{"id":357162,"date":"2021-10-21T14:11:33","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T14:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=374103"},"modified":"2021-10-21T14:11:33","modified_gmt":"2021-10-21T14:11:33","slug":"ecohealth-alliance-conducted-risky-experiments-on-mers-virus-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/10\/21\/ecohealth-alliance-conducted-risky-experiments-on-mers-virus-in-china\/","title":{"rendered":"EcoHealth Alliance Conducted Risky Experiments on MERS Virus in China"},"content":{"rendered":"
Documents released by<\/u> the National Institutes of Health yesterday raise new questions about government-funded research on viruses conducted in China. The annual grant reports from EcoHealth Alliance, which the NIH sent to The Intercept in response to a lawsuit<\/a>, provided additional evidence that the U.S. nonprofit \u2014 which studies\u00a0emerging infectious diseases \u2014 and its sub-awardee, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, were engaged in risky experiments and that the NIH may not have been fully aware of these activities.<\/p>\n In September, The Intercept received two grant proposals<\/a> by EcoHealth Alliance that were submitted to the NIH. One of the proposals, \u201cUnderstanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence<\/a>,\u201d detailed troubling and potentially dangerous research<\/a> conducted with bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China. But the first release of the documents, which The Intercept received more than a year after it requested them, did not include the progress report for the grant\u2019s fifth and final funding year.<\/p>\n Yesterday, the NIH provided that missing report for the period ending May 2019, which was inexplicably dated August 2021. That summary of the group\u2019s work includes a description of an experiment the EcoHealth Alliance conducted involving infectious clones of MERS-CoV, the virus that caused a deadly outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome in 2012. MERS has a case-fatality rate as high as 35 percent<\/a>, much higher than Covid-19\u2019s. The scientists swapped out the virus\u2019s receptor-binding domain, or RBD, a part of the spike protein that enables it to enter a host\u2019s cells, according to the report. \u201cWe constructed the full-length infectious clone of MERS-CoV, and replaced the RBD of MERS-CoV with the RBDs of various strains of HKU4<\/a>-related coronaviruses previously identified in bats from different provinces in southern China,\u201d the scientists wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cChanging the receptor binding site on MERS (from DPP4 to ACE2) is sort of crazy,\u201d wrote Jack Nunberg, a virologist and director of the Montana Biotechnology Center at the University of Montana, in an email to The Intercept after reviewing the documents. Nunberg described the experiment as \u201cdefinitely gain of function,\u201d or experiments that may increase the transmissibility or virulence of pathogens, because it gave the virus \u201ca new receptor, a new host range, and unpredictable properties.\u201d A virus\u2019s host range is the range of species and cell types it is able to infect. The researchers\u2019 intent, which some scientists consider integral to defining gain-of-function, remains unclear.<\/p>\n\n The Intercept previously asked EcoHealth Alliance about work on MERS-CoV referenced in sections of the grant that NIH released in September. At the time, EcoHealth spokesperson Robert Kessler insisted that the group had not conducted the work. \u201cThe MERS work proposed in the grant is suggested as an alternative and was not undertaken,\u201d Kessler wrote in an email in September. Kessler did not respond to a query The Intercept sent yesterday about the apparent falsity of his previous statement.<\/p>\n The work with the MERS virus complicates EcoHealth Alliance\u2019s previous claims that the research covered in the grant had not involved work with \u201cpotential pandemic pathogens,\u201d or viruses, bacteria, and microorganisms that carry a likely risk of uncontrollable spread between humans. Kessler had previously told The Intercept that \u201cAll the other viruses studied under this grant are bat viruses, not human viruses.\u201d But MERS is known to infect and spread in humans, and was specifically designated under the NIH\u2019s former pause<\/a> on funding gain-of-function research of concern.<\/p>\n