Senators Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) and Eric Schmitt (R., Mo.) are demanding answers from the National Institutes of Health on an American taxpayer-funded lab that reportedly experimented with coronaviruses over a year before the pandemic.
Virologists, including one researcher from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China, conducted “potentially risky research” at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) in Hamilton, Mont., in 2018, Ernst and Schmitt said. The scientists at RML infected 12 Egyptian fruit bats with a coronavirus obtained from WIV while both labs were funded by the NIH under Dr. Anthony Fauci’s leadership, according to published research reported by the Daily Mail last week.
The senators relayed their concerns about steps the Montana-based lab is taking to prevent a potential lab leak to NIH director Monica Bertagnolli in a letter sent Wednesday.
“In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which experts in the intelligence community believe likely leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, every precaution must be taken to prevent such an avoidable tragedy from ever happening again,” Ernst and Schmitt wrote.
“There is no room for error and no excuse for carelessness, since even a minor mishap can be catastrophic when dealing with dangerous biological agents, especially those with pandemic potential,” they added, worried that the American lab’s research could result in a future pandemic.
The letter cited instances of security-protocol breaches at RML, including an unauthorized child wandering near the primate facility and a mouse infected with a virus similar to Ebola roaming outside its cage for one day.
Furthermore, the lawmakers pressed the NIH director on the role that Fauci and the research non-profit EcoHealth Alliance played at both WIV and RML.
“As recently as last year, RML cited EcoHealth as an active collaborator on research on cross-species transmission of coronaviruses from bats and other deadly pathogens,” the letter read. “Needless to say, we are deeply concerned NIH continues to invite this shady organization to collaborate, especially on pandemic prevention studies, since the group has thus far not prevented any pandemics, but may have caused one.”
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which operates under NIH, funded gain-of-function research through EcoHealth, a nonprofit that contracted the Wuhan lab “for the past 5 years,” according to an email revealed in September.
The Republican lawmakers asked the NIH to answer what pathogens with pandemic potential are being modified to become more infectious and deadly and how the public will be alerted in case a biological agent escapes from the U.S. lab.
“We have watched the horror movie of Chinese state-run Wuhan Lab’s experiments on coronaviruses in bats, and I have worked to defund EcoHealth’s dangerous projects. To willingly allow the sequel to happen at the taxpayers’ expense is plain batty,” Ernst said in a statement provided to National Review. “But under Fauci’s leadership, Rocky Mountain Lab has increased its risky research of pandemic potential. We cannot allow what happened in Wuhan on our own shores, which is why I’m working to prevent any future lab leak.”