Page:Interim Staff Report on Investigation into Risky MPXV Experiment at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.pdf/5

 In multiple letters and other communications, HHS and the NIH repeatedly told the Committee the most dangerous MPXV experiments had not been “formally proposed” or “planned,” had never been approved or conducted, and were not currently under consideration. The NIH also issued public statements making the same assertion and even forced Science magazine to issue a Clarification for one article on the experiment.



HHS’s repeated assertions that the risky transfer of clade I material into clade II virus experiment was never proposed or approved were false. Internal NIH documents show this experiment was formally proposed and received approval before the NIH’s Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) on June 30, 2015—seven years before the Committee first asked about the MPXV experiment. With the IBC’s approval, researchers could have conducted the proposed bidirectional experiment at any time after June 2015, until May 2023, when the approval was effectively revoked by the NIH (approximately seven months after the Committee’s initial letter that raised concerns about conducting the experiment described by Dr. Moss). The only requirement imposed on the 2015 approved experiment was put in place after a 2018 IBC review, which required the scientists to notify—but not seek new