US House Leaders Request Documents on National Institutes of Health Research

Three U.S. House leaders are demanding the National Institutes of Health turn over documents on government experiments on the monkeypox virus that appear to make it more lethal.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Republican Leader Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., Subcommittee on Health Republican Leader Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Republican Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Va., are asking National Institutes of Health (NIH) Acting Director Lawrence Tabak to turn over information on National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) monkeypox virus enhancement experiments that reportedly makes the disease 1,000 percent more lethal in mice.

While the monkeypox virus circulating among Americans has a mortality rate of less than one percent, the new monkeypox virus reportedly has a mortality rate of 10 percent in unvaccinated people.

Congressional leaders want to know why the government is developing a deadlier virus that appears to have no medical or scientific use and whether it passed protocols on potentially risky medical experiments.

“Based on available information, this experiment would seem to involve risks reasonably anticipated to create, transfer, or use potential pandemic pathogens (PPPs) resulting from the enhancement of a pathogen’s transmissibility or virulence in humans (enhanced PPPs),” the lawmakers write in their written request.

“Under the circumstances, we are interested in learning whether this experiment was reviewed under the HHS P3CO (Potential Pandemic Pathogens) framework used to review risky research proposals. We recently received a letter from HHS implicitly confirming that the HHS P3CO review committee has been inactive since 2019, without any indication that the Biden administration is reactivating this committee. Nevertheless, it is important to know whether NIAID itself conducted any internal review on this issue,” they write.

The members specifically asked for information as well as answers to the below questions by November 14, 2022:

1. All proposals and progress reports discussing the clade 1 monkeypox virus experiment (clade 1 study).
2. For NIH award 1ZIAAI000979, please provide a copy of the grant terms.
3. When did the clade 1 experiment start? Is the experiment ongoing? If not, when did it stop? If ongoing, what is the status of the experiment?
4. What review did this research undergo at NIH? Who reviewed the research proposal? What was the basis of the review decision?
5. What are the risks from this research?
6. What are the benefits from this research?
7. What is the potential benefit to human health from this research? Is there an aim to find a treatment or vaccine?
8. Any correspondence related to whether the clade 1 study should be referred to P3CO review.
9. Was the clade 1 study referred for P3CO review? If not, why not?
10. Was the clade 1 study referred to the Federal Select Agent Program for review? If not, why not? If so, was the clade 1 study further reviewed by the ISATTAC?
11. Why must clade 1 genes be transferred to clade 2 genes?  Why not delete the genes from Clade 1 to determine effects on virulence?
12. A copy of the submission on the clade 1 study sent to the NIAID Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) or to an NIH IBC.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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