Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ‘shielded’ biotech firms in gain-of-function research audit, GOP senator claims
A recent audit of Pentagon funding of gain-of-function research outside the US “may have shielded” collaborations with Chinese biotech firms — including at least one linked to Beijing’s military, a Republican senator alleged Tuesday.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) pressed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for answers about redactions that had concealed the firms — WuXi AppTec, Pharmaron Beijing Co., and Genscript Inc. — from public scrutiny in the audit, according to a letter exclusively obtained by The Post.
“American taxpayers deserve transparency about the programs they are funding, and I am disappointed this OIG report does not provide that accountability,” Marshall wrote.
The Kansan accused the Defense Department of being either unable or unwilling to be transparent about the collaborations with the biotech companies, which “have been flagged by Congress as problematic.”
Former House China Select Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) introduced the Biosecure Act in January to blacklist WuXi AppTec from doing business in the US, which Marshall agrees should be listed as a “company of concern” along with Pharmaron and GenScript.
The bill has yet to receive a vote.
The following month, Gallagher, China Select Committee ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) and Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) urged Austin, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to investigate WuXi AppTec.
The lawmakers said the firm was “closely affiliated” with China’s People’s Liberation Army — and may have stolen US intellectual property.
Last month, the China panel’s new chairman, Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), also demanded a national security briefing from FBI Director Christopher Wray and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines on GenScript.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who forced the audit by tucking a provision into the annual defense spending bill, pointed out another redacted WuXi AppTec grant “that may be playing a role in the [Chinese] regime’s genocide of ethnic minorities” in a separate Tuesday letter to Austin, also obtained by The Post.
“There is no reason for playing hide-and-seek with how and where the hard-earned money provided by taxpayers is being spent,” Ernst told Austin.
Between 2019 and 2020, the US Army Medical Research and Development Command gave $6.5 million to WuXi AppTec “to test antivirals in cells and in animals” infected with the SARS-CoV-2, dengue, Ebola and Chikungunya viruses.
According to the Defense Department Office of Inspector General audit, more than $15.5 million in grants between 2014 and 2023 flowed through subrecipients to “contracting research organization[s] in China or other foreign countries for research related to potential enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential.”
However, the 20-page audit cited “significant limitations with the adequacy of data” — and said the Pentagon “did not track funding at the level of detail necessary to determine whether the DoD provided funding to Chinese research laboratories or other foreign countries” for the gain-of-function experiments.
Such research is classified as “offensive biological work” by the Pentagon, which Marshall said “raises questions” about National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials having admitted this year to funding gain-of-function experiments at the now-debarred Wuhan Institute of Virology through a since-suspended grantee, EcoHealth Alliance.
Manhattan-based EcoHealth has denied that the experiments constituted gain-of-function research on bat SARS viruses — despite NIH officials and scientists testifying otherwise to Congress — and rejected the hypothesis that it may have led to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at New Jersey’s Rutgers University, told The Post last week that the IG report was evidence of “gross negligence” — and it would have been “much better for the DoD to have set taxpayer dollars on fire.”
“The DoD used US taxpayer dollars to fund bioweapons-agents discovery and bioweapons-agents enhancement programs in China and other foreign countries,” Ebright said.
“It neither placed conditions on uses of the funding, nor monitored uses of the funding, nor has records of any result or product of the funding.”
Marshall asked again in his letter for the Pentagon to complete a whole-of-government audit of gain-of-function research.
Reps for the Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
