House investigators on the Energy and Commerce Committee released a 73-page report detailing how NIH officials, including Fauci, misled the media and Congress about risky gain-of-function research involving viruses.
A 73-page report (pdf below) detailing NIH officials’ deceit to the media and withholding of information from Congress regarding risky research involving gain-of-function viruses was made public by House investigators on the Energy and Commerce Committee yesterday. These most recent disclosures come after it was revealed last week that Tony Fauci had misled the New York Times over his participation in a Nature Medicine article that developed the idea that the pandemic could not have originated in a Wuhan, China, lab that Fauci personally funded.
The House launched the probe in response to a Science Magazine article published in September 2022 detailing the risks posed by the monkeypox virus, which is spreading around the world and can adapt to humans to become more deadly or contagious. Science Magazine was informed by Bernard Moss, a seasoned poxvirus researcher at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health that monkeypox adapts to multiply more quickly in people.
Science reported that Moss had started gain-of-function experiments, in which genes from different variations are switched out, to determine why some are more transmissible or harmful than others.
Moss has been trying for years to figure out the crucial difference between two variants of monkeypox virus: clade 2, which until recently was found only in West Africa and is now causing the global outbreak, and clade 1, believed to be much deadlier, which has caused outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo for many decades. He’s found that clade 1 virus can kill a mouse at levels 1000 times lower than those needed with clade 2. To find out why, Moss and his colleagues swapped dozens of clade 2 genes, one at a time, into clade 1 virus, hoping to see it become less deadly, but with no luck so far. Now, they are planning to try the opposite, endowing clade 2 virus with genes from its deadlier relative.
When Moss revealed that he intended to introduce genes from the more lethal clade 1 monkeypox strain into the more prevalent and spread clade 2 monkeypox virus, scientists expressed concern about the study’s potential risks in a follow-up article published in Science Magazine.
However, Ohio State University researcher Linda Saif expressed concern to Science Magazine’s Jocelyn Kaiser about how too restrictive laws could “greatly impede research into evolving or emerging viruses” and divert attention from domestic research to foreign countries where laws are either less stringent or nonexistent. Strangely enough, I had previously revealed that Saif had assisted in the preparation of a ghostwritten essay from Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Shi Zhengli from February 2020, which referred to the potential for a lab mishap at Wuhan as a “conspiracy.”
Later, Science Magazine’s Kaiser modified her article to clarify that Moss’s research would exclusively focus on clade 2a monkeypox virus, not clade 2b, citing a clarification from Moss’s NIAID.
Eight months later, reporter Helen Branswell for STAT News said that NIAID researcher Bernie Moss was the object of Republican “targeting” and that he had never suggested continuing the risky viral research.
But a spokesperson for NIAID told STAT in late May that there had been no formal proposal from Moss to do the research and the institution had no plan to proceed with the study.
“House Republicans want to interrogate poxvirus scientist Bernie Moss—who has been at NIH for 57 years—for work he did not do,” Branswell then wrote on X.
The reports from Branswell of STAT and Kaiser of Science Magazine are also untrue.
House investigators note in their report that Moss released a preprint stating he had already started research using clade 2a and planned study with clade 2b, weeks after NIAID told Science Magazine’s Kaiser that Moss’s planned monkeypox research concerned clade 2a, not clade 2b monkeypox.
Moss and co-authors stated in a preprint, “We have started to investigate the genetic determinants responsible for virulence differences of clade I and IIa viruses and plan to extend this to clade IIb pending institutional approval.”
House investigators find numerous such instances of the NIH misrepresenting Moss’s study and refusing to provide requested materials for more than a year. The NIH eventually gave in and acknowledged in March that Moss had filed a formal application to introduce genes from the more lethal clade 1 monkeypox strain into the more prevalent and transmissible clade 2 monkeypox virus (MPXV), following threats from research regarding a subpoena.
Additionally, Moss’s study proposal to carry out these risky investigations was authorized by the NIH’s Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) in 2015.
A March 19, 2024, letter from HHS and documents reviewed on March 20, 2024, in camera by bipartisan Committee staff confirmed what the agencies had been denying for over a year: that a research team led by Dr. Bernard Moss of NIAID submitted a proposal for a bidirectional MPXV approach at a meeting before the NIH IBC on June 30, 2015.35 This bidirectional approach “was considered and approved by the IBC.”36 The research proposal involved bidirectional transfer of genes between clades I and II of the MPXV, including a proposed transfer of genes from the more lethal clade I into the less lethal but much more transmissible clade II.
The NIH now asserts that Moss never carried out the research, even though they wrongly claimed in 2015 that Moss never proposed the experiments in the first place.
Finally, pandemic author Laurie Garrett misrepresented the intention of House Republicans to “crucify” Bernie Moss for work he never completed by endorsing Helen Branswell’s post on X. “But he mentioned it in an interview with @ScienceMagazine—and that is enough to put a target on his back. This is why scientists are clamming up, avoiding media.”
House investigators have expressed a desire to view lab notes to substantiate which studies Moss completed and have continued to put pressure on the NIH to explain the research he did.
House investigators demanded last October that NIH turn over all documents related to Science Magazine’s coverage of the controversy, “including communications between NIH and American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) or Science magazine,” to determine who had sent false information about Moss’s studies.
This request has not received a response from NIH, and Science Magazine has not updated its information.
House investigators have not, however, requested that NIH identify the source of the misleading information that was given to STAT News reporter Helen Branswell, implying that Moss had not submitted the monkeypox research that he had submitted and received approval to carry out in 2015.
However, Greg Folkers, the former chief of staff of Tony Fauci, stated under oath in a deposition made public by the House COVID Select Subcommittee that Branswell of STAT would call him to obtain direct access to Fauci.
Folkers said to House investigators, “So you asked me the names of a couple of people who might call me directly.” “John Cohen of Science who I’ve known for a long time would sometimes say, ‘Hey, can I talk to Tony?’ And Helen Branswell of Stat, again, would do the same thing.”
Recently, GreatGameIndia reported that during his hearing before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic at Capitol Hill, Fauci claimed the unvaccinated were responsible for an additional 200-300k deaths.
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