- The National Institutes of Health has “systematically thwarted” the government’s oversight of hazardous pathogen research, Richard H. Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
- The P3CO assessment framework was created in 2017 after a three-year hiatus over government funding for research that makes pathogens more lethal or transmissible.
- An NIH grant involving the modification of coronavirus on bats and the transfer of $ 600,000 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology before the pandemic bypassed the P3CO review because the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, led by Anthony Fauci, the project for review.
A supervisory board set up to investigate research that would improve many dangerous pathogens did not receive a grant from the National Institutes of Health, which funded a laboratory in Wuhan, China, to genetically modify coronavirus on the bat. not revised.
According to experts, the NIH grant describes scientists doing research on profit function, a risky field of study that, in this case, made SARS-like viruses even more contagious. Federal funding for research on lucrative functions was temporarily suspended in 2014 due to widespread scientific concerns that it was at risk of leaking supercharging viruses into the human population.
Federal funding for profitable research was resumed at the end of 2017 after the Potential Pandemic Pathogens Control and Oversight (P3CO) Framework was established within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The adjudication board has the task of critically evaluating whether awards that include the improvement of dangerous pathogens, such as coronaviruses, are worth the risks and that proper guarantees exist.
But the NIH sub-agency that awarded the grant to the nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance to study Chinese coronaviruses chose not to send it to the P3CO committee, an NIH spokesman told the Daily Caller News Foundation said, meaning the research received federal funding without an independent investigation by the HHS board.
“This is a systemic problem,” Richard H. Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, told the DCNF, referring to the shortcoming in the review framework.
Ebright said the offices of the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) – the sub-agency that funded EcoHealth – and the NIH “systematically thwarted the HHS P3CO framework” were indeed systematically destroyed by refusing to suggestions for flag and forward review. “
Dr. Anthony Fauci leads the NIAID and Dr. Francis S. Collins heads the NIH.
According to an NIH spokesperson, the EcoHealth award for independent review is not marked by the HHS Evaluation Committee.
“After a careful review of the award, the NIAID determined that research in the award was not profitable research because it did not involve improving the pathogenicity or transmissibility of the viruses studied,” the DCNF spokesman said. .
“We will not submit research proposals that do not meet the definition, because otherwise we will have to submit everything,” the spokesman said.
How to circumvent federal oversight of functional research
The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is at the center of the great speculation that COVID-19 could have accidentally leaked from a laboratory to the human population. EcoHealth’s award for studying coronavirus on bats in China includes the transfer of $ 600,000 to the WIV.
If the award of EcoHealth was subject to P3CO, an HHS panel would have independently assessed the award and, if necessary, recommended additional measures for biocontrol to prevent potential leaks in the laboratory – or even recommended that the award be rejected altogether.
The WIV is a biosafety level 4 laboratory, the highest level of biosecurity certification, but U.S. embassy officials have issued two diplomatic cables warning of insufficient laboratory security after a visit in 2018. One of the cables warned that the laboratory’s work on coronaviruses is based on the bat. according to The Washington Post represented the risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.
In an appendix to the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 origin report released on Tuesday, the WIV’s work is described using ‘recombinant viruses’ in bats’ coronavirus tests, which Ebright says are a description of research on profitability.
According to the New York Times, the U.S. government took a break in 2014 in funding research on lucrative functions after laboratory workers were accidentally exposed to anthrax by the Centers for Disease Control. The incident came on the heels of widespread scientific screams in 2011 when it came to light that laboratories in Wisconsin and the Netherlands were deliberately adapting the H5N1 bird flu virus so that it could jump between ferrets more effectively.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks at a White House press briefing held by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki at the White House’s James Brady Press Briefing Room on January 21, 2021. (Photo by Alex Wong / Getty Images)
Federal-funded profit-for-function research resumed in 2017 after new oversight procedures were implemented. The review framework divided supervisory responsibilities between two groups – the funding agency (the NIAID in the case of the EcoHealth Award) and the P3CO Evaluation Committee, an interdisciplinary group convened by HHS.
The committee is responsible for recommending whether a research grant that includes functional features should include additional risk mitigation measures, a HHS spokesman told the DCNF.. But the committee is kept in the dark about any grants until the funding agency indicates one for its review.
The P3CO framework does not require the HHS Evaluation Committee to conduct a second inquiry into the NIAID’s decision following the review that the EcoHealth Award does not involve profit – making research.
The NIH spokesman said it would be “misleading and inaccurate” to suggest that NIAID is obligated to notify the HHS inquiry committee of its determination.
A spokesperson for the HHS confirmed that the department’s P3CO evaluation committee only reviews research grants that are marked for supplementary investigation by funding agencies such as NIAID. The spokesman did not respond when asked if the review committee was aware of the EcoHealth grant.
Ecohealth has manipulated a history of coronavirus-based coronaviruses. The group’s president, Peter Daszak, said so much during a podcast interview filmed in Singapore a few weeks before the first reported cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan in December 2019.
“You can easily manipulate it in the lab,” Daszak said. “Ear protein drives much of what happens to the coronavirus. Zoonotic risk. So you can get the order, you can build the protein – and we work with Ralph Baric at [the University of North Carolina] to do this – and insert the spine of another virus and do work in the laboratory. ”
Ebright told the DCNF that NIAID was wrong to determine that the EcoHealth grant did not improve the transmissibility of Chinese coronaviruses. He said the summary of the project for the 2019 financial year, which referred to “in vitro and in vivo infection experiments” on coronaviruses, “required * unequivocal * risk-benefit review under the HHS P3CO Framework.”
Other scientists have said that EcoHealth’s NIH-funded work in China involves research into coronaviruses in bats.
“It is difficult to emphasize that the core logic of this award was to test the pandemic potential of SARS – related bat coronaviruses by making those with pandemic potential, either through genetic engineering or throughput, or both,” said Dr. Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson wrote in June.
The NIH ends the EcoHealth Award in April 2020. NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research, Michael Lauer, said in a letter to the group that the agency “does not believe the current project results are in line with program objectives and agency priorities.”
Fauci told a House Energy & Commerce Committee hearing in June that the EcoHealth grant was canceled “because the NIH was told to cancel it.”
“I do not know the reason, but we have been told to cancel it,” Fauci said.
Fauci told Politico following the trial that former White House President Donald Trump had ordered the NIH to cancel the grant.
HHS official recognized government oversight over GOF research is flawed
The only known member of the HHS P3CO Evaluation Committee is its chairman, Chris Hassell, the senior scientific adviser to the HHS office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response. He announced his involvement in a January 2020 speech before the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity.
Hassell said during the speech that the current definition for a potential pandemic pathogen is’ very narrow ‘, which has led to only a few flu-related suggestions being obtained’ for the committee’s investigation.
“I would probably be more candid than might be appropriate – I think it’s too narrow,” Hassell said. He then suggested that the government could fund research that his committee had not investigated.
“I think it can be viewed again, and again there can be definition issues,” Hassell said.
When a function for function function was interrupted in 2014, 21 research projects were discontinued. But the NIH made exceptions for ten of them, according to The New York Times.
After continuing funding in 2017, only two projects were approved in line with the P3CO framework. Both projects deal with the flu virus, according to the NIH.
It is unclear how many research grants were reviewed under the framework. A NIH spokesman said they did not comment or discuss unfunded grants.
It is also unclear who else serves on the HHS P3CO Evaluation Committee. Hassell said in January 2020 that the committee consisted only of federal employees, but said it could harm their job of making their names known.
“As much as it would be good to disclose the individual names that are being proposed, if it cools someone who is willing to serve on the committee, it would be detrimental,” Hassell said.
A HHS spokesman said Hassell was not available for comment.
Eleanor Bartow contributed to this report.
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