In a highly controversial move, the EcoHealth Alliance – a New York-based organization run by British zoologist Peter Daszak – has been given $653,392 of new funding by the United States National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to study bat coronaviruses. Known to be close to notorious NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci, early in the COVID-19 outbreak Daszak had clumsily attempted to debunk the theory that the SARS-CoV-2 virus may have leaked from a laboratory. It later emerged that the British zoologist had research and financial ties to the secretive Wuhan Institute of Virology in China that is at the center of accusations regarding responsibility for the pandemic.
Described by the Wall Street Journal as a ‘parting gift’ from Fauci, who is due to step down at the end of this year, the money given to Daszak’s organization is the first payment of a new five-year grant totaling $3.3 million and was reportedly paid on the same day that NIAID awarded the EcoHealth Alliance over $2.1 million towards two further ongoing studies. One of these studies involves so-called ‘gain-of-function’ research where viruses are deliberately manipulated in the laboratory to make them more dangerous to human beings. Many people believe the virus responsible for COVID-19 resulted from this type of risky experimentation.
The EcoHealth Alliance itself has a similar record of making controversial donations and has previously channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars from U.S. government grants directly to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. During the COVID-19 pandemic the New York-based organization is said to have received around $7 million in U.S. taxpayer cash. Since June 2020 it has been given a total of seven grants from the U.S. government to study animal-borne viruses.
Daszak has played a key role in attempts to discredit speculation that the coronavirus responsible for the pandemic may have leaked from a laboratory. In February 2020 he was instrumental in organizing a high profile public statement published in The Lancet medical journal which claimed that the sharing of data on the coronavirus outbreak was being threatened by rumors and misinformation about the origins of the virus. Signed by twenty-seven scientists, the statement condemned what it described as “conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”
As it turns out, however, six of the statement’s twenty-seven signatories had either worked at or been funded by Daszak’s organization. Nevertheless, neither this conflict of interest nor Daszak’s own ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology received any mention in The Lancet text. Despite this, the statement strongly influenced what became the predominant narrative on the pandemic’s origins in the mainstream media at that time, as well as what was subsequently permitted to be said on social media. By October 2021, however, even the British Medical Journal had concluded that Daszak’s claim to have no conflicts of interest was “falling apart”.
While Daszak has always denied that the EcoHealth Alliance was in any way involved in the development of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, Dr. Andrew Huff Ph.D., a former vice president of the organization, claims it was actively involved through the conducting of gain-of-function experiments. In a signed deposition included in a large packet of information collated by U.S. attorney Thomas Renz, Huff attests that gain-of-function work to create SARS-CoV-2 was carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, with the support of the U.S. Agency for International Development, in collaboration with the EcoHealth Alliance and its partners and sponsors.
Huff further states that the process of developing SARS-COV-2 was ultimately funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, NIAID, and the EcoHealth Alliance, with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill functioning as collaborators.
While there remains much that we still don’t know about the COVID-19 pandemic and what precisely it was that set it in motion, it would appear that key pieces of the puzzle are gradually beginning to fall into place. Despite their continued protestations to the contrary, allegations continue to mount that Peter Daszak, Anthony Fauci, and their organizations, were deeply involved. What is already certain is that the story isn’t over