HHS Suspends Funding of EcoHealth Alliance

Begins Debarment Proceedings Based on Lack of Gain-of Function Research Oversight based on Congressional Investigation

EcoHealth Alliance has had its funding suspended, including a hold on all active grants, by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on the recommendation of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. The Congressional Subcommittee included charges of contempt and incompetence on the part of EcoHealth Alliance and incompetence on the part of NIH and NIAID.

This HHS action follows an extensive investigation by the Congressional House through the Congressional Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. The Subcommittee issued a report, and sent a letter to EcoHealth Alliance on May 15, 2024.

The Subcommittee report, is titled: An Evaluation of the Evidence Surrounding EcoHealth Alliance, Inc’s Research Activities, and provides a summary as follows:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Since April 2020, House Republicans have been investigating the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes investigating the U.S. government’s funding and approving gain-of-function research, as well as the NIH and NIAID grant oversight process. This report examines these processes by analyzing NIAID grant, R01AI110964 – “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,” awarded to EcoHealth and the corresponding compliance actions taken against it by NIH.

During this investigation, the Select Subcommittee has reviewed more than one million pages of documents and interviewed more than a dozen fact witnesses. This work established the evidence to support five interim findings.

Finding 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 is not supported by the evidence.

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

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

Finding 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.

Finding 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.

Again, based on the evidence collected by the Select Subcommittee, there are serious and systemic weaknesses in the federal government’s—particularly NIH’s—grant making processes. The weaknesses identified by the Committees not only place United States taxpayer dollars at risk of waste, fraud, and abuse but also risk the national security of the United States. These weaknesses can only be remedied through both executive and legislative action.

The facts contained in this report necessitate action. It is because of this investigation that the Select Subcommittee believes EcoHealth is not a good steward of U.S. taxpayer dollars. For 4 this reason, the Select Subcommittee is recommending NIH recommend and HHS immediately commence suspension and debarment proceedings against both EcoHealth and Dr. Daszak.

The Select Subcommittee will continue to evaluate the federal government’s funding of gain-of-function research, the associated guardrails, and if sufficient care and oversight exists. This continued effort includes the evidence surrounding NIAID’s deliberations regarding EcoHealth’s research and the application of various policies and procedures.

Finally, the Select Subcommittee continues to be obstructed by pertinent custodians, including HHS and EcoHealth. The actions of these entities are unjustified and will not be tolerated.

Four years ago, President Trump cancelled funding of US/China research into making epidemic viruses. He took this action after Dr. Peter Breggin sent an alert to a very close associate of the President, alerting him to the ongoing HHS funding supporting the gain of function experiments being done by a joint US/China team, chiefly through Chapel Hill, NC and Wuhan, China.

Here is the link to our original April 15, 2020, video and report that was sent to President Trump’s inner circle.  2015 Scientific Paper Proves US & Chinese Scientists Collaborated to Create Coronavirus that Can Infect Humans.

Confirming the impact of our video and report, there is nothing in the previous couple of years that would have inspired such an inquiry according to the Timeline in the Subcommittee Action Referral Memorandum. In fact, the only entry before the April 19, 2020 start of the Trump inquiry was November 5, 2018. And it was essentially benign.

Dr. Breggin then did a second report in late April 2020 when President Trump canceled the taxpayer funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology, saying:

Of all the technologies we have given to China, how to make highly infectious and lethal viruses from bat viruses may be the most dangerous. Yesterday the press made known that President Trump was cancelling all funding of these collaborations between the US and China in the creating of lethal epidemic viruses (see here and here). 

On April 15, 2020, we published a blog about this US/China collaboration in a blog describing how “In 2015, American researchers and Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers collaborated to transform an animal coronavirus into one that can attack humans.” We followed up immediately with a video describing how the US and China joined forces to create a SARS-CoV virus from bats with clinical effects indistinguishable from the current SARS-CoV-2 bat virus that has created the current pandemic. Both reports are available on our Coronavirus Research Center. We alerted authorities, the media and the public to these shocking security breaches. Stopping this research was a major project for us, and as we recently learned, for other groups as well.

Anthony Fauci, Director of NIH’s Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is the key federal official in enabling and funding this horrendous research. In 2015, independent researchers expressed their concern about this federally funded research creating potent laboratory viruses, which broke the government’s own rules prohibiting the laboratory enhancement of viral virulence. Fauci’s institute- NIAID- reviewed the collaborative US/Chinese studies and allowed them to go on—until Trump stopped them.

The researchers justified their efforts as leading to better methods of fighting epidemic viruses. This self-defense motive might have been the purpose for the naïve US researchers, but Wuhan Institute researchers are part of China’s military establishment, and it is absurd to think the Chinese did not have their eyes on developing biological weapons.

We do not know with certainty whether the pandemic virus leaked from Wuhan Institute, but it seems probable. We also do not know—there are contradictory reports—if it was artificially created by tweaking the bat virus. However, as we predicted, we have now found that the same Chinese Wuhan researchers with whom the US shared research efforts have, on their own, gone ahead to continue this research in creating dangerous viruses from bats. This research from 2016 and 2017 can also be found on our Coronavirus Research Center. The efforts of the Chinese to create epidemic virus makes the accidental release of SARS-CoV-2 highly likely and adds to concerns that it was manmade.

We thank President Trump for so quickly seeing the folly and dangers of helping Chinese researchers develop dangerous bat viruses, research which began under the previous administration.

End April 29, 2020 report.

Video below accompanied the report.

Gain of function research is that kind of experimentation with viruses that creates increased infectivity or increased ability to spread. In other words, making a virus either more contagious and infective or more deadly.  The Select Subcommittee report notes that EcoHealth was aware their research was potentially “dangerous gain-of-function research” but that “EcoHealth failed to report this finding right away, as was required by the terms of the grant.” The gain of function research is arguably one of the most dangerous kinds of research that can be undertaken.

Resources

A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence 2015 Nature science paper

Breggins alert Trump insiders to US Taxpayer funding of Wuhan Institute of Virology

Breggin.com | Article Detail   Trump cancels Funding of US/China Research

An Evaluation of the Evidence Surrounding EcoHealth Alliance, Inc’s Research Activities

Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Press Release May 15, 2024

HHS Letter to EcoHealth Alliance—Notice of Suspension and Proposed Debarment of EcoHealth Alliance

First published on AmericaOutLoud.news