Dr. Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance Finally on the Hot Seat With COVID Origins Committee

The Senate Select Subcommittee recommends NIH and HHS immediately suspend and commence debarment proceedings against both EcoHealth Alliance and Daszak

According to Dr. Brad Wenstrup, chairman of the committee, Dr. Daszak has been less than cooperative with the select subcommittee

Not only was EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) over two years late in submitting it’s annual progress report to NIH but Daszak has failed to produce “original laboratory notebook entries” to verify what gain-of-function experiments involving coronaviruses were conducted with US tax dollars by Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China. EHA does not have those notebooks because they were created and retained by WIV in China.

“EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak is not a good steward of U.S. taxpayer dollars and should never again receive funding from the U.S. taxpayer. Dr. Daszak and his organization conducted dangerous gain-of-function research at the WIV, willfully violated the terms of a multi-million-dollar NIH grant, and placed U.S. national security at risk. This blatant contempt for the American people is reprehensible. It is imperative to establish higher standards of oversight at the NIH. The Select Subcommittee’s detailed and comprehensive report today holds Dr. Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance accountable and sheds light on severe shortcomings in our public health systems,” said Chairman Wenstrup.

Who is Dr. Peter Daszak?

Dr. Peter Daszak is a British zoologist, consultant and public expert on disease ecology, in particular on zoonosis. He is the president of EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), a nonprofit, non-governmental organization that supports various programs on global health and pandemic prevention.

In 2014, NIAID awarded EHA grant funding for a six-year NIH project entitled, “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” which focused on the emergence of novel zoonotic coronaviruses with a bat origin.

This research centered around collecting coronaviruses from bats and conducting research on them in the laboratory using mice.

Source: https://reporter.nih.gov/search/xQW6UJmWfUuOV01ntGvLwQ/project-details/9491676

However, the research was not performed by EHA; it was outsourced to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. And that’s where the whole problem began.

In my opinion, all funding to EHA should have been suspended in 2020 until further investigation and not just for the one project related to bat coronaviruses. This idea that scientists can somehow predict what nature is going to design ahead of time is simple arrogance of humans.

Not only was funding not suspended but EHA received over $3M in 2020 and 2021 for projects in Southeast Asia even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic with more funding being awarded for bat coronavirus research in 2023.

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic issued a 59-page report on EHA

Findings:

1: EcoHealth submitted its Year 5 Report nearly two years late. Further, EcoHealth’s claim that it was locked out of an NIH system and blocked from submitting the report on time was not supported by the evidence.

2: EcoHealth violated its grant terms and conditions by failing to report a potentially dangerous experiment conducted by the WIV.

*Daszak wanted to play a game of semantics when confronted with this issue. He stated that he asked NIH and they saw no problem with it so he didn’t see that it GOF research. That NIH approved something does not abrogate his responsibility to err on the side of caution and act with utmost caution.

3: EcoHealth used taxpayer dollars to facilitate gain-of-function (GOF) research on coronaviruses in Wuhan at the WIV, contrary to previous public statements, including those by Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Again, these people have been playing a game of semantics and playing with the definition of GOF to suit their needs. Daszak claimed that because the virus denoted as WIV1 was “SARS-like” it didn’t fall under the GOF pause. In addition, because it was a bat virus it also was not a concern because it had not been shown to infect humans. I thought the whole point of his research was to find viruses with pandemic potential.

Source: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1517719113

It’s also quite interesting that the researchers concluded in a published journal article:

“Both full-length and chimeric WIV1-CoV readily replicated efficiently in human airway cultures and in vivo, suggesting capability of direct transmission to humans.…..Together, the study indicates an ongoing threat posed by WIV1-related viruses and the need for continued study and surveillance.”

Daszak talks out of both sides of his mouth saying this virus is of concern and uses this to get federal funding but then when put on the hot seat and questioned about it he wants to say that there is a big difference between infecting human cells and infecting humans. He also testifies that there was no real difference in replication between WIV1 and other chimeric viruses. Daszak puts responsibility back on NIH for not calling out the issue.

4: NIH may not have known about EcoHealth’s actions without proper intervention by former-President Donald Trump and former-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Further, despite suggestions of political persecution against EcoHealth, career NIH leadership supported every compliance action taken.

• On April 17, 2020, during a press conference, former-President Trump identified the grant to EcoHealth, and any other grants going to China, as potentially problematic.

• On April 18, 2020, Dr. Lauer was told by his supervisor, Dr. Tabak, to send a letter to EcoHealth that would instruct them to terminate all funding to the WIV.

• Dr. Lauer sent this letter the next day, on April 19.

• On April 24, 2020, Dr. Lauer was told by his supervisor, Dr. Tabak, to send a letter to EcoHealth terminating its entire grant.

If not for the actions of the Trump Administration, this grantee and grant may have been allowed to continue without proper oversight.

5: While negotiating the reinstatement of the grant, Dr. Daszak omitted the material fact that unanalyzed samples and sequences—that the U.S. paid for—are in the custody and control of the WIV. This omission was taken as fact by NIAID and NIAID took no steps to verify the actual location of the sequences and samples. If Dr. Daszak had not made this omission it would have provoked questions from NIAID regarding EcoHealth’s ability to fulfill the aims of the reinstated grant. Finally, as a result of Dr. Daszak affirmations, NIH is currently violating the terms of the debarment of the WIV.

It remains unclear how many samples or sequences that the federal government paid for still reside at the WIV. In this email, Daszak states that there are 15,000 samples in freezers in Wuhan and EHA does not have access or control over those samples.

Source: https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Emails-02.pdf

When subcontracting out work to another institution it is critical to conduct audits of that institution on a regular basis to provide accurate reports to the contracting agency.

Let’s not forget that the NIH and Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), aided Daszak “in this multi-year cover-up”. While WIV was suspended and subsequently debarred, more must be done to hold EHA accountable for its wrongdoing. NIH must also be held accountable because NIH is in violation of the terms of the debarment of the WIV.