The Biden administration is beginning steps to implement a decade-long funding ban on the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This Chinese research laboratory has been the subject of ongoing controversy over the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. A memo released by a House subcommittee on Tuesday and an insider with knowledge of the matter confirm that information.
The memo, written by a Department of Health and Human Services official, said the Wuhan institute had failed to comply with numerous requests from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for lab notebooks and other vital documents to verify its testing protocols. safety
The unnamed official said the NIH’s finding of a likely violation of its biosafety protocols by the Wuhan institute is unquestionable. The memo recommended suspending funding to mitigate any potential risk to public health and confirmed sufficient evidence to initiate “exclusion proceedings.”
Although it has not received federal funds since 2020, the institute now has a month to respond to the notice.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released the memo on Tuesday. This was first reported by Bloomberg. House panel Republicans have argued persuasively that the virus likely originated from a lab leak, focusing their scrutiny on research at the Wuhan Institute.
The House committee released an email last week that raises concerns about Anthony Fauci, former adviser to the White House’s coronavirus task force and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID ). The email, shared on the subcommittee’s Twitter account, indicates Fauci was aware of gain-of-function research being conducted in Wuhan, China.
Dated February 1, 2020, the email contains a summary of a meeting attended by Fauci and other scientists, which discussed the origins of the coronavirus. In his summary, Fauci mentions scientists expressing concern about a paper by an Indian research group. The paper suggested that there were unusual mutations in the virus, which would be highly unlikely to have occurred naturally in bats. The scientists suspected that these mutations might have been introduced deliberately.
Fauci, referring to the Indian scientists, noted: “They were concerned that when they looked at the sequences of several nCoV isolates, there were mutations in the virus that would be more unusual to have evolved naturally in bats and that there It was suspected that this mutation was intentionally inserted.”
“Suspicion was heightened by the fact that scientists at Wuhan University were known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine the molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection and the outbreak it originated in Wuhan,” Fauci added. .
After the pandemic began, the Trump administration halted a grant to EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that partnered with NIAID and the Wuhan Institute to research bat coronaviruses in China .
NIH officials have consistently maintained, often in heated confrontations with congressional Republicans, that American taxpayer dollars were not funneled into any laboratory research that could have led to the pandemic. However, they also admitted that they are not sure about the other types of research that the Wuhan Institute was conducting.
Earlier this year, an internal watchdog reported that the NIH had made significant mistakes in managing the grants. A comprehensive 64-page report detailed missed deadlines, unclear protocols and misallocated funds. He underscored concerns about the federal government’s system for monitoring research involving potentially dangerous pathogens.
In May, the EcoHealth grant was reinstated, although with no provision to fund research in China or animal participation.
NOW READ:
Newly Revealed Emails Show Associate Fauci Discusses ‘Gain-of-Function’ Ban Lifted at Wuhan Lab
“*” Indicates mandatory fields
OPINION: This article contains comments that reflect the opinion of the author.
English 
Español de Venezuela