newsweek | The NIH research consisted of two parts. The first part
began in 2014 and involved surveillance of bat coronaviruses, and had a
budget of $3.7 million. The program funded Shi Zheng-Li, a virologist
at the Wuhan lab, and other researchers to investigate and catalogue bat
coronaviruses in the wild. This part of the project was completed in
2019.
A second phase
of the project, beginning that year, included additional surveillance
work but also gain-of-function research for the purpose of understanding
how bat coronaviruses could mutate to attack humans. The project was
run by EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit research group, under the
direction of President Peter Daszak, an expert on disease ecology. NIH
canceled the project just this past Friday, April 24th, Politico reported. Daszak did not immediately respond to Newsweek requests for comment.
The
project proposal states: "We will use S protein sequence data,
infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments
and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that %
divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover
potential."
In layman's terms, "spillover potential" refers to the
ability of a virus to jump from animals to humans, which requires that
the virus be able to receptors in the cells of humans. SARS-CoV-2, for
instance, is adept at binding to the ACE2 receptor in human lungs and
other organs.
According to Richard Ebright, an infectious disease
expert at Rutgers University, the project description refers to
experiments that would enhance the ability of bat coronavirus to infect
human cells and laboratory animals using techniques of genetic
engineering. In the wake of the pandemic, that is a noteworthy detail.
Ebright,
along with many other scientists, has been a vocal opponent of
gain-of-function research because of the risk it presents of creating a
pandemic through accidental release from a lab.
Dr. Fauci is renowned for his work on the HIV/AIDS crisis in the
1990s. Born in Brooklyn, he graduated first in his class from Cornell
University Medical College in 1966. As head of NIAID since 1984, he has
served as an adviser to every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan.
A
decade ago, during a controversy over gain-of-function research on
bird-flu viruses, Dr. Fauci played an important role in promoting the
work. He argued that the research was worth the risk it entailed because
it enables scientists to make preparations, such as investigating
possible anti-viral medications, that could be useful if and when a
pandemic occurred.
The work in question was a type of
gain-of-function research that involved taking wild viruses and passing
them through live animals until they mutate into a form that could pose a
pandemic threat. Scientists used it to take a virus that was poorly
transmitted among humans and make it into one that was highly
transmissible—a hallmark of a pandemic virus. This work was done by
infecting a series of ferrets, allowing the virus to mutate until a
ferret that hadn't been deliberately infected contracted the disease.
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