NIH move to ax bat coronavirus grant draws fire

Controversy comes amid global calls for China to allow independent probe of virus origins. Researchers are reacting with alarm and anger to the National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) abrupt decision on 24 April to kill funding for a grant studying how coronaviruses like the one that launched the current pandemic move from bats to humans. The axing of the high-scoring grant came days after President Donald Trump, without providing evidence, suggested the pandemic virus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, supported by the grant, and vowed to kill the project. Grants by the biomedical agency are reviewed by scientists and are supposed to be shielded from political influence. The now-defunct grant, which was funded for $3.1 million in its first 5 years, scored in the top 3% when it was renewed for another 5 years last year. "This is a horrible precedent" and "the most counterproductive thing I could imagine," given the project's relevance to understanding the pandemic and preventing future ones, says Gerald Keusch, a former director of NIH's Fogarty International Center and associate director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory at Boston University.