Former White House Coronavirus Response team member Dr. Scott Atlas claimed on Sunday that “”science has become politicized,” adding that the internal politics in the field is “destructive” and “there’s no transparency.”
He went on to argue that “this undermines the validity of the research and their statements,” and alleged there is a “cabal” in science.
“There is a sort of a group of people, very powerful people in science, who are at the NIH, like Dr. [Anthony] Fauci and others in academia and in the scientific journals,” he told “Sunday Mornings Futures.”
“The prestigious grants, the way you get promoted in the university is to have NIH [National Institutes of Health] grants,” Atlas went on to say. “You submit papers to these journals. The people who review the grants to get them accepted or not, to give you funding, are the same people in the NIH and in the journals.”
“It’s a cabal,” he continued. “They control the money, they control the scientific money, they control the careers of everyone.”
NIH and White House spokespeople did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment on Sunday.
Atlas blasted Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx and former CDC Director Robert Redfield in a new book saying that he was “disgusted” by their dismissal of scientific data he presented to them during the Trump administration.
In the book, “A Plague Upon Our House” which Fox News Digital obtained an advance copy of, Atlas says he presented data and studies showing that schools should be reopened and that children are not significant spreaders of the coronavirus, but was virtually ignored by Fauci and others on the team.
Speaking on Sunday with host Maria Bartiromo Atlas said, “I would bring into the task force scores of papers … 20 scientific publications and when asked about my opinion, I would go through the data.”
He went on to say that when he would “cite the data” to the other members of the task force, “all I heard from them was either nothing, silence, or simply calling me an outlier.”
“And then they would run to the media and do this ad hominem attack stuff,” he continued, arguing that “there was no critical thinking there.”
“There was no citation of a study,” Atlas told Bartiromo. “In fact, they never disagreed with each other.”
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Last month, Atlas slammed Dr. Birx for an “Orwellian” attempt to “rewrite history” after she testified before Congress.
Birx testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic earlier this month, saying that officials in former President Trump’s White House did not take steps to push mask-wearing, social distancing, and other mitigation steps that could have prevented thousands of COVID-19 deaths.
Birx also reportedly slammed Atlas, saying he advocated for letting COVID-19 spread through the population to reach herd immunity. The New York Times reported Birx testified that she repeatedly raised her concerns about Atlas’ positions and theories to other doctors on the task force.
Atlas, delivering a point-by-point rebuttal to reports of Birx’s testimony about his role, told Fox News that her claim that he advised Trump to “let the infection spread widely without mitigation to achieve herd immunity,” telling Fox News that “is false.”
“I never advised the president, the Task Force, or anyone else while in Washington to allow the virus to spread,” Atlas said. “Dozens of my writings and interviews during my Washington service explicitly called for specific mitigations, including social distancing, extra hygiene, and masks when not able to socially distance, and ‘focused protection,’ a heightened protection of those at risk, to allow a safe opening and end the public health destruction from lockdowns.”
Atlas argued “the data shows that natural immunity, people who have recovered from the disease, not only have protection, they have better protection” than those who have been vaccinated, but never had the disease.
“This is something that was known for decades,” he argued. “This is basic knowledge about viral infection, including coronaviruses.”
“The protection wanes with the vaccine in a quicker time than the protection wanes from natural infection so natural infection confers protection, significant durable protection,” Atlas added.
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“The United States is bizarrely denying the science,” he claimed, adding that the country is “denying fact and this shows really an indictment of the public health leadership of this country.”
Fox News’ Andrew Mark Miller, Brooke Singman and Andrew Murray contributed to this report.
