House Republicans are seeking to close a loophole that allows National Institutes of Health grantees to limit transparency about experiments abroad, a response to some of the mistakes made prior to COVID-19.
Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) introduced a bill Thursday that would require foreign labs that receive money from the NIH through a U.S. entity to share all records about U.S.-funded experiments.
“Taxpayer dollars belong to the taxpayers, who deserve transparency about how their hard-earned money is being spent,” Carter said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “This bill will ensure that bad actors stay as far away from U.S. grants as possible and that those who are awarded grants use them responsibly.”
The bill follows the controversy regarding a National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases grant to the nonprofit research firm EcoHealth Alliance, with the subgrantee being the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
EcoHealth received funding from NIAID to conduct bat coronavirus research at the WIV beginning in 2014 to better understand the natural emergence of viruses with pandemic ability. Federal funding was pulled from the project in 2020 due to concerns about the research’s connection to COVID-19, but it was subsequently restored under the Biden administration.
Following an investigation largely advanced by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, however, it was revealed that EcoHealth was not only two years late in submitting a critical year-end report but also failed to report potentially dangerous research to NIAID.
When questioned before the committee, President of EcoHealth Peter Daszak testified that researchers at the WIV stopped sharing critical information with his American-based team about the U.S.-funded research, including lab notebooks, raw data, and progress reports.
Emails released by EcoHealth document that Daszak’s team had over 15,000 samples of coronaviruses frozen in the WIV lab, access to which was entirely cut off following the NIH revoking funding in 2020.
In May, the Department of Health and Human Services began debarment proceedings for both EcoHealth and Daszak, following the congressional investigation. A typical term for debarment, or the prohibition of the use of any federal funds for the entity, is three years.
Carter chided NIH leadership, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, former NIAID director, for not maintaining proper oversight of federal tax dollars in the agency’s foreign research, especially with adversaries.
“We’ve seen how Dr. Fauci and the Chinese Communist Party have weaponized American wallets to further cruel, unnecessary, and dangerous research,” Carter told the Washington Examiner.
Although NIH updated its guidance in 2023 to require foreign subrecipients to share research documentation with both the grantee and the agency directly no less than every six months, staff for the representative told the Washington Examiner that making this a statutory requirement would give the policy more weight.
The bill requires that a grantee who is not compliant within 180 days shall be required to return all grant funding to the awarding agency.
“This bill is a legislative vehicle that ensures NIH’s guidance is fully enforceable and subrecipients are held accountable,” a staffer for Carter said. “Under this bill, if a grantee or subrecipient does not comply, funding will be withheld.”
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The bill is part of a larger piece of legislation on reforms for the nation’s premier biomedical research agency proposed earlier this month by the Energy and Commerce Committee.
Other security measures within the broader legislation include national security reviews for research involving foreign adversaries, establishing an independent review board for risky infectious disease research, and giving the HHS secretary the ability to immediately suspend grants that may jeopardize national security.