Rosendale aims to defund Rocky Mountain Lab research

by Michael Howell

On November 15, an amendment sponsored by U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale was attached to a federal appropriations bill under consideration since last October funding the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. Rosendale’s amendment “prohibits funds made available by this Act from conducting or supporting any gain-of-function research involving a potential pandemic pathogen by Rocky Mountain Laboratories.” (see www.congress.gov) The amendment was adopted by voice vote, but consideration of the bill itself has been suspended.

A second amendment sponsored by Rosendale “to reduce the salary of Vincent Munster, Chief, Virus Ecology Section, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to $1” failed by a recorded vote: 155-268, 1 Present. Montana’s U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke opposed the amendment.

NIAID claims that it has not conducted any gain-of-function research involving potential pandemic pathogens. In a settlement agreement resolving a lawsuit filed by Friends of the Bitterroot et al against NIH/RML in 2004 over construction of the BSL-4 lab, it was agreed that “RML represents that it will not weaponize any pathogens at its facility” although “it may study pathogens that have been weaponized.” NIAID claims that Rosendale’s concerns are based on misinterpretations and erroneous characterizations of reports, and other unsupported claims bouncing around on the internet.

The White Coat Waste (WCW) Project, a group aiming to stop taxpayer-funded animal experiments, claims on its internet blog (blog.whitecoatwaste.org) that it was after reading the group’s expose “detailing how—at least a year before the pandemic—a shady Maryland zoo whose curator was a National Institutes of Health (NIH) animal experimenter shipped off bats to a deadly NIH virus superlab to be infected with a coronavirus first obtained by the notorious Wuhan lab that experts believe caused COVID,” and having subsequent conversations with WCW that “Rosendale immediately sprang into action.”

An article in the Daily Mail quotes the president and founder of WCW, Anthony Bellotti, as saying: “Our investigation has uncovered the real-life horror story of how a shady roadside zoo whose curator was an NIH animal experimenter shipped off bats to a deadly government virus lab overseen by Dr. Fauci to be infected with a coronavirus obtained directly from the Wuhan lab that experts believe caused COVID.”

The WCW quotes Rosendale as saying, “Taxpayers in Montana and across the nation shouldn’t be funding unnecessarily dangerous animal research that can spark another pandemic. My commonsense amendments to the NIH’s 2024 spending bill would undo some of the damage done by Anthony Fauci by defunding NIH programs he supported that put public health and national security at risk.” 

“I was proud my amendment to the LHHS Appropriations bill passed to prohibit taxpayer dollars from funding any dangerous gain-of-function research at Rocky Mountain Laboratories,” Rosendale stated online. 

Rosendale did not respond to the Bitterroot Star’s request for comments on the amendment. 

According to fact checkers at healthfeedback.org, Fox News’s Jesse Watters, who took over the primetime slot formerly occupied by Tucker Carlson, also began making claims about the work done on pathogens by NIAID at Rocky Mountain Laboratory (RML) based on inaccurate or unsubstantiated assumptions in his November 1, 2023 primetime show. Watters posted an excerpt on his Facebook page in which he claimed “Fauci frankensteined Covid bats on our soil a year before the pandemic, but then acted all shocked when the virus started spreading” and calls for “Fauci and everybody up in Montana” to be locked up and refers to the WCW Project’s “expose” which cited as supporting evidence a study from 2018 by Van Doremalen et al.

The fact checkers at healthfeedback.org note that the study does describe research on coronavirus involving the Egyptian fruit bats Rousettus aegyptiacus and carried out at the NIAID laboratory in Hamilton, Montana. However, they say a closer reading of the study shows that Watters’ claim is inaccurate, stating “Van Doremalen et al. worked on a virus called WIV-1[1]. WIV-1 is a coronavirus that was identified in 2013 and had sparked interest at the time because of a certain level of similarity to SARS-CoV-1, the virus responsible for the SARS outbreak of 2003. However, a comparison of the two viruses’ genomes shows that WIV-1 is different from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

“So, we know that SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13 diverged fifty years ago and that lab experiments on RaTG13 could not lead to SARS-CoV-2. And we know that WIV-1 is more distantly related to SARS-CoV-2 than RaTG13 is. This means that SARS-CoV-2 and WIV-1 are separated by at least five decades of evolution. This genomic evidence invalidates the implication in Watters’ video title that the research on WIV-1 conducted in Montana was connected to the pandemic.”

Watters also stated, “In 2018, Fauci’s goons went to the Wuhan lab, bottled up a virus and brought it to a lab in America” and “grabbed a dozen Egyptian fruit bats, threw them in the back of a van.”

The fact checkers state that while it is true that WIV-1 was first isolated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (hence the initials WIV), nothing indicates that Van Doramalen and colleagues actually shipped the viral particles from Wuhan.

The Materials and Methods section of Van Doremalen et al. explains that the viral particles of WIV-1 used in the study were produced locally, using a method described in a previous publication by Menachery et al.

Menachery et al. explained that the viruses used for their study are a “synthetic construction” using a “published sequence.” The Acknowledgments section also mentions that Menachery et al. obtained information and material from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but not the virus particles themselves.

Furthermore, Van Doremalen et al. specified in their Materials and Methods section that “animal experiments were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the Rocky Mountain Laboratories (ASP 2016-021E, 05/2016). Such committees oversee animal use activity and animal research facilities to ensure the welfare of animals used in research. Nothing indicates that the bats were rounded up and thrown ‘in the back of a van’”, as Watters claimed.

NIAID doesn’t ordinarily comment on pending legislation; but in this case they did offer to “clarify some things.” 

“Recent online coverage erroneously characterized a research study conducted in December 2016 at Rocky Mountain Laboratories and published in 2018 in the journal Viruses. In the study, RML researchers studied WIV-1, a coronavirus, in Egyptian fruit bats. WIV-1 is a different virus than the SARS-CoV-2 virus involved with the COVID-19 pandemic and this study did not involve gain-of-function research. As noted in the published manuscript, the virus did not replicate well in the bats. Additionally, the virus used in these experiments was not shipped from China. Rather, it was generated using common laboratory techniques, based on genetic information that was publicly shared by Chinese scientists. The research was conducted at a higher level of biosecurity (BSL-4) than was required (BSL-3).

RML Integrated Research Facility is the first NIH facility of its kind to house BSL-2, BSL-3, and BSL-4 laboratory space in one building, along with scientific support, administrative offices and conference rooms. The scientists did the work at BSL-4 even though WIV-1 virus (as well as SARS-CoV-2) is approved for study at BSL-3.  According to NIAID, the research team at RML “is more used to working at BSL-4 and those labs are immediately accessible to their work area where the BSL-3 labs are in an adjacent building, so it was simply a logistics decision to work in the BSL-4 lab.” 

“Scientists at RML have research expertise in coronaviruses, beginning with the original SARS-CoV-1 outbreak in 2002-03 to MERS-CoV in 2012 and most recently SARS-CoV-2, generating information that is critical to understanding these viruses and developing appropriate interventions.” 

RML employs over 450 people, including some of the top scientists studying infectious microbes that cause diseases in efforts to develop new vaccines and treatments. 

According to NIAID, since 1928, when the landmark facility was constructed—and two decades before that when its scientists worked out of makeshift cabins and tents—RML has played a key role in our nation’s health and well-being by focusing its talent and resources on the infectious disease threats of the day. 

One hundred years ago, that meant helping overcome the scourge of “black measles,” which was striking down settlers in Western Montana’s Bitterroot Valley at an alarming rate. Today, it means grappling with more confounding health issues, such as coronavirus, influenza, prion diseases, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Research at the lab has been responsible for breakthroughs in the fight against Sudan virus (one of four viruses known to cause human Ebola disease), MERS, salmonella, SARS and neuro-degenerative brain diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s, as well as diseases such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Q fever, and Lyme disease.

Moreover, its proven history in the study of exotic illnesses—and the ability of its researchers to quickly investigate newly emerging infectious diseases—make RML eminently positioned to play a central role in conducting research that could help safeguard the public against infectious disease threats, including a possible bioterror attack.

As officials at NIAID put it, “That a biomedical research facility the size and technological sophistication of RML is located in the heart of the Bitterroot Valley offers Montanans unique access to the utmost in collaborative, educational, and employment opportunities with world-renowned scientists. And for NIH scientists, RML provides a truly exceptional place to live, study, and conduct pioneering research that could one day lead to a cure for some of the world’s most formidable infectious diseases.”