The House Energy and Commerce Committee obtained documents from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirming that virologist Lili Ren of the Institute of Pathogenic Biology at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing submitted data to NIH GenBank on March 28. December 2019. GenBank is a database of genetic sequences maintained by the NIH.
The two-week period between the sequence’s submission to the US database and its public release by China appears to reinforce allegations that Beijing withheld important information as the world tried to understand and respond to the deadly new virus.
News of the submission was initially reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The committee noted that Ren is a subcontractor for the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, which previously provided NIH grants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and has come under scrutiny during the pandemic.
In correspondence with the committee, HHS characterized this submission as “incomplete” and lacking “information necessary for publication.”
“Following established quality control processes during which NCBI staff review technical but not scientific or public health details, a resubmission request was issued to Lili Ren on December 31, 2019, with notification that if the information additional requested submissions were not provided by January 14, 2020, then the original submission would be removed from the processing queue,” HHS stated in its letter to the committee.
A new submission from Ren was never received. The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention released an “almost identical” sequence to the one presented by Ren about two weeks later, on January 10, 2020, claiming that it released the sequence as soon as it was available.
“This significant discovery further highlights why we cannot trust any so-called ‘facts’ or data provided by the CCP and seriously calls into question the legitimacy of any scientific theories based on such information,” said GOP Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.), Brett Guthrie (Ky.) and Morgan Griffith (Va.) in a statement.
