In recent weeks, the newly appointed director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Jeffery Taubenberger, has amassed a significant amount of research funding and influence.
This is despite his long-standing involvement in high-risk virology, a field that President Donald Trump's health leaders have pledged to eradicate. Taubenberger, a virologist and long-time ally of Anthony Fauci, has been a staunch defender of the controversial practice of enhancing viruses, known as gain-of-function (GOF) virology, for over a decade.
Taubenberger's ascension to the helm of NIAID on April 24 was met with opposition from his superiors, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya, who view GOF as potentially catastrophic.
However, a week after Taubenberger's appointment, HHS announced a half-billion-dollar investment in a vaccine technology co-invented by Taubenberger. According to government watchdog Open the Books (OTB), Taubenberger could receive royalty payments and lab investments if this taxpayer-funded gamble on vaccine technology proves successful.
Taubenberger's rise to the top of the second largest subagency at Bhattacharya's NIH follows a career marked by headline-grabbing GOF research. As reported by the Daily Caller, Taubenberger's most notable experiments involved "archaevirology" - the revival of the 1918 Spanish flu that killed up to 100 million people from a body preserved in permafrost.
Taubenberger also participated in experiments to splice genes from the 1918 flu with contemporary H1N1 viruses. Critics like Kennedy and Bhattacharya argue that gain-of-function experiments like these offer no public health benefit.
Taubenberger, who did not respond to requests for comment for this story, has worked with Fauci to advocate for GOF virology against concerns from other scientists about lab-born pandemics. In a May 2020 email, Taubenberger referred to those concerned about one of the earliest and most hotly debated GOF experiments the creation of an airborne H5N1 avian influenza virus as "the complaining crowd". The World Health Organization estimates the fatality rate of H5N1 to be roughly 50%.
Taubenberger's appointment as NIAID director highlights the practical challenges of "draining the swamp." Despite their ambitions for upheaval, Kennedy and Bhattacharya face an entrenched Washington bureaucracy. Taubenberger's leadership of the $6.6 billion institute is temporary, but it comes at a sensitive moment.
As the head of NIAID, the agency that funds most federally-funded GOF, Taubenberger is well-positioned to influence new regulations. His leadership coincides with a 120-day sprint to ban "dangerous gain-of-function research." Trump signed an executive order on May 6 that started the clock on a four-month process to hammer out the precise language.
Laura Kahn, a pandemic expert and coauthor of the book "One Health and the Politics of COVID-19," expressed disappointment at Taubenberger's appointment. She stated, Given Taubenbergers research history, his appointment suggests that such work will continue to be supported by NIAID despite Trumps executive order. Have we learned nothing from COVID-19?
Kahn also criticized Taubenberger's reconstruction of the 1918 influenza virus, stating that it "sent a terrible message to China and Russia that dangerous GOF work was acceptable." However, virologists who support GOF have praised Taubenberger's appointment.
When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, Taubenberger worked with Faucis disgraced senior scientific adviser David Morens to defend the researchers who had conducted GOF research in Wuhan. He and Morens coauthored a July 2020 scientific paper arguing that theories about a hypothetical man-made origin of the coronavirus have been thoroughly discredited.
Morens later faced bipartisan criticism in 2024 for emails exposing his attempts to evade the Freedom of Information Act in his communications with Peter Daszak, a longtime friend. Morens said that he would delete any smoking guns.
Taubenbergers public statements on GOF research while more measured than the private communications mocking people with concerns contrasts starkly with that of his bosses. In a 2012 article defending the avian influenza experiment, Taubenberger wrote, In considering the threat of bioterrorism or accidental release of genetically engineered viruses, it is worth remembering that nature is the ultimate bioterrorist.
This position directly contradicts comments Bhattacharya gave on May 7 in a television interview citing that work as emblematic of the GOF the NIH plans to fetter out. Bhattacharya stated, Anything that puts the American people at risk like this is not something we at the NIH should be doing.
The COVID-19 pandemic did not appear to dampen Taubenbergers enthusiasm for GOF research. In a December 2022 podcast interview, Taubenberger expressed his aspiration to revive other pre-1918 pandemic viruses through archival tissues from human autopsies, including viruses that caused pandemics in the Middle Ages.
Andrew Noymer, an associate professor of population health and disease prevention at the University of California, Irvine, expressed concern about Taubenbergers support of GOF research three years after COVID-19 emerged. He stated, Any leopard that hasnt changed its spots already in the light of SARS-CoV-2, Im skeptical will change its spots now.
Within a week of Taubenberger taking the reins at NIAID, he started ruffling feathers. HHS announced earlier this month that it will devote massive departmental resources toward the development of a flu vaccine platform co-owned by Taubenberger in the hopes it will provide broad protection against multiple strains of pandemic-capable flu viruses. The initiative, dubbed "Generation Gold Standard," is a major career milestone for Taubenberger, a Fauci-aligned expert who has not only survived but thrived in a department now led by self-declared renegades like Kennedy.
The success comes despite a career and declared worldview starkly at odds with the renegade ethos of his bosses. Taubenberger once stated in a 2022 podcast interview, My wife bought me a mug that says my medical degree is worth more than your Google search.
This statement encapsulates the tension between Taubenberger's traditional approach to virology and the disruptive ethos of his superiors, highlighting the ongoing struggle within the health sector to balance scientific expertise with public concerns and political pressures.
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