WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - National Institutes of Health (NIH) records obtained in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit show that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) was concerned with gain-of-function research in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2016.
“Gain of function is a potential terroristic weapon,” said Dr. Bradley Jones, a general practitioner physician in Lake Ozark, Missouri. “We should not be doing gain of function on viruses.”
However, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) lifted a ban on funding gain-of-function (GOF) research on Dec. 19, 2017, according to media reports.
“On his way out the door, when Trump won, Obama quietly made it legal to do gain of function research again and that's when Dr. Fauci went around Trump and started doing gain of function research again without presidential permission because it's bio weaponry when you do that,” Jones told Legal Newsline. “When you weaponize a virus, that's just dangerous.”
Judicial Watch sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on March 16, 2021, after the NIH denied a 2020 FOIA request for records of communications, contracts, and agreements with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China between January 1, 2013, and April 22, 2020.
Records sought by Judicial Watch included agreements, fund disbursement records, and NIAID communications regarding $3.7 million in grants reportedly provided by the NIH to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Dr. Fauci’s agency has stonewalled Judicial Watch’s lawful request for information about the agency’s connections to the controversial Wuhan lab,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a statement online. “The American people have a right to know about Dr. Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ involvement with the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Among the 1,651 pages of records obtained by Judicial Watch from the NIH was an email inquiry by David A. Miller, an FBI agent at the FBI’s Newark Field Office, into a bat coronavirus grant that is tied to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. However, responses from Erik Stemmy, program officer with CEIRR/iDPCC and Coronavirus Pathogen Biology, were redacted when it was provided to Judicial Watch.
“That really surprises me that the FBI would do anything appropriate compared to what they've been doing for the last five years,” Jones added.
Neither the FBI nor the NIH, nor NIAID responded to requests for comment.