Experimental Vaccines Had Surprise Side Effect During Ebola Outbreak. Fauci Panicked.

As health officials grappled with the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the military learned experimental Ebola vaccines caused an unexpected side effect that spooked embassies in Africa and rattled Anthony Fauci, newly released documents reveal.

Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chair Rand Paul released the documents Monday as part of his ongoing investigation into Fauci and the origins of the COVID virus. They were first reported by Just The News.

The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick in Maryland conducted the experiments in late November 2015. They tested the efficacy of four experimental vaccines against filoviruses, the family of viruses to which Ebola belongs. Aerosolized Ebola virus killed nearly all of the primate research subjects, vaccinated or not, Fauci’s notes show. But autopsies showed the vaccinated primates demonstrated “necrosis, inflammation and fibrin in the lungs” that the unvaccinated group did not.

The November 2015 experiments compared four unnamed experimental vaccines in four primates each. The documents do not clearly name the precise vaccine candidates tested. They do indicate that a study a few months earlier in June 2015 had uncovered the same worrying vaccine-induced lung injury in a vaccine made by Profectus.

The documents also refer to Crucell, now Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, which codeveloped an Ebola vaccine with Fauci’s institute.

The drugmakers and Fauci did not respond to requests for comment.

The documents suggest that the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Division of Clinical Research (DCR) informed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the finding.

By the spring of 2016, the finding set off alarm bells in the embassies of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, where clinical trials for Ebola vaccines were getting underway.

“The embassies in West Africa (Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone) as you might expect went bonkers since it looks like we’re going to [vaccinate] people with the [dangerous] vaccine,” Fauci said in a March 9, 2016, diary entry.

“I believe all of this is important for bio defense, but has little to do with naturally emerging Ebola outbreaks,” he wrote. “Nonetheless, the idea that the vaccine can do harm is now causing people a great deal of concern.”

The next day, on March 10, 2026, Michael Kurilla, Fauci’s head of biodefense, wrote that “there are some … who fear this may derail filovirus vaccines permanently.”

“While there are potential crossover issues for public health outbreaks of Ebola, the dynamics of disease transmission are fundamentally different [than aerosolization],” he wrote. “I’m hopeful that FDA will arrive at the same conclusion. Messaging these results may require some attention.”

Other tests had demonstrated the vaccines’ safety, Kurilla said.

“Study results reference here represent outcomes from aerosol challenge which differ significantly from other challenge routes … where these same vaccine candidates have displayed clear, unambiguous protection without evidence of lung pathology,” he said.

Kurilla’s office did not respond to a request for comment. NIH did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a March 22, 2016, email, Kurilla said that publicly sharing the data necessitated discussing “how this impacts ongoing and future vaccine trials needs.”

“We need to clearly articulate the difference between natural infections and an artificial, highly engineered aerosol delivery,” he added.

Dual Use Concerns

The documents indicate that few people have full transparency into biodefense collaborations between the NIH, the U.S. military and the intelligence community. Even the highest echelons of the NIH are sometimes left in the dark.

Fauci first learned of the experiment from a secure teleconference with the White House, Pentagon, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), CIA, and the “NIA,” a possible reference to the National Institute on Aging.

Fauci’s concern is apparent in a March 2016 email in which he instructs his top aides to relay the entire truth about the experiments or risk termination.

“Do not tell me what you think I want to hear or hold back what you think will upset me,” Fauci said. “If someone does not tell me the truth and I find out they did not, then they are gone. Please find out the correct information before I report to the White House.”

When he learned during a National Security Council meeting that his own institute had underwritten the experiments, Fauci wrote, “I almost fell off my chair.”

“As it turns out, the NIAID people in our bio defense program rely on the Department of Defense to conduct bioterror related experiments using a variety of Ebola vaccines to determine their efficacy against aerosolized challenge with people,” Fauci wrote in the March 9, 2016, diary entry.

Peter Jahrling, a scientist at the U.S. Army lab at Fort Detrick, defended the aerosolized Ebola experiments. He said they should not be considered “dual use,” or applicable to bioweapons development. By the same standard, the Pentagon’s entire medical products division would be considered dual use, he argued.

“Understood but if this is dual use research then the entire [Defense Threat Reduction Agency] portfolio which calls for aerosol challenge against MCM for BioDefense pathogens is dual use. If the bioterrorist threat involves an aerosol attack I don’t see how anyone could criticize us for asking the question,” he wrote.

In another email, Jahrling said that despite the “extreme anxiety” caused by the aerosolized Ebola experiments, they would move forward with an unspecified coronavirus (CoV) study.

“We will continue to make plans to initiate the CoV study as soon as the lights turn green,” Jahrling said. “I will keep the rest off Email, but if aerosol challenge studies are considered [dual use] then the entire [medical countermeasure] development paradigm is gutted.”

Jahrling did not immediately respond to a request for comment.