Dr. Lawrence Tabak, the former acting director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) who admitted to Congress last year that his agency funded risky gain-of-function virus research in China, abruptly resigned Tuesday, according to multiple reports.
Tabak, the No. 2 official at NIH, did not provide a reason for his departure in a notice to colleagues.
“It has been an enormous privilege to work with each of you (and your predecessors) to support and further the critical NIH mission,” Tabak wrote in an email obtained by the New York Times.
The outlet reported that Tabak, who had already been passed over to become acting director of the NIH under President Trump, was facing a reassignment to a role that he found unacceptable.
Tabak led the NIH during part of the COVID-19 pandemic and faced scrutiny from congressional Republicans over federal grants provided to Manhattan-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance for bat coronavirus research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China – the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an October 2021 letter to Congress, Tabak appeared to contradict former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci’s testimony from May of that year denying that the NIH funded the controversial research.
Tabak’s letter acknowledged NIH had funded a “limited experiment” at the Wuhan Institute of
He did not describe that experiment as gain-of-function research — but disclosed that EcoHealth “failed to report” that the modified bat coronaviruses had been made 10,000 times more infectious in violation of its grant terms.
The NIH scrubbed its definition of gain-of-function research from its website the same day the letter was sent to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.).
Last May, after repeated denials by Fauci about gain-of-function research, Tabak finally admitted to lawmakers that EcoHealth-funded experiments in Wuhan were just that.
“If you’re speaking about the generic term, yes, we did,” Tabak responded when asked by Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic whether NIH funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through EcoHealth Alliance.
Tabak had also confirmed to House lawmakers in 2022 that the NIH “eliminated from public view” early genomic sequences of COVID-19 at the request of Chinese scientists, admitting that was an “error.”
The resignation came two days before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed by the Senate to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH.
Kennedy had indicated ahead of his confirmation he would move to cut at least 600 NIH jobs.
The NIH did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
