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The National Institutes of Health altered a key portion of its website last week around the time it disclosed to Congress that experiments it funded in China met the definition of gain-of-function. The federal agency, known as the NIH, had a detailed explanation of gain-of-function research on its site, noting that the term refers to any research that modifies a biological agent in a way that confers new or enhanced activity to that agent. But the explanation was wiped between Oct. 19 and Oct. 21—possibly ahead of the NIH’s most recent disclosures on Oct. 20 about research it funded in...

Top American health officials who critics say misled Congress with claims regarding U.S.-funded virus research in China are pushing back after documents were released appearing to show that the United States did pay for gain-of-function research, contrary to the officials’ testimony. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) sent the documents last week to lawmakers. They show that the NIH funded research that increased the function of coronaviruses and MERS, experts said. Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the NIH, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads one of the institutes, told Congress earlier this year that the agency did not fund...

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded research in China that created a more potent form of a bat coronavirus, according to newly disclosed documents. An experiment conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, situated near where the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, compared mice infected with the original bat coronavirus to mice infected with a modified strain created by researchers, according to the documents. The mice infected with the modified version “became sicker than those infected” with the original version, Lawrence Tabak, the principal deputy director at the NIH, told lawmakers in letters (pdf) on Oct. 20....