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posted by Fnord666 on Friday June 26 2020, @04:44PM   Printer-friendly

White House ordered NIH to cancel coronavirus research funding, Fauci says:

The National Institutes of Health abruptly cut off funding to a long-standing, well-regarded research project on bat coronaviruses only after the White House specifically told it to do so, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Fauci made the revelation Tuesday at a Congressional hearing on the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which is caused by a coronavirus that is genetically linked to those found in bats. Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas) asked Fauci why the NIH abruptly canceled funding for the project, which specifically worked to understand the risk of bat coronaviruses jumping to humans and causing devastating disease.

Fauci responded to Veasey saying: "It was cancelled because the NIH was told to cancel it."

"And why were they told to cancel it?" Veasey pressed.

"I don't know the reason, but we were told to cancel it," Fauci said.

After the hearing, Fauci clarified to Politico that it was the White House that told the NIH to cancel the funding. An unnamed White House official told Politico that the White House did encourage the funding cut, but ultimately it was the Department of Health and Human Services—of which the NIH is a part—that made the final decision. An HHS spokesperson said only that the funding was cut because "the grantee was not in compliance with NIH's grant policy."

In an emailed statement to Ars Wednesday, the NIH did not respond to questions about the cancellation, saying only that "NIH does not discuss internal deliberations on grant terminations."


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Saturday June 27 2020, @12:26PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 27 2020, @12:26PM (#1013212) Journal

    Is it wise to allow such research being that the research itself could be a potential vector of infection?

    Of course, yes. Let us keep in mind that even if COVID-19 came from a research lab, that wouldn't require the Chinese authorities to suppress for a month information about its spread in Wuhan. There are true acts of foolish that remain so no matter where the disease originated.

    I could see extremely dangerous agents developed that would be too dangerous to develop on Earth, much less an urban environment, due to this sort of risk, but coronavirus wasn't one of those things.

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