House Republicans demand career scientist explain pathogen research

WASHINGTON — House Republicans are ratcheting up pressure on federal agencies’ pandemic response with an unprecedented move: interrogating a career poxvirus scientist’s infectious disease work.

In a letter to federal health officials Tuesday, top Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee asked longtime researcher Bernard Moss, who has worked for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for more than four decades, to sit for a videotaped interview about his work on mpox.

The request stokes a long-running argument about whether pathogen-altering work known as gain-of-function research is safe and effective, a debate reignited in recent years with unproven theories that the Covid-19 virus originated with this type of research at a lab in Wuhan, China.

Moss said in a Science article last year that he planned work to understand the mpox virus’ severity by inserting genes from a more lethal version of the virus into a less deadly strain. His writing came amid an outbreak of mpox that led to 42 deaths and more than 30,000 cases in the U.S., according to government data.

After E&C Republicans questioned the National Institutes of Health on Moss’ research this March, the agency told the group, which includes Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), health subcommittee chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and oversight subcommittee chair Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), that Moss’ project “has not been formally proposed” and the agency has “no plan” to move forward with the research.

The Republicans, each of whom has criticized the infectious disease institutes’ Covid-19 response, were not satisfied.

“This is a stunning admission,” they wrote this week. “It seems unlikely that Dr. Moss changed his mind. On the other hand, it is hard to believe the NIAID has apparently overruled one of its most highly respected scientists. These circumstances demand a detailed explanation about what happened with this research project publicized by Dr. Moss.”

The Trump administration lifted a moratorium on gain-of-function research in 2017. Earlier this year, responding to building criticism of the approach amid lawmakers and scientists, an expert panel advised the NIH to boost oversight and more narrowly define the pathogen-altering studies, but did not suggest banning them entirely.

However the issue continues to be a flashpoint for congressional Republicans, especially as lawmakers consider a debt ceiling deal that could dramatically curb future NIH spending growth. GOP members argued during a special coronavirus committee hearing in March that gain-of-function research played a role in the pandemic and should be banned. In the Senate, Kentucky Republican Rand Paul has repeatedly interrogated federal health officials on its use and safety.

Longtime NIAID Director Anthony Fauci — who retired in December — has vehemently denied that the agency funded gain-of-function research in China but also defended the approach as critical for developing flu vaccines.

Early in the pandemic, the Trump administration ordered NIH to abruptly end a grant for EcoHealth Alliance, a group working with Wuhan researchers to study coronaviruses’ jump from animals to humans. While the viruses EcoHealth studied are not closely related to Covid-19 and couldn’t have evolved into the virus that caused a worldwide pandemic, critics argue that EcoHealth’s work shows the lack of safety oversight in gain-of-function research.

“We’ve got to do a better job of getting people to understand what gain-of-function is,” Fauci told the New York Times this April. “So when Rand Paul asked me, did you fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan? I said, absolutely not.”

The GOP lawmakers asked for Moss to sit for an interview by the end of June, and gave the Health and Human Services Department, NIH’s parent agency, 48 hours to respond.

“HHS has received the letter and will respond directly to the subcommittee,” a spokesperson told STAT in an email. “HHS’s longstanding policy is to comply with legitimate oversight inquiries by balancing the congressional oversight interest with HHS’s interest in the information requested and to work with the committee to address its interest.”

Moss joined NIAID in 1966, roughly two years before Fauci joined the institute, and became chief of the viral diseases lab in 1984, the same year Fauci became NIAID director. Much of Moss’ work over the years has focused on studying poxvirus’ transmission, spread, and evasion of immune responses. He has earned numerous awards for his research and led groups such as the American Society for Virology.

It’s these accolades that Republicans said made the sudden halt to the mpox work “extraordinary” as they demanded answers from HHS officials.