Wash Post: US Loosened Curbs on Gain-of-Function Research Since 2017

The National Institutes of Health and other U.S. officials have been lifting the curbs on risky gain-of-function research over the past four years, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

Top Republicans have argued that emails and other evidence show that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where some health experts believe COVID-19 originated.

"The risks are absolutely real – they're not intellectual constructs or hypotheticals: Something that you make or information that you release will result in an accident of some kind," Stanford University physician and microbiologist and NIH adviser David A. Relman told the Post.

NIH Director Francis Collins and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIAID in the NIH, have overseen federal funding and oversight of gain-of-function research, the Post reported.

Gain-of-function research is defined as taking a pathogen and modifying it in a lab to be more transmissible or deadly for the purposes of scientific study.

There were an estimated 18 research grants from 2012 to 2020 that included language describing what could be gain-of-function research, according to an the Post's exclusive investigative reporting from science journals and talking to experts.

From the Post's 18 assumed gain-of-function research projects reviewed, around $48.8 million was distributed to 13 institutions, including eight since oversight weakened in 2017.

Collins and Fauci put in safeguards, restrictions, and oversight on the risky research under the Obama administration, but lifted it over the past four years, the Post reported, citing federal documents, congressional testimony, and interviews with experts.

In 2017, Collins and Fauci moved to reduce the oversight committee to a mere advisory role and NIH leaders could approve projects without submitting them for review that might slow the process of approval.

Also, since 2017, the work could be done confidentially and without public records, according to the report.

Collins denied the report when pressed by the Post, saying controls remain in place and that changes were merely providing "framework" for governmental gain-of-function research.

"Reasonable people do not all completely agree on the ideal way to frame the oversight of these very sensitive experiments," Collins told the Post. "There are some who see the risks as greater and the benefits as less. And vice versa."

Collins did admit lab accidents "are certainly a concern."

"You want to mitigate that by having the highest possible containment for any kind of experiment that might lead to trouble," Collins added to the Post, saying the NIH still has a "very intense, deliberative process."

Fauci also defended the NIH's "highest degree of oversight" for all research projects and said the NIH will be as transparent as possible on sensitive research.

"To the extent that we can be transparent, that the system would allow us to be transparent, we go overboard to be transparent," Fauci told the Post.

NIH officials declined to say how many gain-of-function projects they have funded since 2012, but they did confirm two projects in 2018.

NIH Reporter, the agency database, has tens of thousands of grants each year, but it does not designate which are for gain-of-function research.

Just "three or four" had received oversight, according to Trump administration assistant Health and Human Services secretary for preparedness and response Robert Kadlec.

"They were grading their own homework," Kadlec told the Post.

"Frankly, we didn't have the scientific wherewithal," he continued, adding the oversight was "robust enough to make sure that bad things don't happen."