- With respect to review for DURC, there was no indication from the documents that the IBC reviewed for DURC or referred for DURC review in 2015 and 2018. According to a 2023 PNAS article by the Moss team about other research on MPXV, all procedures and protocols were approved by the NIH IBC and judged not to have the potential for DURC. This suggests that there was DURC review for MPXV experiments, but there has not yet been any evidence showing that the MPXV gene transfer experiments were reviewed for DURC.[1]
May 30, 2023, Committee Letter[2]
On May 30, 2023, Chair Rodgers, Health Subcommittee Chair Guthrie, and O&I Subcommittee Chair Griffith sent a letter to the HHS Assistant Secretary for Legislation as a follow up to HHS’s April 26, 2023, letter, which did not respond directly to most of the questions in the Committee’s March 2023 letter. Because HHS had not been forthcoming with documents and written responses, the Committee requested a videotaped, transcribed in-person interview with Dr. Moss by June 30, 2023.
June 22, 2023, STAT Article
In a June 22, 2023, STAT article, NIAID denied Dr. Moss had made any formal proposal for the MPXV experiment:
But a spokesperson for NIAID told STAT in late May that there had been no formal proposal from Moss to do the research
- ↑ In a May 3, 2024, briefing with Majority Committee staff, CDC experts stated that CDC mpox research proposals were subjected to DURC review. However, CDC has not yet responded to follow-up questions as to why CDC conducted such DURC reviews, and how this practice originated. The fact that both NIH and CDC conducted DURC reviews of mpox research suggests that these agencies were not confident that the lack of required DURC review for mpox research was adequate for protecting public safety.
- ↑ Letter from The Honorable Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican Leader, et al, H. Comm. on Energy & Commerce to The Honorable Melanie Egorin, HHS ASL, (May 30, 2023), https://energycommerce.house.gov/posts/e-and-c-leaders-request-top-nih-researcher-sit-for-videotaped-interview-after-admin-stalls-on-providing-lethal-mpox-experiment-documents.
issued in December 2017. Because of HHS and NIH lack of transparency and lack of detailed discussion for this course of conduct, the staff at this time makes the inference that the Moss research team itself lacked confidence that under the P3CO framework the IBC would find the benefits outweighed the risks of this direction of the experiment. The Moss research team may have also lacked confidence because they secretly conducted this part of the experiment and were dismayed by the results.
23
