{"id":1828,"date":"2021-11-20T04:07:35","date_gmt":"2021-11-20T04:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jewelryon.com\/?p=1828"},"modified":"2021-11-20T04:09:52","modified_gmt":"2021-11-20T04:09:52","slug":"nih-and-ecohealth-colluded-to-evade-research-restrictions-mercola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jewelryon.com\/?p=1828","title":{"rendered":"NIH and EcoHealth Colluded to Evade Research Restrictions, Mercola"},"content":{"rendered":"

nih-ecohealth-alliance-evade-research-restrictions-mercola<\/a>\u00a0PDF<\/p>\n

STORY AT-A-GLANCE<\/h5>\n
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  • Emails reveal the National Institutes of Health colluded with EcoHealth Alliance to circumvent federal restrictions on gain-of-function (GOF) research and avoid oversight<\/span><\/li>\n
  • NIH officials allowed EcoHealth Alliance to craft oversight language governing its own GOF experiments<\/span><\/li>\n
  • At least two NIH officials expressed concern that the experiment might fall under the designation of GOF banned under federal moratorium. They later accepted EcoHealth\u2019s illogical justification for why the research should not be restricted<\/span><\/li>\n
  • The NIH is now trying to evade responsibility by shifting blame for the unlawful research onto EcoHealth Alliance, saying they violated the grant rules<\/span><\/li>\n
  • According to EcoHealth president Peter Daszak, the parent virus for his proposed chimeric SARS-like viruses, WIV1, had \u201cnever been demonstrated to infect humans.\u201d Yet three months earlier, his collaborator, Ralph Baric, Ph.D., had published a paper showing WIV1 did indeed have the ability to infect humans and posed a threat to the human population<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    The walls are closing in on Dr. Anthony Fauci as emails reveal the National Institutes of Health colluded with EcoHealth Alliance to circumvent federal restrictions on gain-of-function (GOF) research.<\/p>\n

    The damning revelations were published by The Intercept1<\/span><\/sup> and Daily Caller,2<\/span><\/sup> November 3, 2021. While the NIH has kept the grant correspondence secret, only allowing select congressional staff to review the documentation in a private session, The Intercept was given access to their personal notes.<\/p>\n

    Considering federal grants are of clear public interest, the NIH\u2019s decision to not make the correspondence public is suspicious in and of itself. Are they hiding something? You bet. As reported by Intercept journalists Sharon Lerner and Mara Hvistendahl:3<\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

    \u201cEmails show that NIH officials allowed EcoHealth Alliance to craft oversight language governing its own gain-of-function research …<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Detailed notes on NIH communications obtained by The Intercept show that beginning in May 2016, agency staff had an unusual exchange with Peter Daszak, the head of EcoHealth Alliance, about experiments his group was planning to conduct on coronaviruses under an NIH grant called \u2018Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence\u2019<\/em>4<\/span><\/sup> …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    EcoHealth was entering the third year of the five-year, $3.1 million grant that included research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other partners. In a 2016 progress report, the group described to NIH its plans to carry out two planned experiments infecting humanized mice with hybrid viruses, known as \u2018chimeras.\u2019<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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    The plans triggered concerns at NIH. Two staff members \u2014 Jenny Greer, a grants management specialist, and Erik Stemmy, a program officer handling coronavirus research \u2014 wrote to EcoHealth Alliance to say that the experiments \u2018appear to involve research covered under the pause,\u2019 referring to a temporary moratorium5<\/span><\/sup> on funding for gain-of-function research that would be reasonably anticipated to make MERS and SARS viruses more pathogenic or transmissible in mammals …<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Initially, NIH staff appeared intent on enforcing the funding pause … But what happened next sets off alarm bells for biosafety advocates: Agency staff adopted language that EcoHealth Alliance crafted to govern its own work.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    The agency inserted several sentences into grant materials describing immediate actions the group would take if the viruses they created proved to become more transmissible or disease-causing as the result of the experiments.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    NIH Tries to Evade Responsibility<\/h2>\n

    The NIH is now trying to evade responsibility by shifting blame for the unlawful research onto EcoHealth Alliance. October 21, 2021, NIH principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak, Ph.D., sent a letter6<\/span>,<\/sup>7<\/span>,<\/sup>8<\/span><\/sup> to James Comer, ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, \u201cto provide additional information and documents regarding NIH’s grant to EcoHealth Alliance Inc.\u201d<\/p>\n

    In the letter, Tabak acknowledged that Fauci lied to Congress when he emphatically insisted the NIH\/NIAID have never funded GOF research. However, when it comes to circumventing the research moratorium, Tabak lays the blame squarely at the feet of EcoHealth. According to Tabak:9<\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

    \u201cThe 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 …<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    In this limited experiment, laboratory mice infected with the SHC014 WIV 1 bat coronavirus became sicker than those infected with the WIV1 bat coronavirus. As sometimes occurs in science, this was an unexpected result of the research, as opposed to something that the researchers set out to do …<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    The research plan was reviewed by NIH in advance of funding, and NIH determined that it did not to fit the definition of research involving enhanced pathogens of pandemic potential (ePPP) because these bat coronaviruses had not been shown to infect humans. As such, the research was not subject to departmental review under the HHS P3CO Framework.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    However, 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.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    These measures would prompt a secondary review to determine whether the research aims should be re-evaluated or new biosafety measures should be enacted. EcoHealth failed to report this finding right away, as was required by the terms of the grant.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    In other words, EcoHealth\u2019s experiment \u201caccidentally\u201d turned into GOF. At that point, EcoHealth should have alerted the NIH, but allegedly didn\u2019t. So, according to Tabak, NIH bears no responsibility as they relied on EcoHealth to follow the terms of the grant.<\/p>\n

    EcoHealth has denied this charge, saying \u201cThese data were reported as soon as we were made aware, in our year four report in April 2018 … At no time did program staff indicate to us that this work required further clarification or secondary review.\u201d10<\/span>,<\/sup>11<\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

    As noted by The Intercept,12<\/span><\/sup> Tabak implies the NIH created that reporting rule \u201cout of an abundance of caution,\u201d but according to the correspondence The Intercept reviewed, \u201cthe language was inserted at Daszak\u2019s suggestion,\u201d and \u201cthe NIH and EcoHealth Alliance worked together to evade additional oversight.\u201d<\/p>\n

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    Illogical Justifications<\/h2>\n

    How did they evade additional oversight? Through illogical and contradictory risk assessments. While Tabak claims the resulting virulence was unintentional, how could that be, since the experiment in question was supposed to test the \u201cemergency potential\u201d of bat coronaviruses in the human population?<\/p>\n

    The name of the grant itself tells us they\u2019re going to assess the possibility of a bat coronavirus mutating into something that can affect humans, and to do that, they will likely try to manipulate the virus to see if it can gain that function.<\/p>\n

    EcoHealth president, zoologist Peter Daszak, suggested to the NIH that the experiment should not be categorized as restricted GOF because his proposed hybrid viruses were so different from the SARS virus (which is known to infect humans). The Intercept continues:13<\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

    \u201cDaszak also pointed out that WIV1, the parent of the proposed chimeric SARS-like viruses, \u2018has never been demonstrated to infect humans or cause human disease,\u2019 according to the transcribed emails.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    And he said that previous research \u2018strongly suggests that the chimeric bat spike\/bat backbone viruses should not have enhanced pathogenicity in animals.\u2019 The NIH would go on to accept these arguments.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    But the group\u2019s argument that its viral research did not pose a risk of infection appears to contradict the justification for the work: that these pathogens could potentially cause a pandemic.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    \u2018The entire rationale of EcoHealth\u2019s grant renewal on SARS-related CoVs is that viruses with spikes substantially (10-25%) diverged from SARS-CoV-1 pose a pandemic risk,\u2019 said [Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center virologist, Jesse] Bloom.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    \u2018Given that this is the entire rationale for the work, how can they simultaneously argue these viruses should not be regulated as potential pandemic pathogens?\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    But Daszak\u2019s justification makes no sense for yet another reason. Three months before Daszak wrote that determination for the NIH \u2014 where he suggests the WIV1 virus they were going to use as the backbone for the chimeras had \u201cnever been demonstrated to infect humans or cause human disease\u201d \u2014 his collaborator, Ralph Baric, Ph.D., had published a paper14<\/span><\/sup> showing WIV1 did indeed have the ability to infect humans.15<\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n