“The headline says the sequences were deleted, which is inaccurate. They were not deleted. This is a really important point, and I’ve highlighted what did happen from what we provided to you earlier this week,” NIH Media Branch Chief Amanda Fine told The Epoch Times in a March 31 email.
“In June 2020, in response to a request by the same researcher, NCBI gave the sequence data the status of ‘withdrawn,’ which removes sequencing data from all public means of access but does not delete them,” the spokesperson said at the time.
“NCBI subsequently reassigned the status of the sequence data to ‘suppressed,’ which means that sequence data are removed from the search process but can be directly found by accession number. This action to reassign the data was identified as part of NLM’s ongoing review into the matter. We are working to make more information available.”
The biotechnology center, which is part of the institute’s National Library of Medicine (NLM), is the U.S. component of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration.
“BioProject ID PRJNA637497 is also referred to as Submission-ID SUB7554642. Three days later, on June 8th, the NIH declined the researcher’s request, advising that it prefers to edit or replace, as opposed to delete, sequences submitted to the SRA.”
SRA refers to the Sequence Read Archive, a data resource made available by NCBI that stores raw sequencing data.
On June 16, 2020, NIH officials reversed themselves and deleted the genetic sequencing data, as requested by the Wuhan researcher. That researcher was quoted by EO as explaining to NIH: “Recently, I found that it’s hard to visit my submitted SRA data, and it would also be very difficult for me to update the data. I have submitted an updated version of this SRA data to another website, so I want to withdraw the old one at NCBI in order to avoid the data version issue.”
After some discussion about what would be deleted, the NIH concluded the discussion by reassuring the Wuhan researcher that it “had withdrawn everything.”
Asked for a response to Fine’s claim the information wasn’t deleted, EO founder and President Jason Foster told The Epoch Times that NIH’s actions ensure that the CCP virus genetic sequencing info is only available to the few individuals possessing its “accession number,” which effectively deletes the data from open access and research.
“NIH documents released with Empower Oversight’s report demonstrate that the sequencing data was deleted from public view by the NIH at the request of the Wuhan researcher,” he said.
“Our report also details emails between professor Jesse Bloom and the NIH’s Steve Sherry from October 2021 that clearly indicate NIH retained copies ‘for archival purposes.’ Yet the emails demonstrate that NIH refused to share that data in an open, transparent scientific process sought by professor Bloom.
“The NIH should make more information available about each and every time it reassigned the status of sequence data and any information potentially relevant to the origins of COVID-19 should be made available for scientific inquiry.”
Fine didn’t respond when asked by The Epoch Times about who “has access to all of the genetic sequencing information provided by the Wuhan researcher and which was requested by that researcher to be removed.”
The Epoch Times also asked that because “NIH must know who in fact has accessed the data ... who did so and when since the Wuhan researcher requested the information’s removal?”
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