NIH Director’s Claims About Funding Risky Research in China Come Under Scrutiny

Acting Director of the National Institutes of Health Lawrence Tabak testifies during a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and the Subcommittee on Health hearing about the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in Washington on Feb. 8, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The head of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) claimed in front of Congress on Feb. 8 that the United States has never funded a category of risky research in China, and that the work that was funded by America could not have led to the COVID-19 pandemic. Critics say both assertations are dubious or false.

Dr. Lawrence Tabak, the acting NIH director, told members of Congress that the NIH is not financially supporting any research in foreign countries involving enhanced potential pandemic pathogens (ePPPs), or pathogens that are highly transmissible and virulent and result from enhancing the transmissibility and/or virulence of a pathogen.

“There is no funding of ePPP research in any foreign country today, that is sponsored by NIH,” Tabak said during the hearing on Capitol Hill. He also said the NIH has never funded such research in foreign countries, related to the SARS-CoV virus. SARS-CoV-2 causes COVID-19, while SARS-CoV-1 caused illnesses in the early 2000s.

Later in the hearing, Tabak said the research the NIH did fund in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the first COVID-19 cases were identified, could not have led to SARS-CoV-2.

“The most important point to appreciate here is that the viruses that were under study in that subproject bear no relationship to SARS-CoV-2. They are genetically distinct,” he said, adding that “it would be equivalent to saying that a human is equivalent to a cow.”

Critics noted that the proposal for the grant that was approved by the NIH said one aim was to experiment with bat viruses 90 to 75 percent similar to SARS-CoV. The proposals were obtained by The Intercept through litigation.

“This is a road map to the high-risk research that could have led to the current pandemic,” Gary Ruskin, executive director of U.S. Right To Know, a group that has been investigating the origins of COVID-19, told the outlet.

The grant led to work that increased the virulence of a modified bat virus, the NIH revealed in 2021. Mice infected with the modified version “became sicker than those infected” with the original version, Tabak wrote to lawmakers at the time.

The NIH said at the time that the experiments proposed in the grant plan did not meet the definition of ePPPs because the viruses in question “had not been shown to infect humans.” An NIH official said in a 2018 cable that the research at the lab “strongly suggests that SARS-like coronaviruses from bats can be transmitted to humans to cause SARS-like disease,” while the government probed the possibility that the COVID-19 virus was generated with assistance from the NIH grant.

“Tabak falsely stated that NIH had not supported gain-of-function research or enhanced potential pandemic pathogens research in Wuhan,” Richard Ebright, a chemistry professor at Rutgers University, told The Epoch Times via email. Tabak also “falsely stated that the NIH-supported high-risk research in Wuhan could not have resulted in SARS-CoV-2,” Ebright added.

The NIH did not respond to a request for comment.

An aerial view shows the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on April 17, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

Tabak’s definitive statements drew scrutiny from Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), who noted that the Wuhan Institute of Virology repeatedly refused to hand over documents outlining what research it conducted with U.S. funds. The refusal led to the termination of the subaward. Additionally, the NIH primarily monitors research by reviewing reports from and exchanging messages with grantees, and even that type of review was performed inadequately in the case of the Wuhan grant, a watchdog concluded in January.

“How can the NIH know for sure that it hasn’t funded ePPP when NIH can’t be sure it can get the lab records of experiments funded by NIH?” Lesko wondered.

“They have done what they said they would do. The work was commensurate with the modest sums of money that we provided to them,” Tabak claimed.

“I don’t know what other work they’re conducting there,” he added.

The subaward was funneled through EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based group.

The U.S. Department of Defense and NIH both approved millions in new funding for EcoHealth in 2022.

“Why allow a company who breached contract and failed to comply to get more taxpayer dollars?” Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, asked Tabak.

Tabak said that EcoHealth was advised of the deficiencies and has been working with the United States to correct them.

Griffith noted that the deficiencies stemmed from a lack of information from the Wuhan lab and questioned whether the NIH needed the power to disbar organizations that don’t comply with contractual obligations.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Inspector General, the watchdog that produced the recent report, recommended the NIH consider referring the Wuhan lab to HHS for debarment, which would prevent it from receiving U.S. taxpayer funds through HHS grants in the future. The NIH concurred with the recommendation.

After Tabak said the NIH has the power to include financial penalties for grantees for failure to meet obligations, Griffith asked whether Congress should add penalties for NIH if it fails to do proper oversight.

“I can’t speak to that,” Tabak said.