NIH Admits It “Suppressed” Wuhan Lab Genetic Data, But Disputes Watchdog’s “Deleted” Label

Authored by Mark Tapscott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A National Institutes for Health (NIH) spokesperson is disputing a non-profit watchdog group’s claim that the agency “deleted” genetic sequencing data on Covid-19 from a Chinese lab, but the same official acknowledged the data was “suppressed.”

“The headline says the sequences were deleted which is inaccurate. They were not deleted. This is a really important point, and I’ve highlighted what did happen from what we provided to you earlier this week,” NIH Media Branch Chief Amanda Fine told The Epoch Times in a March 31 email.

Fine was referring to a March 29 Epoch Times story headlined “NIH Deleted Info Received From Wuhan Lab on Covid-19 Genetic Sequencing, Watchdog’s FOIA Finds.” The information Fine referenced as having been provided to The Epoch Times by NIH earlier in the week was included in the published story:

“’In June 2020, in response to a request by the same [Wuhan] researcher, National Center for Biotechnology [NCBI] gave the sequence data the status of ‘withdrawn,’ which removes sequencing data from all public means of access but does not delete them.

“NCBI subsequently reassigned the status of the sequence data to ‘suppressed,’ which means that sequence data are removed from the search process but can be directly found by accession number. This action to reassign the data was identified as part of NLM’s ongoing review into the matter. We are working to make more information available,” the spokesperson said.

The biotechnology center, which is part of the institute’s National Library of Medicine (NLM), is the U.S. component of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration.

The Epoch Times story was prompted by a report published on March 29 by Empower Oversight Whistleblowers and Research (EO) that was based on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) responses the group received from the institute.

The non-profit reported that “on June 5, 2020, a Wuhan University researcher requested that NIH retract the researcher’s submission of BioProject ID PRJNA637497 because of error. The Wuhan researcher explained ‘I’m sorry for my wrong submitting,’” Empower Oversight said in a statement (pdf) on March 29.

“BioProject ID PRJNA637497 is also referred to as Submission-ID SUB7554642. Three days later, on June 8th, the NIH declined the researcher’s request, advising that it prefers to edit or replace, as opposed to delete, sequences submitted to the SRA,” EO reported. SRA refers to the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) data resource made available by NCBI, and it “stores raw sequencing data.”

“But then, on June 16, 2020, NIH officials reversed themselves and deleted the genetic sequencing data, as requested by the Wuhan researcher. That researcher was quoted by EO as explaining to NIH: ‘Recently, I found that it’s hard to visit my submitted SRA data, and it would also be very difficult for me to update the data. I have submitted an updated version of this SRA data to another website, so I want to withdraw the old one at NCBI in order to avoid the data version issue.’

“After some discussion about what would be deleted, the NIH concluded the discussion by reassuring the Wuhan researcher that it ‘had withdrawn everything.’”

Asked for a response to Fine’s claim the information was not deleted, EO Founder and President Jason Foster told The Epoch Times that NIH’s actions ensure the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus genetic sequencing info is only available to the few individuals possessing its “accession number,” which effectively deletes the data from open access and research.

“NIH documents released with Empower Oversight’s report demonstrate that the sequencing data was deleted from public view by the NIH at the request of the Wuhan researcher,” Foster said.

“Our report also details emails between Professor Jesse Bloom and the NIH’s Steve Sherry from October 2021 that clearly indicate NIH retained copies ‘for archival purposes.’ Yet, the emails demonstrate that NIH refused to share that data in an open, transparent scientific process sought by Professor Bloom,” Foster continued.

“The NIH should make more information available about each and every time it reassigned the status of sequence data and any information potentially relevant to the origins of COVID-19 should be made available for scientific inquiry,” he said.

Fine did not respond when The Epoch Times asked who “has access to all of the genetic sequencing information provided by the Wuhan researcher and which was requested by that researcher to be removed.”

The Epoch Times also asked that because “NIH must know who in fact has accessed the data … who did so and when since the Wuhan researcher requested the information’s removal?”