Experts Call on Congress to Quickly Implement New Gain of Function Oversight System After NIH ‘Failure’
Experts on Aug. 3 urged Congress to implement a new oversight system over risky research conducted in or funded by the United States, asserting the present system is ill-equipped to identify problematic experiments.
Two Department of Health and Human Services agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are currently required to analyze whether proposed projects meet the definition of research “involving enhanced potential pandemic pathogens,” or pathogens that could lead to a pandemic.
Projects that meet the definition are referred to a committee made up of members appointed by the health secretary, with the panel deciding whether the projects can move forward or not.
The current system, known as the PC3O framework, is not working, the experts said.
Richard Ebright, a laboratory director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, said that the system “in principle” provides for adequate oversight, but “in practice largely has existed only on paper.”
In the four-and-a-half years since the policy was announced, only three projects have been approved, while a number of others—including work done in Wuhan, China, that was funded by the NIH—were not flagged “due to a failure by the NIH to identify and flag all covered projects,” Ebright said.
Ebright was testifying before the Senate during the first congressional hearing on risky biological research, known formally as gain of function research, since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Another witness, Massachusetts Institute of Technology biologist Kevin Esvelt, said that the NIH has a long history of funding projects that are aimed at enhancing the transmissibility of viruses, including lethal pathogens, but that many of the projects were not flagged by the agency.
“It’s been a failure, I think at this point in time,” Dr. Steven Quay, CEO of Atossa Therapeutics, told the panel.
The Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH, and
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