NIH Previously Funded Almost Every Top Chinese Biomedical Researcher, Says Dr. Jay Bhattacharya
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya reveals NIH funded nearly every top Chinese biomedical researcher over two decades, including many trained in U.S. labs, raising post-pandemic concerns like industrial espionage. The old sub-award model—seen in Wuhan Institute of Virology ties—failed under scrutiny, prompting NIH to shift to direct auditing via sub-projects, allowing cuts if foreign partners refuse cooperation. New rules now demand cost-effectiveness justifications and proof of American benefit, even amid global health gains. These reforms reflect a cautious but necessary pivot to protect taxpayer investments while preserving scientific progress. [Automatically generated summary]
I think we have to be very careful about how we fund research relationships with China, especially post-pandemic, where it seems pretty clear to me that the NIH in particular funded research in collaboration with China that was actually quite dangerous and may indeed have led to the pandemic.
We have to be very, very careful about that.
I think for the past two decades, maybe two and a half decades, The NIH and the United States had a relationship with China that was, especially like in 2000 to 2010, much more friendly.
The U.S. invested in the Chinese biomedical research enterprise.
Almost every single top Chinese biomedical research scientist of note was funded in some part by the NIH.
Many were trained in the United States.
So we invested heavily in that.
Post-pandemic, and especially given the geopolitical circumstances we are in now, it looks in retrospect like it wasn't all that wise an investment.
And at the same time, there are legitimate reasons to worry about industrial spying and a whole host of other concerns.
And so we have, as a country, a legitimate interest in protecting our investments in the biomedical research enterprise.
There's a real look inside the Trump administration now.
We're just focused now on making sure that we don't invest in countries of concern in the way we had, including China.
That our investments on foreign research collaborations are audited well, overseen well, and serve the interests of the American people.
It's really important that people understand that that doesn't mean we're pulling back from the rest of the world.
Research requires there to be international collaboration.
There's scientists in Europe, in South America, all over the world, that our legitimate scientists and their research collaborations with American scientists would produce better advances than if you didn't have those research collaborations.
Science is a worldwide enterprise.
At the same time, the way that we interact with these and support these relationships needs to be much more secure than it has been.
And that's something that actually is a big success of the last year.
We've reset our relationships with the rest of the world, our scientific relations with the rest of the world, at least as far as biomedicine goes, so that we can have those collaborations without the worry that we're going to produce another Wuhan.
Well, so flesh that out, how you've made this reset.
That's fascinating.
I mean, you're saying across the board.
Yes.
Yeah, so the traditional way the NIH has funded research collaborations across the world is the NIH will fund a domestic researcher or some domestic institution.
That domestic institution then will issue a sub-award to some foreign institution.
And that the collaboration, essentially the money flows from the NIH to the domestic institution, then to the foreign institution.
And the domestic institution had the sort of obligation to oversee and audit the foreign institution.
So in the case of Wuhan, what happened was that the NIH funded an agency or an organization called the EcoHealth Alliance.
EcoHealth Alliance had a sub-award relationship with this Wuhan Institute of Virology.
And when all of the pandemic happened and the NIH had an interest in getting the lab notebooks of what exactly was studied in Wuhan, the EcoHealth Alliance essentially delayed reporting at all about what it knew what had happened and then ultimately said, oh, well, we don't control Wuhan Institute of Virology.
We can't get the lab notebooks.
That is an unacceptable structure.
If American taxpayer dollars are going to go to some foreign institution, then we should be confident that we, the Americans, have an auditing relationship that allows us to get access to the kinds of things that we normally have access to for a domestic institution that we fund.
Which will never happen in communist China, just for the record, right?
Well, I mean, any place where that can't happen, we're not going to fund them.
We're not going to fund those relationships, those research relationships.
So what we did is we put a new sub-project system, replaced the old sub-award system with sub-project system.
So now you can have the domestic institution and the foreign institution can have a research relationship.
That's fine.
But if NIH funded, then both of them have to have direct auditing relationships with the NIH.
And so then the NIH then can shut off money to the foreign institution if it's not cooperating.
It can do auditing.
It has to have that structure.
It's called a sub-project system.
This is one of the first things that I did, ordered when I first got in.
And so that means, and when there is these foreign collaborations, in addition to making sure that the auditing system, auditing structure is right and so we can oversee it more safely, we also put in two new requirements for these collaborations.
Two New Requirements for Foreign Collaborations00:00:48
One, that if you're going to have a foreign, if you're going to do work outside the United States, you have to justify it by showing that that work would be much more expensive or prohibitive to do in the U.S. than it is outside.
So for instance, there's some diseases and conditions that are much more prevalent outside the U.S. and so easier to study outside the U.S.
That would be a reason why you would want to study it.
But then two, that the knowledge gained actually would benefit Americans.
Of course, the knowledge gained may benefit the whole world, but it has to at least benefit Americans as well, since it's American taxpayer dollars going to it.
So that's the new way that we're dealing with the world.
We encourage foreign collaboration, but on a safer, auditable way, in a way where it's justified to do the work abroad rather than in the United States.