EcoHealth Alliance defends US-funded bat coronavirus research in China
- Science non-profit says it complied with reporting requirements after its funder, the National Institutes of Health, claimed it did not
- US lawmakers have questioned whether EcoHealth conducted risky research when it worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology
The letter, submitted to the health agency and first published by The Wall Street Journal, is the latest in an unfolding political controversy surrounding US government-funded research in China.
It is playing out against a backdrop of unanswered questions about the origins of the virus that causes Covid-19 and a theory that it could have spread following a research accident at the Wuhan institute – though no evidence has arisen to link the virus to the lab.
The theory has nonetheless sparked a wider debate among lawmakers, scientists and media in the US and elsewhere about regulations on laboratory safety, and what kinds of virus research should and should not be allowed.
The NIH and outside scientists have been clear: none of the viruses reported under the EcoHealth grant were close enough to have given rise to the one that causes Covid-19.
“Any claims to the contrary are demonstrably false,” the NIH said last week.
But the US$3.1 million, five-year grant awarded by the NIH to EcoHealth for research done in collaboration with the Wuhan institute has come under a spotlight, especially as grant reports recently released into the public domain have opened up details of the research to further scrutiny.
Last week, the NIH ratcheted up the debate with a letter to US lawmakers who were probing the issue. The letter said EcoHealth had failed to immediately report findings that suggested a 2018 experiment could have improved how well a bat virus could grow in mice – violating a condition for a secondary review of research that could potentially make viruses more dangerous.
The agency said it gave EcoHealth five days to hand over “any and all” unpublished data from funded experiments.
EcoHealth hit back on Tuesday saying it “did in fact comply with all reporting requirements”, and that the NIH claim was a misunderstanding over when the data was collected.
“Our relationship with NIH has always been that if we are asked for information, we respond and follow up in a timely manner. If NIH had indicated to us at any point that any issues needed further clarification, we would of course have complied immediately with any request, as we have always done,” EcoHealth president Peter Daszak wrote in the letter, which also included unpublished data requested by the agency.
Meanwhile, the group said that the results from the mice experiment were not corroborated and may not have been “statistically relevant”.
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The NIH said it stood by its letter and would not comment further on internal deliberations related to compliance with grants, according to the Journal.
The agency has been under pressure from US lawmakers to answer questions about whether it funded research in China that would fall into a controlled category of experiments often referred to as “gain of function” that can make certain viruses more transmissible or pathogenic.
The NIH has repeatedly said the work conducted by EcoHealth was not in this category, because it was done on viruses not known to infect people. But conservative lawmakers have accused the agency of misleading the public and earlier this month a group of senators called for a pause on “risky research” on pathogens.
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Bat viruses being studied in Cambodia to gain new coronavirus pandemic insights
More questions were raised last week – including among scientists – after a new grant report from EcoHealth was released by the NIH to members of Congress that showed work at the Wuhan institute involving the Mers coronavirus.
The NIH said the experiments did not fit the agency’s definition of research requiring special review because “the research was not reasonably anticipated to result in an ePPP”, or an enhanced pathogen of pandemic potential, according to Science Insider.
In comments to the publication, EcoHealth also defended the research, which manipulated genetic copies of the Mers virus in order to test if a certain feature of related bat viruses found in nature could pose a risk.
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Coronavirus researcher Stanley Perlman of the University of Iowa said that since only a small part of the virus’ spike protein was replaced, the experiment was “not risky”, while the data provided also indicated that the constructed virus did not grow better than the original virus in cells.
“There are other ways to do this that might not be less risky, but are less controversial,” he said.
Jack Nunberg, director of the Montana Biotechnology Centre at the University of Montana, said while the design of the experiment was “perhaps low-risk”, there were other considerations.
“The fundamental problem with this perhaps low-risk experiment was that it has little if any basic scientific merit and cannot possibly predict risks of spillover [from bats to humans]. The balance of risk/benefit is such that that experiment should have raised red flags,” he said.
But scientists have also raised concerns that the controversy around virus research and its oversight may detract from critical studies.
Perlman said transparency was always important. But he added: “I fear that discussions about oversight are politically motivated and will lead to self-editing on the part of researchers, which will ultimately affect our ability to perform crucial experiments such as identifying the next possible pandemic virus.”
Nunberg said decisions should be made carefully, by scientists and not politicians.
“The benefits of some of such experiments, done properly, can be great, so we need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” he said.
