{"id":1472882,"date":"2022-05-12T10:30:39","date_gmt":"2022-05-12T14:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1472882"},"modified":"2022-05-12T10:30:41","modified_gmt":"2022-05-12T14:30:41","slug":"nih-director-admits-agency-concealed-early-covid-genomic-sequences-at-request-of-chinese-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/nih-director-admits-agency-concealed-early-covid-genomic-sequences-at-request-of-chinese-scientists\/","title":{"rendered":"NIH Director Admits Agency Concealed Early COVID Genomic Sequences At Request Of Chinese Scientists"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fnih-director-admits-agency-concealed-early-covid-genomic-sequences-at-request-of-chinese-scientists%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1472882&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2021\/12\/omicron-2.jpg?w=1200&#038;h=800&#038;ixlib=react-9.3.0\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>The top official at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has admitted to federal lawmakers that the agency hid the early genomic sequences of COVID-19 that it had uncovered after Chinese scientists requested the move.<\/p>\n<p>Acting director Lawrence Tabak told a House Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday that NIH \u201celiminated from public view\u201d the data that had come from a lab in Wuhan, China, the city where the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 first emerged.<\/p>\n<p>But Tabak said that \u201cresearchers can still access it via an archaic \u2018tape drive,&#8217;\u201d the New York Post <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/05\/11\/nih-director-tabak-confirms-agency-hid-covid-genes-per-chinese\/\">reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The admission followed a\u00a0Vanity Fair <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2022\/03\/the-virus-hunting-nonprofit-at-the-center-of-the-lab-leak-controversy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">report<\/a> that traced an evolutionary biologist named Jesse D. Bloom\u2019s actions as he tried to \u201cdig deep and discover the truth.\u201d Bloom wrote a scientific paper and gave it to top U.S. immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci, setting off a firestorm.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBloom\u2019s paper was the product of detective work he\u2019d undertaken after noticing that a number of early SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences mentioned in a published paper from China had somehow vanished without a trace,\u201d Vanity Fair reported. \u201cThe sequences, which map the nucleotides that give a virus its unique genetic identity, are key to tracking when the virus emerged and how it might have evolved. In Bloom\u2019s view, their disappearance raised the possibility that the Chinese government might be trying to hide evidence about the pandemic\u2019s early spread.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPiecing together clues, Bloom established that the NIH itself had deleted the sequences from its own archive at the request of researchers in Wuhan. Now, he was hoping Fauci and his boss, NIH director Francis Collins, could help him identify other deleted sequences that might shed light on the mystery,\u201d the magazine wrote.<\/p>\n<p>In the House hearing, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) asked Tabek why U.S. health officials would comply with China\u2019s request to hide the genomic sequences.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s no question that the communication that we had about the sequence archive \u2014 Sequence Read Archive \u2014 could have been improved. I freely admit that,\u201d Tabek said. \u201cIf I may, the archive never deleted the sequence, it just did not make it available for interrogation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But he added that researchers can still get to the original sequences if they so desire.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not the first scandal about the Wuhan lab. Documents published in September by The Intercept revealed that U.S. health officials indirectly funded so-called \u201cgain of function\u201d research at the Wuhan lab \u2014 including the modification of three bat coronaviruses distinct from COVID-19 and the discovery that they became much more infectious among \u201chumanized\u201d mice when human-type receptors were added to them. U.S. officials have denied the funding went to \u201cgain of function\u201d research.<\/p>\n<p><em>Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the a.m. editor of the Drudge Report for four years. Send tips to josephcurl@dailywire.com and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The top official at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has admitted to federal lawmakers that the agency hid the early genomic sequences of COVID-19 that it had uncovered after<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":159,"featured_media":1482719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1472882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1472882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1482719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1472882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1472882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1472882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}