| | | | |  | | By Carmen Paun, Erin Schumaker and Daniel Payne | |  The House Energy and Commerce Committee is investigating whether an NIAID virologist performed a risky gain-of-function experiment. | Getty Images | | House Republicans don’t trust the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to decide whether to conduct potentially risky experiments — and want that authority taken from it. How so? A Republican staff report released Tuesday accused the NIAID, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees both institutes, of lying to the House Energy and Commerce Committee about a potentially risky experiment with mpox, the rash-causing virus that sparked a global outbreak in 2022. The committee is investigating whether a researcher at NIAID — Dr. Bernard Moss, a virologist who leads the agency’s genetic engineering section — inserted genes from a deadlier form of mpox into a more transmissible form of the virus. The latter caused the global outbreak but has a low mortality rate. The deadlier version, which is endemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has sparked an ongoing outbreak there, raising concerns that it could spread beyond the DRC. The NIAID, the NIH and HHS told the committee the experiment never happened but offered no proof, the report says. They also initially said the experiment wasn’t formally proposed or planned, according to the report, which notes that internal NIH documents proved the contrary. “The committee is looking for an issue where there isn’t one,” an HHS spokesperson said in an email to POLITICO. HHS and its divisions, including NIH, “follow strict biosafety measures” and “the experiment referenced by the committee was never conducted, which the committee knows,” the statement said. Why it matters: The report is the latest in House Republicans’ push against potentially risky research, also known as gain-of-function, which can result in viruses and other pathogens being made more transmissible or deadlier to study them. Several top Republicans, including Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), who leads the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, have said such experiments shouldn’t be conducted because of their risk. What’s next: A group of experts at HHS that oversees funding decisions about proposed research involving experiments on pathogens that could cause a pandemic — the so-called P3CO framework — should decide what risky experiments should go forward, the Republicans’ report said. The HHS group has so far reviewed only three potentially risky research projects, a sign that the definition of the type of experiments that requires oversight is too narrow, an E&C Committee aide told reporters during a briefing.
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Mormon Mesa, Nevada | Erin Schumaker/POLITICO | This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. High times. Google searches for Amanita muscaria, a type of hallucinogenic mushroom, rose 114 percent between 2022 and 2023 in the U.S., according to a paper published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
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Researchers are developing an AI smart trap to lure, trap and monitor mosquitos in Africa. | USF | With the help of a $3.6 million NIAID grant, University of South Florida researchers are developing an artificial intelligence surveillance tool to fight malaria in Africa. Enhancing Malaria Epidemiology Research through Genomics and Translational Systems, or EMERGENTS, will bring together experts from around the world, including the United States, Nigeria and Cameroon, to establish an International Center for Excellence for Malaria Research in west-central Africa. How so? Using a global mosquito-tracking dashboard they created in 2022, the researchers will train local scientists to engage their communities to track mosquitoes. Citizen scientists will be able to upload their smartphone photos of mosquitoes into a real-time online dashboard and data portal. With the help of that data, researchers will test an AI smart trap to lure, trap and monitor the Anopheles stephensi mosquito, a major malaria vector, with the goal of deploying smart traps throughout west-central Africa during the project period. “We are the only team that we know of globally that can successfully enable anatomy-based classification from a single photo to identify mosquitoes,” Sriram Chellappan, a grant co-recipient and computer science and engineering professor at the University of South Florida, said in a statement. “Our algorithm automatically identifies the head, thorax, abdomen and legs from a mosquito image, then it uses specific anatomical components to identify the mosquito type — for example, the wing for Anopheles stephensi.” Why it matters: Malaria, which is spread by mosquitoes, causes flu-like symptoms that can progress to kidney failure, seizures and mental confusion and can result in a coma if not treated quickly, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were 249 million new malaria cases worldwide in 2022, and 608,000 of them were fatal, the World Health Organization reports. Ninety-five percent of those deaths were in Africa. What’s next: The technology EMERGENTS develops for Africa could one day be used for fighting mosquito-borne illnesses at home. While the A. stephensi mosquito hasn't been detected in the U.S., the researchers say that Florida, given its climate and international tourism, is ground zero for domestic mosquito-borne diseases.
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Cameron Andrews, founder and CEO of Sirona Medical, says artificial intelligence has made the FDA's job harder. | Sirona Medical | Initially developed for use in other sectors, artificial intelligence tools are seeping into health care, posing a challenge for regulators. That’s according to Cameron Andrews, founder and CEO of Sirona Medical, an AI-powered platform for radiologists. “The FDA is now responsible for a much harder job,” he told Daniel. “It is in some ways trying to reign in AI as it is broadly plugged into health care.” Why it matters: Even some in the health tech industry recognize the challenge before the federal government from AI. How the government, tech companies and health providers react in the coming months will have a big impact on the future of the technology, he believes. “Health care is a business of trust,” he said. “And if in the commission of moving quickly, there are AI companies that break things in a way that breaks patient trust and breaks physician trust, the adoption of this technology may be set back years.” Even so: Andrews said some solutions could be built into the systems themselves. “If all of a sudden on a Tuesday, stuff that was working yesterday stops working, we need an auditable record that demonstrates how and why and the way in which that gets remedied,” he said. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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