar with the process who spoke to Politico.

But Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reportedly decided to go with Quay anyway, and federal health officials signed off on it last week. Politico’s sources noted that Quay’s selection is still undergoing final vetting.

The Independent has reached out to the Health and Human Services Department and Quay for comment.

Quay has ties to several prominent institutions, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University School of Medicine, founded six startups and invented seven FDA-approved drugs, according to his website. But he does not have formal training in infectious diseases, Politico noted.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is currently being run by Acting Director John Powers III.

Despite leaving the position years ago, Fauci continues to make headlines.

After being subpoenaed for a Senate hearing Wednesday, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times, refusing to answer questions about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ahead of the hearing last week, Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, released more than 1,000 pages from a long-running diary Fauci kept.

In an April 2021 entry, Fauci wrote that members of the “radical right wing” like Paul were trying to “connect me with the virus from WUHAN.”

“They are saying that I deliberately worked with the Chinese together with [zoologist] Peter Daszak to create a virus that would be released to the world,” he wrote at the time. “This sounds very much like a way-out conspiracy theory, which it is. However, there are enough crazy people around to make this a problem.”