The National Institutes of Health reiterated its stance Thursday that it did not fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, despite having released documents \u2026<\/b>
\nThe National Institutes of Health reiterated its stance Thursday that it did not fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, despite having released documents on Wednesday showing that it funded the creation of a lab-made SARS coronavirus that was more deadly and pathogenetic towards mice with humanized cells. EcoHealth Alliance informed the NIH in August that its lab-created rWIV1-SHC014 S coronavirus killed 75% of mice with humanized cells, while the natural WIV1 virus it was based on killed less than 25% of mice with the same humanized cells. The experiments were conducted with the Wuhan Institute of Virology between June 2018 and May 2019. \u201cThese results suggest that the pathogenicity of SHC014 is higher than other tested bat SARSr-CoVs in transgenic mice that express hACE2,\u201d EcoHealth Alliance told the NIH in its progress report. NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak told House Oversight and Reform Committee Ranking Member Rep. James Comer of Kentucky on Wednesday that EcoHealth\u2019s failure to report its findings right away was a violation of the terms of its research grant. Tabak added that his agency has provided the group five days to submit \u201cany and all unpublished data from the experiments and work conducted under this award.\u201d Tabak\u2019s letter was an admission by NIH that the agency\u2019s director, Francis Collins, and National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, have been untruthful in their claims that the EcoHealth Alliance research grant in Wuhan did not involve gain of function research, Rutgers University professor Richard Ebright said on Twitter Wednesday. But an NIH spokesperson said Ebright\u2019s tweet was incorrect, telling the DCNF that EcoHealth\u2019s research still didn\u2019t meet the definition of gain of function research spelled out in the Potential Pandemic Pathogens Control and Oversight (P3CO) review framework, even though the group\u2019s lab-created virus was tested and shown to be more deadly towards mice with humanized cells. \u201cBecause a mouse got sicker doesn\u2019t mean it would make a human sicker,\u201d the NIH spokesperson said. \u201cThe mouse study doesn\u2019t tell us anything about human biology except how the viruses interact with the human ACE2 receptor. As you know mice and humans are very different.\u201d \u201cImportantly, the presence of the human receptor alone is not sufficient to drive human infection,\u201d the spokesperson said. \u201cAll other aspects of the mice, including the immune system, remained unchanged in this model.\u201d Ebright said the NIH was effectively saying the only way for EcoHealth to determine whether their lab-created virus is more infectious towards humans is to test the virus on a human. \u201cThey have no shame,\u201d Ebright told the DCNF. \u201cIn essence, they are claiming that, because the NIH did not fund infection studies with lab-generated viruses and human subjects \u2014 Uyghur detainees? Falun Gong dissidents? \u2014 the NIH did not fund gain of function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement subject to the federal policies,\u201d Ebright said. \u201cBy any rational standard\u2013indeed, by any defensible standard\u2013a virus that exhibits increased 10,000-fold higher viral load and higher pathogenicity in humanized mice, expressly engineered to model infection in humans, is reasonably anticipated to exhibit enhanced transmissibility in humans and pathogenicity in humans,\u201d Ebright said. (RELATED: Fauci-Funded Wuhan Lab Viruses Exhibited Over 10,000 Times Higher Viral Load Than Natural Strain, Documents Show) The NIH spokesperson objected to Ebright\u2019s interpretation, but did not provide an answer when asked whether there were any tests aside from infecting humans with the virus that could have proven to the NIH that EcoHealth\u2019s lab-created virus was more infectious towards humans, or should be flagged for further review under the P3CO framework.<\/p>\n