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ANALYSIS: WHY WAS ECOHEALTH ALLIANCE'S GRANT REINSTATED DESPITE GROUP’S APPARENT
FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH NIH CONDITIONS?




Peter Daszak, right, the president of the EcoHealth Alliance, is seen in Wuhan,
China, on Feb. 3, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
By Hans Mahncke
5/11/2023
Updated:
5/11/2023

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News analysis
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has reinstated a grant that had been
terminated by President Donald Trump in April 2020. However, a document first
obtained by the House Oversight Committee reveals that the NIH’s conditions for
reinstatement have not been met.
The grant, titled "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence," was
originally awarded in 2014 by Dr. Anthony Fauci's National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Under the terms of the grant, EcoHealth
Alliance, a government-funded nonprofit that purportedly engages in research to
prevent pandemics, was awarded $3.8 million over five years to assess the
spillover potential of bat viruses “using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and
receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments in cell culture and
humanized mice.” Put in simple terms, NIAID was paying EcoHealth to genetically
engineer and manipulate bat viruses in labs.
In May 2016, the grant was suspended after Erik Stemmy, a NIAID program officer,
noticed that federal government funds may have been used for prohibited
gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China.
At the time, the Obama administration had put in place a moratorium on
gain-of-function experiments. However, for reasons that remain unclear, the
suspension was lifted in July 2016. At the time, EcoHealth’s president, Peter
Daszak, thanked NIAID in an email for lifting the gain-of-function funding
pause.
As part of the conditions of the grant, EcoHealth had to file regular activity
reports. However, starting in 2018, EcoHealth stopped submitting these reports.
EcoHealth would later blame technical difficulties for their failure to submit.
The missing reports comprised the critical 2018–2019 timeframe right before the
outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan.
Despite EcoHealth’s delinquency in filing the status reports, NIAID did not stop
funding the project. It was only after a Freedom of Information Act request for
the reports was filed in 2021 that EcoHealth was prompted by NIAID to provide
the reports. The reports, which were finally submitted by EcoHealth at least two
years too late, in 2021, revealed that the NIAID grant had been used by
EcoHealth and the WIV in part to create laboratory-engineered bat viruses. Had
this fact been reported in a timely manner, the experiments would likely have
been shut down by NIAID.
When the connections between the WIV and NIAID’s grant became known in April
2020, Trump terminated the grant. Trump’s decision caused an outcry among the
media and his critics. However, the NIH, which is NIAID’s parent body, appears
to have been well aware that Trump’s actions were merited.
On July 8, 2020, Michael Lauer, the NIH’s deputy director for extramural
research who was in charge of “ensuring scientific integrity, public
accountability, and effective stewardship of the NIH extramural research
portfolio,” wrote a letter to EcoHealth, listing seven demands that needed to be
fulfilled as a condition for reinstatement of the grant.


NIH ISSUED 7 DEMANDS

First, EcoHealth needed to provide a sample of the COVID-19 virus which it used
to determine the virus’ genetic sequence. The ostensible purpose of this demand
was to compare this original sample with other samples in order to assess when
it first emerged.
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Second, EcoHealth was required to “explain the apparent disappearance of Huang
Yanling, a scientist / technician who worked in the WIV lab but whose lab web
presence has been deleted.” Huang Yanling has long been thought to be patient
zero. Her profile was scrubbed from the WIV’s website shortly after the outbreak
of the pandemic in 2019 and she has not been seen since.
NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci listens to President Joe Biden (out of frame)
speak during a visit to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda,
Md., on Feb. 11, 2021. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Third, EcoHealth was asked to share the “WIV’s responses to the 2018 U.S.
Department of State cables regarding safety concerns.” These cables had warned
of a "serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators
needed to safely operate” the WIV’s high-level containment laboratories. They
also warned that the National Health and Family Planning Commission, a state
agency of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), had denied a request to conduct
coronavirus experiments at biosafety level 4. The actual experiments were
carried out in low biosafety level 2 facilities.
Fourth, EcoHealth was required to “disclose and explain out-of-ordinary
restrictions on laboratory facilities, as suggested, for example, by diminished
cell-phone traffic in October 2019, and the evidence that there may have been
roadblocks surrounding the facility from October 14-19, 2019.”
Fifth, the NIH demanded that EcoHealth “explain why WIV failed to note that the
RaTG13 virus, the bat-derived coronavirus in its collection with the greatest
similarity to SARS-CoV-2, was actually isolated from an abandoned mine where
three men died in 2012 with an illness remarkably similar to COVID-19, and
explain why this was not followed up.”
Sixth, EcoHealth was required to “arrange for WIV to submit to an outside
inspection team charged to review the lab facilities and lab records, with
specific attention to addressing the question of whether WIV staff had
SARS-CoV-2 in their possession prior to December 2019.” The independent
inspection team needed to “be granted full access to review the processes and
safety of procedures of all of the WIV field work.”
Seventh, and lastly, EcoHealth had to stipulate to properly and fully report all
its subawards in the Federal Subaward Reporting System.


ECOHEALTH REJECTED NIH’S DEMANDS

The list of demands issued by the NIH is notable in that it suggests that NIH
officials were well aware of the possibility that COVID-19 had emerged from the
WIV. This awareness stands in stark contrast to public pronouncements in 2020
from NIH leaders such as Francis Collins and Fauci.
The demands themselves are remarkably onerous—in particular, the requirement for
an independent inspection of the WIV to ascertain when it came into possession
of COVID-19.
It would have been known to NIH leaders such as Lauer that EcoHealth would
likely not comply and that, in any case, compliance required cooperation from
CCP officials, which would not be forthcoming. With no prospects for compliance,
it would have been understood at the time that the list of demands had the
purpose and effect of permanently suspending the grant.
The P4 laboratory on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan,
Hubei Province, China, on May 13, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
Indeed, EcoHealth hired counsel who informed the NIH in August 2020 that
EcoHealth refused to answer any of the questions posed. However, shortly after
NIH was informed of EcoHealth’s non-compliance, Fauci awarded EcoHealth a fresh
grant totaling $7.5 million, more than double the previous grant that Trump had
revoked.
There is no indication that EcoHealth changed its course and no indication that
any of NIH’s demands were met. NIAID did not respond to an Epoch Times inquiry
as to whether EcoHealth had complied with the list of requirements.
Yet, despite EcoHealth’s apparent failure to comply with the NIH’s list of
demands, its grant has now been reinstated. The unanswered question is why?
The other question is why House Republicans have not addressed this issue. For
instance, Erik Stemmy, the NIAID official who initially suspended EcoHealth’s
grant could have been subpoenaed to explain why the grant was reinstated in 2016
despite funds having been used for prohibited gain-of-function work. Lauer could
have been subpoenaed to explain why EcoHealth’s grant was again reinstated in
2023 despite the NIH’s specific requirements regarding the WIV not having been
met.
As for EcoHealth, the group has issued a celebratory statement, announcing that
NIH reversed itself and reinstated the grant that Trump had terminated. Notably,
it concedes that “due to concerns about continuing collaborative laboratory
research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” the reinstated grant would not
be used for “on-the-ground work in China,” nor for “recombinant virus culture or
infection experiments.”
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not
necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
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Top Two Comments:
sypkim

2023-05-12

Francis Collins, Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszark, Rochelle Walensky, Jennet
Woodcock, etc. are all medical criminals of the highest order and should be
prosecuted for their lies and crimes which harmed and killed millions of
Americans!!!
Americans should not look the other way but to seek to punish them for their
crimes…
If Republicans fail to get to the bottom of the truth, they themselves are also
problems and cannot be trusted…

Reply

Share

jfredericks77

2023-05-12

Gain of function is just a fancy term for bio engineering diseases. Bio Weapons
in another words!!!
This is what the CDC and the NHI are engaged in and we are supporting them with
are tax dollars
This is kin to paying a hit man to kill yourself!

Reply

Share


54
Comments
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Related Topics
NIH
National Institutes of Health
NIAID
EcoHealth Alliance
fauci
Peter Daszak
wuhan institute of virology
National Institute of Allergy And Infectious Diseases
Comments
Write a comment...
Top Two Comments:
sypkim

2023-05-12

Francis Collins, Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszark, Rochelle Walensky, Jennet
Woodcock, etc. are all medical criminals of the highest order and should be
prosecuted for their lies and crimes which harmed and killed millions of
Americans!!!
Americans should not look the other way but to seek to punish them for their
crimes…
If Republicans fail to get to the bottom of the truth, they themselves are also
problems and cannot be trusted…

Reply

Share

jfredericks77

2023-05-12

Gain of function is just a fancy term for bio engineering diseases. Bio Weapons
in another words!!!
This is what the CDC and the NHI are engaged in and we are supporting them with
are tax dollars
This is kin to paying a hit man to kill yourself!

Reply

Share



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