The House Energy and Commerce Committee released a 73-page report on June 11, exposing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials for lying about gain-of-function virus research to reporters and withholding information from Congress. This investigation was launched approximately two years ago following a September 2022 article in Science Magazine that warned about the dangers of the monkeypox virus spreading worldwide, potentially adapting to humans and becoming more transmissible or deadly.
Bernard Moss, a veteran poxvirus researcher at the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told Science Magazine that monkeypox evolves to replicate faster in humans. The article indicated that Moss had begun gain-of-function experiments, wherein he swapped out genes from various variants to understand why some are more dangerous or transmissible than others.
American investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker revealed in his Substack newsletter that per the Science article, Moss has been trying for years to figure out the difference between two variants of the 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 and caused outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo for decades.
Moss found that the clade 1 virus can kill a mouse at levels 1000 times lower than those needed with clade 2. He and his colleagues swapped dozens of clade 2 genes, one at a time, into the clade 1 virus, hoping to see it become less deadly. They are now planning to try the opposite: endowing the clade 2 virus with genes from its deadlier relative.
Thacker also noted that Moss’ disclosure of his plans to insert genes from the more deadly clade 1 monkeypox strain into the more common and transmissible clade 2 monkeypox virus triggered a second story in Science Magazine, with scientists expressing alarm at the study’s dangers. Linda Saif, an Ohio State University researcher, told the magazine that excessive regulation could “greatly impede research into evolving or emerging viruses” and drive research overseas, where U.S. regulations don’t apply.
NIAID said that Jocelyn Kaiser later updated her article to claim that Moss’ research would only involve clade 2a and not clade 2b monkeypox virus. However, eight months later, STAT News reporter Helen Branswell accused Republicans of “targeting” Moss, alleging he had never proposed to move forward with the dangerous virus studies. A spokesperson for NIAID told the news outlet in 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. Thacker said that both Kaiser’s and Branswell’s reports are false.
Investigators found that weeks after NIAID claimed there was no approved monkeypox research, they discovered that an approved proposal from 2015 allowed Moss to conduct the research he had been accused of lying about. However, the House Energy and Commerce Committee has not demanded that NIAID explain who provided false information to Branswell claiming Moss had not proposed the monkeypox research he had actually proposed and was approved to conduct in 2015.
These latest revelations followed the reporting last week that Fauci lied to the New York Times about his involvement in a Nature Medicine piece that advanced the theory that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic could not have started in a lab he himself was funding in Wuhan, China.