NIH accuses EcoHealth Alliance of multiple grant violations



EcoHealth Alliance is in trouble with the National Institutes of Health again, but the agency appears to be showing lenience toward the nonprofit group, which used taxpayer dollars to conduct risky bat virus experiments with Chinese researchers.

In October, then-NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak wrote in a letter to lawmakers that EcoHealth had violated the terms of a research grant to study bat coronavirus by failing to report the results of a lab experiment that caused a bat coronavirus to become more contagious. Now, current NIH Deputy Director Michael Lauer wrote another scathing letter to the nonprofit criticizing EcoHealth's pattern of noncompliance with the agency's grant requirements.

"EcoHealth has demonstrated a history of failure to comply with several elements of the terms and conditions of grant awards, but also for the suspended award," Lauer wrote to EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak and chief of staff Dr. Aleksei Chmura.

The "suspended award" was a 2020 grant for research that was sub-awarded to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to the Washington Examiner, which first reported the letter.

EcoHealth has received millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded research awards over the course of many years for coronavirus research in China as well as many other projects. But Lauer accused the group of a slew of violations related to neglecting to turn in financial and research progress reports on time and failing to meet other oversight requirements. The NIH identified eight different written agreement requirements that EcoHealth had failed to comply with, including reporting requirements for a $3 million study of "spillover risk of high zoonotic potential viruses from wildlife," the Examiner reported.

The NIH also accused EcoHealth of overcharging the agency on its "facilities and administrative" costs for the grant involving work with the Wuhan lab. "NIH identified that an inappropriate F&A was charged at a rate of 11 percent for years 2-5 of the subaward agreement," the letter states. The nonprofit should have charged a rate of 8%, according to NIH.

House Republicans on the Oversight Committee led by ranking member Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) said the NIH letter "confirms EcoHealth hid the truth about their risky coronavirus experiments in Wuhan."

Oversight Republicans are getting results. \n \n@RepJamesComer recently requested NIH provide its communications with EcoHealth & Peter Daszak.\n \nA letter dated January 6, 2022 now confirms EcoHealth hid the truth about their risky coronavirus experiments in Wuhan.pic.twitter.com/XeOtyS6kK5
— Oversight Committee Republicans (@Oversight Committee Republicans) 1641935005

Because of these multiple violations, the NIH informed EcoHealth that its current grants will no longer be automatically extended at no cost. The nonprofit must "request and receive written prior approval from the appropriate NIH awarding Institute or Center (IC) before any extensions of the final budget period." Additionally, EcoHealth will be required to "develop and successfully implement a Corrective Action Plan (CAP) for these awards with milestones to address and correct the deficiencies noted in this letter."

Commenting on Lauer's letter, Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and a critic of gain-of-function experiments, criticized the NIH for going easy on EcoHealth by declining to take further enforcement action, even though the agency is entitled to under federal law.

"Inexplicably, [the] letter imposes no sanctions on EcoHealth — which continues to receive $2.1 million annually in NIH funding — other than to set a new deadline of 1/14/2022," Ebright tweeted. He is one of many public health experts who believes that EcoHealth improperly funded risky gain-of-function experiments in Wuhan, China, that could make viruses deadlier.

NIH officials including Dr. Anthony Fauci have repeatedly publicly denied that grants awarded to EcoHealth or any other researchers were used to fund gain-of-function research that made deadly pathogens more transmissible among humans. EcoHealth also denies that a $600,000 grant received from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and sub-awarded to the Wuhan lab funded gain-of-function research there, but this claim is contested. Lawmakers like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have asserted that experiments known to have been done with EcoHealth's collaboration qualify as gain-of-function, and squabbling over the technical definition this area of research has led to tense public exchanges between Paul and Fauci. Last summer, Paul referred Fauci to the Department of Justice to be criminally investigated for allegedly lying to Congress.

Leaked documents published by whistleblowers in September revealed that in 2018, EcoHealth Alliance asked the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for a $14 million grant to study infectious diseases as part of a program to prevent pandemics. The agency ultimately rejected EcoHealth's request after reviewers determined the group proposed to conduct research that violated agency guidelines on gain-of-function research.

The main problem with EcoHealth Alliance dodging oversight and reporting requirements for its research grants is that if the group did fund gain-of-function research, Fauci and the NIH may not even be aware of that fact because the results of the experiments were not reported on time.

Washington Post editorial board says EcoHealth Alliance's Peter Daszak must answer questions before Congress



The Washington Post editorial board on Tuesday called on EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak to testify before Congress and face questions on his organization's use of taxpayer funds to conduct gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

Following revelations that EcoHealth Alliance violated the terms of a National Institutes of Health grant by failing to report the results of an experiment that artificially made a virus more lethal, the Washington Post editorial board said Daszak needed to testify about his work with the Wuhan lab and answer questions about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Daszak's group EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit that studies emerging diseases, partnered with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and one of its scientists, Shi Zhengli, for a five-year research program funded by NIH to study bat coronaviruses and the potential risk of one of these viruses being transmitted to humans and causing a pandemic like COVID-19.

There are two main hypotheses that explain the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first, supported by most scientists and based on historical examples, is that the virus naturally leapt from an animal host to a human, possibly through an intermediary host. The second is that a genetically-modified virus was leaked or somehow escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a world-renowned center for studying bat coronaviruses located just 20 miles away from the first major outbreak of COVID-19.

There is evidence for and against both hypotheses and scientists have not conclusively ruled out either theory. However, Daszak and other prominent public health scientists and government officials have aggressively pushed back against the lab-leak hypothesis, claiming it is a "conspiracy theory" promoted by individuals with possibly xenophobic or racial prejudice against Chinese scientists at the Wuhan lab.

NIH Director Francis Collins and his subordinate, Dr. Anthony Fauci, have also vigorously denied funding "gain-of-function" research at the Wuhan lab — research involving experiments that artificially make viruses more transmissible among humans.

The Chinese government and scientists at the Wuhan lab have likewise denied that COVID-19's origins had anything to do with the work done at that lab.

However, the Post editorial board acknowledges that last week's revelation that EcoHealth Alliance violated the terms of its NIH grant by failing to report experiments conducted at the Wuhan lab that artificially made a virus more infectious raises new questions about the work done by Daszak's group.

Last week, it was disclosed that the EcoHealth Alliance in August filed a report on its research in 2018-2019 — the report was two years late. This just happens to be the two-year period of the pandemic and intense debate about the virus origins. No reason has been given. Mr. Daszak did not respond to our query. The tardy report describes experiments, approved in advance by the NIH, to test the infectivity of the genetically-manipulated viruses on mice with cells resembling those of the human respiratory system. The manipulations made the viruses more lethal to the mice. Although the NIH continues to insist this did not fit the definition of "gain of function" research, and could not have led to the pandemic strain, it certainly should have met the U.S. government's own requirements for stricter oversight.

The editorial board said "unanswered questions" remain about Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance, and the Wuhan lab, questions that he must answer before Congress.

But unanswered questions keep emerging about Mr. Daszak and the WIV. He was at the center of public debate over virus origins, the only American appointed to the joint World Health Organization-China mission. Why did he not disclose his 2018 proposal to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for research on bat coronaviruses with the WIV and others, which called for engineering a modification onto spike proteins of chimeric viruses that would make them infect human cells in the way the pandemic strain did? What does he know about the databases of viruses that WIV took offline in 2019 and never brought back? Does he know what research the WIV may have done on its own, during or after their collaboration? What was being done at WIV in the months before the pandemic?

Mr. Daszak must answer these questions before Congress. His grants were federal funds, and it is entirely appropriate for Congress to insist on accountability and transparency. He might also help the world understand what really happened in Wuhan.

House Republicans in August released a report calling Daszak the "public face" of a Chinese "disinformation campaign designed to suppress public discussion about a potential lab leak." They have demanded that he be subpoenaed to testify to Congress, but so far no Democrats have moved to do so.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb: New documents show NIH funded Chinese research that made viruses more dangerous, lab leak plausible



Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, acknowledged Wednesday that newly released documents show that the National Institutes of Health funded research in Wuhan, China, that created circumstances that could have led to a dangerous engineered virus possibly escaping from a lab.

Speaking on CNBC, Gottlieb said that whether the work done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other laboratories in the Wuhan area meets the government's technical definition of gain-of-function research is a "political and legal discussion."

"The bottom line is they were doing research on viruses in that institute that was making those viruses potentially more dangerous to humans. And handling the viruses in ways that could potentiate their release, particularly by infecting transgenic animals that have fully-humanized immune systems," Gottlieb said.

"They were doing things in that lab that could have led to circumstances where a virus that was purposefully evolved in ways that it could be more dangerous to humans could have escaped," he continued.

"They were doing things in that lab that could have led to circumstances where a virus that was purposefully evolve… https://t.co/GzJYKkEB0k

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) 1631105960.0

Earlier this week, The Intercept published more than 900 pages of documents that detail how the NIH awarded grants to EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based nonprofit group that turned those grants around and handed them to Chinese researchers to study coronaviruses.

One of those grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases appears to have funded gain-of-function experiments, research that intentionally make viruses more transmissible among mammals, and particularly among humans. The possible role that such experiments had in the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic is both unknown and controversial.

While most scientists believe that the SARS-CoV-2 virus has a natural origin, there are others who question whether it's possible the virus was engineered at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or another nearby lab, and somehow leaked, causing the pandemic.

NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fuaci has repeatedly denied that NIH funded such experiments in China and maintained that the natural origin theory is the most probable explanation for where COVID-19 came from. But Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), one of Fauci's prominent critics, says the newly revealed documents show Fauci lied about taxpayer funding for gain-of-function research and that further investigation is needed to the role NIAID and NIH played in the possible origins of the pandemic.

According to Gottlieb, there were two relevant details in the documents that were previously not known.

"What's revealed by these documents are two interesting details I previously didn't know. First, there was experimentation being done on MERS-like coronaviruses, not just SARS-like coronaviruses. Second, they affirmed what we suspected about coronavirus research being done at other institutes around Wuhan ... at a level three biocontainment facility," he said.

Bombshell documents suggest Dr. Fauci was 'untruthful' about federal funding for risky coronavirus research in China



The U.S. agency led by White House COVID adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci funded research experiments to infect humanized mice with novel coronaviruses at a laboratory in Wuhan, China, newly released documents reveal.

Over 900 pages of documents were obtained by The Intercept as part of a Freedom of Information Act request against the National Institutes of Health. The documents detail how EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based nonprofit group that supports field research on coronaviruses around the world, awarded federal funding to study bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Newly revealed details include two previously unpublished grant proposals that were funded by Fauci's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. One of those grants appears to show gain-of-function research — experiments that intentionally make viruses more transmissible among mammals, and particularly among humans — being funded by U.S. taxpayers through NIAID's grant to EcoHealth Alliance and a subsequent sub-award to the Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment. The grant was awarded for a five-year period between 2014 and 2019.

From The Intercept:

One of the grants, titled "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence," outlines an ambitious effort led by EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak to screen thousands of bat samples for novel coronaviruses. The research also involved screening people who work with live animals. The documents contain several critical details about the research in Wuhan, including the fact that key experimental work with humanized mice was conducted at a biosafety level 3 lab at Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment — and not at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as was previously assumed. The documents raise additional questions about the theory that the pandemic may have begun in a lab accident, an idea that Daszak has aggressively dismissed.

The bat coronavirus grant provided the EcoHealth Alliance with a total of $3.1 million, including $599,000 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology used in part to identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans. Even before the pandemic, many scientists were concerned about the potential dangers associated with such experiments. The grant proposal acknowledges some of those dangers: "Fieldwork involves the highest risk of exposure to SARS or other CoVs, while working in caves with high bat density overhead and the potential for fecal dust to be inhaled."

Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, reviewed the documents and determined that the research described fits the definition of gain-of-function experiments.

"The viruses they constructed were tested for their ability to infect mice that were engineered to display human type receptors on their cell," Ebright told The Intercept. He indicated that the documents show the Chinese researchers were able to infect humanized mice with two different types of novel coronaviruses.

In a Twitter thread, Ebright elaborated that the materials "show that the 2014 and 2019 NIH grants to EcoHealth with subcontracts to WIV funded gain-of-function research as defined in federal policies in effect in 2014-2017 and potential pandemic pathogen enhancement as defined in federal policies in effect in 2017-present."

He also said the documents confirm that one of the experiments produced several " laboratory-generated SARS-related coronaviruses," and that one of these engineered viruses "was more pathogenic to humanized mice than the starting virus from which it was constructed."

...and thus not only was reasonably anticipated to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity, but, indeed, was *demonstrated*… https://t.co/EpTwg2EBQv

— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) 1630978394.0

"The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful," Ebright said.

The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony F… https://t.co/Ym8gLkQbO4

— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) 1630978394.0

Fauci, the director of NIAID, has repeatedly denied that his agency or any part of the National Institutes of Health provided federal funding for gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In July, Fauci accused Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) of lying after Paul pressed him on NIAID's funding for coronavirus research in Wuhan.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology lab has been the focus of efforts to discover the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. While many scientists maintain that the most likely origin for the SARS-CoV-2 virus is natural spillover — a bat coronavirus, for example, making the evolutionary leap to infect humans — others have raised questions about the possible role the Wuhan lab played in the virus' origins, given its proximity to the first outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan and the research that was conducted there.

The most relevant question is whether Chinese scientists in Wuhan performed gain-of-function experiments to engineer coronaviruses, and whether its possible one of those viruses escaped and caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

Scientists have so far been unable to conclusively prove that SARS-CoV-2 had a natural origin, which has led many in the scientific community to call for intense scrutiny of the Wuhan lab as part of any investigation of the origins of the pandemic. President Joe Biden in May ordered the intelligence community to investigate the matter, and the classified August 27 report he received was inconclusive.

But the new documents obtained by The Intercept support accusations that scientists in Wuhan, at the Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment if not the Wuhan Institute of Virology, were performing the kinds of dangerous experiments that many had previously warned could cause a pandemic under unsafe conditions.

And according to Sen. Paul, the documents show that "Fauci lied."

Surprise surprise - Fauci lied againAnd I was right about his agency funding novel Coronavirus research at Wuhan.… https://t.co/YSugJ4LJsu

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) 1631013000.0
(ready) Cotton demands NIH 'come clean' about funding for Wuhan virus lab and origins of COVID-19

(ready) Cotton demands NIH 'come clean' about funding for Wuhan virus lab and origins of COVID-19



Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) called on the Biden administration to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for covering up the origins of COVID-19 as the hypothesis that the virus originated in a Wuhan virology lab gains mainstream credibility among scientists.

In an interview on "Sunday Morning Futures" on Fox News, Cotton discussed a letter he signed with seven other Republican lawmakers including Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) pressing that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for answers on allegations that the U.S. funded gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to make pathogens like SARS-CoV-2 deadlier or more easily transmissible.

During a May 11 Senate hearing on the pandemic response, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci denied that NIH has ever funded "gain of function research" at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Fauci said that $600,000 in NIH subgrants that were diverted to the Wuhan Institute of Virology by a nonprofit group called the EcoHealth Alliance were used to study coronaviruses in bats and were not used for gain of function research.

On Sunday, Cotton told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that Dr. Fauci was "playing word games" with the NIH funding.

"Dr. Fauci has been to Congress, and he said this absolutely did not happen. But Dr. Fauci is playing word games," Cotton said. "So, the money that the NIH gave went to an American organization, which turned around and gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to these Wuhan labs to investigate coronaviruses and, yes, to find ways to make them more contagious and more dangerous."

"And we asked [NIH Director] Francis Collins, who's Dr. Fauci's boss, to come clean, to tell us exactly what was happening, why this research was being funded, as you point out, Maria, during a time in which the Obama administration had explicitly banned this kind of gain of function research, research into making some of the world's deadliest pathogens even more dangerous," he added, suggesting that some "public health bureaucrats" may have violated the Obama administration's 2014 moratorium on gain of function research.

Watch:

Last year, Cotton was accused of promoting a "fringe" conspiracy theory when he raised the mere possibility that the Chinese government may have lied about the origins of the virus and that it could have originated in a Wuhan lab. Articles or posts on social media that advanced the "lab leak" hypothesis were labeled misinformation and suppressed by content moderators for contradicting the "scientific consensus" that COVID-19 originated in nature.

But now there is a growing community of scientists and credentialed health experts calling for renewed investigation into the "viable" theory that COVID-19 was accidentally released from a lab conducting gain of function research. There is no direct evidence that this happened, but scientists are not dismissing the possibility and are asking the federal government to attempt to find the truth.

Here's Tom Cotton discussing possible origins. While he goes a little further than I would go, overall he is episte… https://t.co/BjlDOHUGmd

— Chris Said (@Chris_Said) 1621788112.0

An explosive U.S. intelligence report that came out over the weekend said that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough with COVID-like symptoms in November 2019 that they required hospitalization. The report suggests COVID-19 was spreading in China much earlier than the Chinese government admitted, which vindicates Cotton for warning last year that it is likely China was "lying to the world" about the coronavirus outbreak.