by Jerry Dunleavy, Justice Department Reporter
\nWashington Examiner<\/p>\n
A<\/span> leading critic of the National Institutes of Health contends the federal agency \u201cput at risk\u201d U.S. public health and national security by funding a bat coronavirus research project by EcoHealth Alliance.<\/p>\n Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, told the Washington Examiner<\/i> that a new letter in which the NIH conceded <\/a>that the group run by Peter Daszak violated its rules when conducting bat coronavirus research is a “bombshell” admission because it \u201ccorrects the untruthful assertions\u201d by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and his boss, NIH Director Francis Collins, both of whom claim the NIH did not fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China.<\/p>\n Ebright\u2019s assertions are challenged by the NIH, which continues to back <\/a>the contentions made by Collins, who is retiring from his role <\/a>, and Fauci on the politically charged issue that strikes at the root of the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n Lawrence Tabak, the NIH’s principal deputy director, said in the Wednesday letter <\/a>that EcoHealth Alliance provided a five-year progress report <\/a>on bat coronavirus research conducted under an NIH grant and that \u201cin this limited experiment, laboratory mice infected with the SHC014 WIV1 bat coronavirus became sicker than those infected with the WIV1 bat coronavirus.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAs sometimes occurs in science, this was an unexpected result of the research, as opposed to something that the researchers set out to do,” the agency said, adding: \u201cEcoHealth failed to report this finding right away, as was required by the terms of the grant.\u201d<\/p>\n With critics, including Sen. Rand Paul<\/a> of Kentucky, contending the letter confirms that the Wuhan lab collaborator had indeed been conducting gain-of-function research <\/a>, Ebright said, \u201cNIH’s acknowledgment of the facts is new, but the facts themselves are not.\u201d He insisted the NIH had been \u201cinformed about the gain-of-function research in Wuhan in 2018 and again in 2020.\u201d<\/p>\n FAUCI CRITICS SAY NIH LETTER DEBUNKS GAIN-OF-FUNCTION DENIALS <\/a><\/b><\/p>\n Gain-of-function research is defined <\/a>by the Department of Health and Human Services as research \u201cthat improves the ability of a pathogen to cause disease” to “enable assessment of the pandemic potential of emerging infectious agents.” It warns these studies \u201cmay entail biosafety and biosecurity risks.\u201d<\/p>\n Collins and Fauci say they don\u2019t fully know what goes on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but they have been adamant in claiming the NIH did not fund <\/a>gain-of-function <\/a>research at the facility.<\/p>\n \u201cCollins and Fauci lied to Congress, lied to the press, and lied to the public,” Ebright said. “Knowingly, willfully, and brazenly.”<\/p>\n After a pause in 2014, HHS announced <\/a>the creation of the Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight Framework in 2017, which was ostensibly set up to review any grants that might involve gain-of-function research. However, the 2019 renewal of the EcoHealth Alliance grants was not subjected to the P3CO review, according to the NIH <\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cBy failing to forward the proposal for the required HHS-level risk-benefit assessment, and then by funding the proposal without the required HHS-level risk-benefit assessment, officials at the NIH violated federal policies that were put in place to protect U.S. national security and U.S. public health … and put at risk U.S. national security and U.S. public health,\u201d Ebright told the Washington Examiner<\/i>. \u201cThe NIH spokesperson \u2014 or preferably the NIH officials who funded the proposal without the required HHS-level risk-benefit assessment \u2014 need to explain how this violation of federal policy occurred and what steps are being taken to ensure that similar violations of federal policy do not occur in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n An NIH spokesperson told the Washington Examiner<\/i> that \u201cthe comments being made are incorrect.\u201d<\/p>\n Specifically, the spokesperson said, \u201cthe research that requires increased oversight under the HHS P3CO Framework <\/a>is that which is reasonably anticipated to create, transfer, or use potential pandemic pathogens resulting from the enhancement of a pathogen\u2019s transmissibility and\/or virulence in humans.\u201d<\/p>\n But, as Ebright told the Washington Examiner<\/i>, \u201cIt also is correct \u2014 incontrovertibly correct \u2014 that the results\u201d in EcoHealth Alliance\u2019s progress reports and proposals \u201cshow that EcoHealth and its Wuhan partner constructed novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses \u2014 artificial, lab-generated viruses that do not have counterparts circulating in nature \u2014 that exhibited 10,000 times enhanced viral load and two to four times enhanced pathogenicity in infection studies in mice engineered to display human receptors on their cells (\u2018humanized mice\u2019).\u201d<\/p>\n The professor said it \u201ctherefore is correct that the proposal for the second 5-year grant term, which proposed to construct more such novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviuruses \u2014 included research reasonably anticipated \u2014 indeed highly likely \u2014 to create, transfer, or use potential pandemic pathogens resulting from the enhancement of a pathogen\u2019s transmissibility and\/or virulence in humans <\/a>\u2014 and, therefore, it is correct that the proposal for the second 5-year grant term required HHS-level risk-benefit assessment under the HHS P3CO Framework.\u201d<\/p>\n Fauci sat in the hot seat <\/a>in May during a Senate hearing in which he clashed with Paul.<\/p>\n \u201cI do not have an accounting of what the Chinese may have done, and I am fully in favor of any further investigation of what went on in China. However, I will repeat again \u2014 the NIH and NIAID categorically has not funded gain-of-function research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Fauci said.<\/p>\n That was in response to Paul asking Fauci if he would “categorically” say COVID-19 could not have occurred through serial passage in a laboratory.<\/p>\n There were also some telling comments from Collins in an interview that same month.<\/p>\n \u201cNIH would not have supported any such research on coronaviruses because there are risks there that you might actually end up producing a virus that has a higher danger attached to it than what nature has already come up with,” Collins said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe absolutely did not fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan,” Collins added.<\/p>\n CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER <\/a><\/b><\/p>\n The NIH\u2019s RePORTER website\u00a0 <\/a>said the agency provided $15.2 million to EcoHealth Alliance over the years, with $3.74 million going toward <\/a>understanding bat coronavirus emergence.<\/p>\n The NIH told the Washington Examiner<\/i> that EcoHealth Alliance\u2019s research \u201caimed to advance our understanding of the interactions of the spike protein with the ACE2 receptor, one component of human biology, in viral infection\u201d but insisted \u201cthe presence of the human receptor alone is not sufficient to drive human infection.\u201d<\/p>\n Daszak maintained a long working relationship with Wuhan lab \u201cbat lady\u201d Shi Zhengli, sending her lab at least $600,000 in NIH funding. Daszak was also part of the World Health Organization-China team that dismissed <\/a>the lab leak hypothesis as \u201cextremely unlikely\u201d earlier this year.<\/p>\n