New NIH Letter About EcoHealth Reporting Failure Raises New Questions About Gain-Of-Function Funding

Documents released yesterday by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) appear to contradict previous claims by the EcoHealth Alliance regarding the subject of experiments on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China, raising further questions over whether U.S. government funding contributed to so-called “gain-of-function” research.

In a letter to Representative James Comer, Ranking Member on the Oversight and Reform Committee, the NIH provided additional information and documents regarding NIH’s much-scrutinized grant to EcoHealth Alliance.

“The limited experiment described in the final progress report provided by EcoHealth Alliance was testing if spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model,” the letter, signed by NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawrence A. Tabak, states. “In this limited experiment, laboratory mice infected with the SHC014 WIV1 bat coronavirus became sicker than those infected with the WIV1 bat coronavirus.”

The NIH added that “this was an unexpected result of the research,” as “sometimes occurs in science.”

“The research plan was reviewed by NIH in advance of funding, and NIH determined that it did not fit the definition of research involving enhanced pathogens of pandemic potential (ePPP) because these bat coronaviruses had not been shown to infect humans,” said the NIH. “As such, the research was not subject to departmental review under the HHS PSCO Framework.”

“However,” the NIH continued, “out of an abundance of caution and as an additional layer of oversight, language was included in the terms and conditions of the grant award to EcoHealth that outlined criteria for a secondary review, such as a requirement that the grantee report immediately a one log increase in growth.”

“These measures would prompt a secondary review to determine whether the research aims should be re-evaluated or new biosafety measures should be enacted,” the letter claimed.

According to the NIH, “EcoHealth failed to report this finding right away, as was required by the terms of the grant.”

The letter has sparked more questions about the funding of potentially dangerous research, including from Sen. Rand Paul — who grilled Dr. Anthony Fauci earlier this year after the White House medical advisor claimed that “the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

“‘I told you so’ doesn’t even begin to cover it here,” tweeted Paul in response to a tweet highlighting the letter and stating that the “NIH states that EcoHealth Alliance violated Terms and Conditions of NIH grant AI110964.”

Tabak’s letter stresses that

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