Dr. Francis Collins appeared to acknowledge this week that the U.S. agency he heads funded gain-of-function experiments in Wuhan, China, which runs counter to claims he and a subordinate made earlier this year. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the agency Collins directs, revealed last week that money it gave to EcoHealth Alliance supported risky experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China that some experts said met the definition of gain-of-function. The term gain-of-function generally refers to research that increases a biological agent’s pathogenicity and/or transmissibility. Until last week, the NIH defined it as research that modifies an agent “so that it confers new or enhanced activity to that agent.” Both Collins and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), claimed earlier this year that the NIH did not fund gain-of-function research in China. “Neither NIH nor NIAID have ever approved …