Materially Misleading and Potentially False Representations to the Committee
HHS and the NIH misled the Committee in official written correspondence about the MPXV gene transfer experiment on no fewer than five occasions over the course of 17 months. This does not include additional instances of misleading verbal statements or email communications by HHS and NIH leadership and senior scientific officials to Committee staff.
HHS, the NIH, and NIAID told the Committee that a risky MPXV research proposal at NIAID had not been “formally proposed” or “planned”.[1] These assertions simply were not true. The project was formally submitted to the NIH’s IBC for approval, and the project received the approval from the IBC on June 30, 2015, as documented in written meeting minutes reviewed by Committee staff.[2]
The agencies’ deception of Congress is unacceptable and potentially criminal.
Accordingly, the Committee has lost trust in the NIH and NIAID’s ability to oversee its own research on potential pandemic pathogens or enhanced potential pandemic pathogens and to fairly determine whether an experiment poses an unacceptable biosafety or public health risk.
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.[3] This bidirectional approach “was considered and approved by the IBC.”[4] 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.
- ↑ Letter from The Honorable Melanie Egorin, HHS ASL, to The Honorable Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Chair, H. Comm. on Energy & Commerce, et al, (Apr. 26, 2023) (included in Appendix I).
- ↑ Letter, supra note 9.
- ↑ HHS and NIAID insisted on in camera review citing unspecified biosafety concerns if the documents were made public. This is a common basis for withholding information related to dual-use and gain-of-function research of concern from Congress and the public. Committee staff question the validity of these concerns, particularly in light of the fact the grant has resulted in multiple academic publications which publicly describe – in great detail – the dual-use and gain-of-function techniques utilized by the Moss team.
- ↑ Letter, supra note 33.
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