{"id":520828,"date":"2022-02-20T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2022-02-20T12:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=386868"},"modified":"2022-02-20T12:00:04","modified_gmt":"2022-02-20T12:00:04","slug":"nih-sent-the-intercept-292-fully-redacted-pages-related-to-virus-research-in-wuhan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/02\/20\/nih-sent-the-intercept-292-fully-redacted-pages-related-to-virus-research-in-wuhan\/","title":{"rendered":"NIH Sent The Intercept 292 Fully Redacted Pages Related to Virus Research in Wuhan"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the global<\/u> death toll from Covid-19 approaching 6 million, the need to understand the origins of the pandemic is both pressing and grave. But the National Institutes of Health continues to withhold critical documents that could shed light on this question. This week, in response to ongoing litigation over public records related to coronavirus research funded by the federal agency, the NIH sent The Intercept 292 fully redacted pages rather than substantive material that could help us understand how the virus first came to infect humans.
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One of hundreds of redacted pages the NIH sent to The Intercept this week in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.<\/p>\n<\/div>
\nAt this point, no one can say for sure how SARS-CoV-2 set off the pandemic. It may have emerged naturally, jumping from a host animal to people, as many other deadly pathogens have. Or the coronavirus could have first spread to humans as the result of a research mishap \u2014 through bat capture and collection<\/a>, risky experiments<\/a>, or a host of other more mundane lab activities. U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed<\/a> both theories as possible. But knowing exactly what led to the worst disease outbreak in recent history requires more information.<\/p>\n

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The \u201clab-leak\u201d hypothesis is bolstered by a long history of accidents at facilities that study pathogens and the fact that one such laboratory that specializes in coronaviruses, the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, is located in the very city where the pandemic first began. As many have noted, China has not been forthcoming with information that could help us understand the origins of the pandemic, blocking access<\/a> to a cave that may hold important clues, taking a database of information about coronaviruses offline, and refusing requests for records from the World Health Organization.<\/p>\n

But the U.S. government, which funded some of the coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through a New York-based research organization called EcoHealth Alliance, has also withheld information that could provide insight into the origins of the pandemic. The Intercept filed a Freedom of Information Act request in September 2020 for grants the NIH provided to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. At the time, only summaries of the research were publicly available. The NIH initially refused to provide the documents. It was only after The Intercept sued<\/a> the federal agency that it agreed to provide thousands of pages of relevant materials.<\/p>\n

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Some of these releases have proven newsworthy. The grant proposals received in an initial batch of documents in September revealed that\u00a0scientists working under the grant in\u00a0Wuhan were engaged in what most knowledgeable experts we consulted described as gain-of-function experiments<\/a>, in which scientists created mutant bat coronaviruses and used them to infect \u201chumanized mice.\u201d The mutant viruses proved more pathogenic and transmissible in the mice than the original viruses. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, denied that the U.S. had funded gain-of-function work in Wuhan.<\/p>\n

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Communications<\/a> received by The Intercept in December provided insight into the agency\u2019s ongoing and largely unsuccessful efforts to obtain records pertaining to the biosafety of the work conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And another grant proposal<\/a> from EcoHealth Alliance that we received from the NIH clarified the extent to which ongoing work now funded by the U.S. government is similar to the work under the now-suspended bat coronavirus grant\u00a0that has raised so many biosafety red flags and questions. We also learned that in 2020 the FBI sought documents<\/a> related to the U.S.-funded coronavirus research in Wuhan.<\/p>\n

But the most recent batch of documents, which the NIH sent The Intercept on Tuesday, underscores an ongoing lack of transparency at the agency.\u00a0Even as members of Congress<\/a> and scientists<\/a> call for additional information that could shed light on the origins of the pandemic, 292 of 314 pages \u2014 more than 90 percent of the current release \u2014 were completely redacted. Besides a big gray rectangle that obscures any meaningful text, the pages show only a date, page number, and the NIAID logo. The remaining pages also contain significant redactions.<\/p>\n

Even\u00a0when the redactions are technically justifiable under the Freedom of Information Act,\u00a0public agencies typically have\u00a0the discretion to release documents anyway.\u00a0In this inquiry, which could help us understand the\u00a0how this pandemic began \u2014 and how we might avoid future outbreaks \u2014 the presumption should be to give the public as much as information as possible, not the least.<\/p>\n\n <\/iframe>\n \n

The NIH still had more than 14,00 pages of relevant documents in its possession when it issued the almost entirely redacted release to The Intercept. Despite broad bipartisan agreement<\/a>\u00a0about the need to better understand\u00a0whether research could have led to the deadliest disease outbreak in recent history, the agency appears to have no urgency to make this critical information public.<\/p>\n

The post NIH Sent The Intercept 292 Fully Redacted Pages Related to Virus Research in Wuhan<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on The Intercept<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The NIH continues to withhold critical documents that could shed light on the origin of the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n

The post NIH Sent The Intercept 292 Fully Redacted Pages Related to Virus Research in Wuhan<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,340],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520828"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":527750,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520828\/revisions\/527750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}