At first, his devious plan backfired. Instead of debunking AL 721, the NIAID study confirmed that AL 721 stopped viral replication. When those promising results began emerging, Dr. Fauci and his PIs cancelled the trial, making sure that AL 721 never went to Phase 2. Dr. Fauci told skeptical activists that he could not get any volunteers to enroll in the study. (In 2021, he would invoke the same bunko to kill NIAID’s ivermectin trials.)
