The Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Republican Members (E&C or the Committee) investigated ongoing research involving MPXV, a virus that causes mpox (formerly known as “monkeypox”), planned and/or conducted at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). E&C is the committee with jurisdiction over public health agencies per Rule X clause 1(f) of the U.S. House of Representatives, including NIAID’s parent agency, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and any other federal biomedical research. The Committee has a long history of conducting oversight of federally funded virology research, including investigating accidents at high-containment laboratories, and examining federal policies related to biosecurity, biosafety, and potentially risky experiments. Note that in the U.S. House of Representatives, “Interim Staff Report on Investigation into Risky MPXV Experiment at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases” such investigations have turned up a host of egregious, outrageous occurrences. Referring to a September 15, 2022 report in Science Magazine about MPXV, Dr. Bernard Moss, a notable pox virologist working for decades at NIAID reports swapping dozens of genes from the much more transmissible, but less deadly, clade II MPXV into the more deadly clade I MPXV. Apparently, the Moss team was “planning to try the opposite, endowing clade II virus with genes from its deadlier relative.” This represents gain-of-function research with a potentially dangerous pathogen and as will be demonstrated in the report for which this article introduces, what has ensued since the E&C investigation, representing the legislative branch of the U.S. government and hence the people, has bordered on or in fact represents criminality.
The proposal to transfer genes from the deadlier clade I into the more transmissible clade II alarmed some scientists who believed a more potent version of the mpox outbreak strain could spark an epidemic that would be substantially more lethal.
Not surprisingly, given that it occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, oversight requests were made to the NIH. E&C wanted to have a better understanding of the potential risks and benefits of the experiment Dr. Moss had described in the Science magazine interview, in particular the proposal to transfer genes from clade I into clade II.
Clearly, this class of experiment fell into the gain-of-function research of concern (GOFROC) and given the high likelihood that SARS-COV-2 was also manipulated in laboratories and subsequently leaked out, the imperative to learn more was more than rational.
The disclosure of the research in Science Magazine also appeared to implicate federal policies or practices regarding dual-use research of concern (DURC) by utilizing gene transferring techniques that, if misapplied, pose a significant threat to public health and human safety.
A Culture of Cover-Up
What commenced over the past eighteen months was utterly unacceptable.
For 18 months, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the NIH, and NIAID according to E&C “repeatedly obstructed and misled the Committee about whether the transfer of genes from clade I into clade II experiments described by Dr. Moss in the Science article had been approved or conducted.”
First, just outright refusing to answer questions by Republican members of EC, much like investigations into COVID-19 “HHS also refused to provide most of the requested documents to the Committee unless they had already been made public.”
More documentation was ultimately made available but always under the most trying of conditions. HHS and NIH had to be essentially in a corner, opting to share documentation on premises under camera instead of answering subpoenas or transcribed interviews.
Ultimately, HHS and NIH conducted a series of gaslighting exercises to downplay the current research, declaring that such research was designed to avoid more dangerous classes of GOFROC. The federal government via HHS and NIH even “forced science to issue clarification for one article on the experiment.”
HHS Lies to Elected Officials
In the E&C report, the authors declare that HHS repeatedly asserted that it was not funding GOFROC via the transfer of clad I material into clade II virus experiment. Of course, according to the E&C report, this was an outright lie.
How do they know? Because E&C were able to access original documentation showing that these experiments were approved for funding by NIH’s Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC)on June 30, 2015. A full seven years prior to the Committee asking HHS/NIAID for information about the MPXV experiments.
Apparently, initial requirements for safety and even adhering to compliance were lax. It was only after a 2018 IBC review that more rigorous requirements were put in place for GOFROC.
Finally, Some Honesty…But
How did the HHS come clean? According to the E&C report in a letter dated March 19, 2024, HHS Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Melanie Egorin admitted that “research involving bi-directional transfer of genes between clades I and II of the MPXV was considered and approved.” Importantly, and context is necessary, this admission only was made after a great pressure was applied by E&C –after threat of subpoena ultimately compelled HHS and NIH to share the documents related to the risk experiments to a team via in camera.
This breakthrough of an executive branch agency bureaucrat finally acknowledging what was essentially already published for all to review and understand in plain sight occurred only after a “deliberate, prolonged effort to deceive the Committee '' even suggesting criminal behavior on the part of executive branch officials and employees. In fact, to this day, the culture of lying, obfuscation and gaslighting mastered by Dr. Anthony Fauci continues on in that officials at these executive branch agencies continue to deny the existence of the GOFROC despite the evidence of approval for eight years now.
The Culprit
The Committee goes on the record in this report as to the need for “additional evidence from HHS, the NIH, or NIAID to have confidence that the experiment did not occur.”
Inadvertence or mistake aside, “the deceptive conduct suggests that HHS, the NIH, and particularly NIAID, may have knowingly and deliberately misled the Committee regarding potentially dangerous intramural GOFROC/DURC research.”
Even if the experiment never did occur E&C notes that all of the obstruction, misrepresentations and gaslighting activity associated with the topic suggests “the lengths to which NIAID will go to evade outside oversight just for the sake of evasion.”
The Committee centers its investigational powers now on NIAID as that is the agency that “bears the most responsibility for misleading the Committee.” This is especially so given NIH’s “decentralized structure where the research institutes have a large degree of autonomy in setting research priorities and managing grants, including approval and oversight of biosafety measures.”
Conclusion
The Committee based on this E&C-driven investigation, comes to the primary conclusion that NIAID cannot be trusted to oversee its own research of pathogens responsibly. It cannot be trusted to determine whether an experiment on a potential pandemic pathogen or enhanced potential pandemic pathogen poses unacceptable biosafety risk or a serious public health threat.”
And perhaps most important goes to the core underpinnings of the American experiment—its balance of powers in its constitutional government. That is that NIAID, an executive branch agency made possible, funded by the legislative branch, cannot be trusted to honestly communicate with said legislative branch (Congress) nor the public, for which the former represent when it comes to controversial and potentially dangerous GOFROC experiments. TrialSite suggests what this really represents is a breakdown in what the Founding Fathers intended for our form of government. Special interests in the form of industry and other financial interests for example infuse executive branch agencies, turning them against the representatives of the people, the core to all democratic forms of government.
All of this is highly relevant given that the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) recently issued updated policy and related guidance on DURC and Gain-of-Function (GOF) research.
Why? According to the Committee, “This updated policy replaced the earlier OSTP Recommended Policy Guidance for Departmental Development of Review Mechanisms for Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight and the HHS Framework for Guiding Funding Decisions about Proposed Research Involving Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogens (collectively hereinafter referred to as “P3CO”) imposed in 2017.”
Under the new OSTP policy, the funding agencies such as NIAID maintain primary responsibility for oversight of GOFROC and DURC experiments involving potentially dangerous pathogens.
Both the 2017 policy as well as the updated 2024 policy call for the agency conducting the experiments to serve as overseer and regulator.
But E&C correctly identifies, “In almost any other scientific field or industry, this arrangement would be immediately recognized as a conflict of interest, necessitating independent review and oversight.”
Call to Action: Follow the link to read the entire report.
https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/niaid-continues-potentially-dangerous-gain-of-function-research-during-pandemiclies-obfuscates-and-gaslights-congressional-investigation-now-busted-fc21e676