are Feds Still Financing EcoHealth Alliance, Despite Its COVID-19 Role Continually Unresolved? //
The world is still trying to recover from COVID-19. This pandemic was the worst since 1918 Spanish flu. There are many questions about the origins of the virus as well as the role of U.S. taxpayer funded research in China.
However, the National Institutes of Health recently granted $650,000 EcoHealth Alliance, a nongovernmental organization at the center of an international controversy.
You have to be strong!
Scientists are still divided on whether the pandemic was caused by a laboratory leak. However, a recent research paper concluded that SARS-CoV-2 could have been caused by an infectious clone that was created in vitro, which is in a laboratory.
It is not difficult to remember that EcoHealth Alliance funded coronavirus research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. This research facility is known to have engaged in “gain of functionality” research to reproduce a virus and increase its virulence.
The EcoHealth Alliance and its leader, Dr. Peter Daszak (a British zoologist) have been the targets of recent congressional inquiries.
Yet, the NIH granted the NGO another grant to administered by, you guessed it, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIH agency under Dr. Anthony Fauci).
EcoHealth Alliance was previously the recipient of millions in taxpayer dollars courtesy the NIH. The latest grant award to EcoHealth Alliance is to study and prevent another major coronavirus pandemic.
This is a noble goal, but it could be achieved by a biomedical research laboratory with a better track record, less controversy and fewer unanswered question.
It’s not surprising that Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), ranking member of House Committee on Oversight and Reform blasted for its latest decision by the NIH.
EcoHealth should not be paid a penny from the American taxpayer for their gross mismanagement American citizens’ hard-earned dollars.
Fauci repeatedly denied the claim that American taxpayer funds were used in Communist China’s gain-of function coronavirus research. The claim is rightly disputed by members of Congress. Details of the role of EcoHealth Alliance as well as the Chinese origins for COVID-19 remain a mystery.
In a joint press release, Comer and Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), highlighted the reasons EcoHealth should be the subject of a deeper investigation:
EcoHealth received a $3.7million grant from the NIH in 2014 to study bat coronaviruses. EcoHealth and Dr. Daszak were in violation of the grant terms as they failed to file an annual report within the deadline.
The report was filed by EcoHealth and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It was clear that they had engaged in gain of function research in violation of the federal moratorium.
Dr. Daszak argued with and bullied NIH to accept his definition of gain of functionality, shielded him from NIH and supported the [Wuhan Institute of Virology’s] decision not to remove their online database of virus sequences.
Dr. Lawrence Tabak was the principal deputy director of NIH and reported in 2021 that Daszak’s team had failed to report on a crucial experiment with mice, as required by their NIH grant.
Amazingly, Tabak wrote to Comer on October 20, 2021. Tabak wrote a remarkable Oct. 20, 2021 letter to Comer acknowledging that there was indeed a limited experiment and that the research was “testing if spike protein from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating circulating in China were capable binding to the human ACE2 receptor” in a mouse model.
The mice became more sick than those infected by the bat coronavirus during this experiment.
It is not in dispute that the experimental mice became sicker. Instead, the heated dispute between Fauci, other NIH officials, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky), and other members Congress focused on the exact definition of gain-of function research as it applied to the Wuhan lab’s activities.
Tabak continued in his Oct. 20, 2021 letter that “The research plan was reviewed prior to funding and NIH determined it did not meet the definition of research involving enhanced pandemic pathogens of potential because the bat coronaviruses have not been proven to infect humans.”
Curiously, the NIH removed the definition of gain-of function research the same day (Oct. 20, 2012) that Tabak responded. The gain-of-function research was previously defined by the NIH as “any type of research that modifies a biologic agent so that it confers a new or enhanced activity to this agent.”
It was indeed possible to create a more dangerous strain of the virus to infect mice through lab work.
Despite these definitional changes the core of the matter remains unchanged.
In August 2021, President Joe Biden declared: “We must have an open and transparent account of this global tragedy. Nothing less is acceptable.” Communist China was uncooperative and a U.S. intelligence document on COVID-19’s origins was not conclusive.
Possibly, EcoHealth Alliance grant funding may have contributed to gain-of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Unclassified April 2020 State Department memorandum states that Shi Zheng Li was the Wuhan researcher who discovered bat coronaviruses. Shi, also known as “the Bat Lady”, was paid from grant money in the language.
This case is far from over. This case must be investigated by the Congressional investigators.
Comer is correct: EcoHealth Alliance shouldn’t be given another dime from taxpayers.
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