EcoHealth Alliance funneled taxpayer dollars to researchers in Wuhan to conduct bat research.
Two government agencies are cutting off the flow of taxpayer dollars to the nonprofit organization responsible for overseeing risky bat coronavirus research at a lab in Wuhan, China leading up to the pandemic.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) are suspending grant funding for EcoHealth Alliance, according to letters sent earlier this week to Senator Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) obtained exclusively by National Review.
“The Biden-Harris administration was backing EcoHealth’s effort to bring their batty studies from Wuhan into our own backyard, but we’re clipping their wings,” Ernst told NR.
“We aren’t going to stop until we have a guarantee the mad scientists who may be responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic will never get their hands on bats or U.S. taxpayer dollars ever again. So far we are batting a thousand, but are still waiting on DoD and HHS to confirm they got the memo and are getting out of EcoHealth’s bat business.”
The most recent USAID grant to EcoHealth, which went towards a conservation project in Liberia, was issued in April, years after lawmakers and independent scientists began raising concerns about the risky bat research EcoHealth had funded at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the years leading up the Covid pandemic.
The USAID suspension comes after the Department of Health and Human Service’s (HHS) suspension of all government funding for EcoHealth. HHS also initiated debarment proceedings against the nonprofit to permanently prevent it from receiving taxpayer dollars.
“USAID confirms that on May 15, 2024 it suspended additional funding to EHA for the Conservation Works Activity in Liberia. USAID does not have any other direct awards with EHA, nor is USAID aware of the Agency providing any indirect USAID funding, including subawards, to EHA at this time,” the USAID wrote to Ernst on Wednesday.
“Additionally, in accordance with the best interest of the Agency, USAID has decided to end all ongoing activities with EHA and is currently concluding an orderly termination of the aforementioned activity in Liberia.”
The NSF was funding two EcoHealth projects when HHS suspended its government funding, a research project analyzing spillover risks of diseases originating in animals, and a Boston University research project on pandemic preparedness that had EcoHealth as a grant subawardee. NSF suspended its grant and Boston University suspended its research grant, the agency informed Ernst in a letter sent Thursday.
In addition, the NSF identified four awards EcoHealth may have been connected to, and determined that EcoHealth’s involvement in those awards has already ceased. National Review has reached out to EcoHealth for comment on the grant suspensions by USAID and the NSF.
“EcoHealth’s catastrophic coronavirus collaboration with the Wuhan animal lab likely caused COVID, killed millions, and cost trillions,” said Justin Goodman, senior vice president at the White Coat Waste Project, a public health watchdog organization.
“Taxpayers shouldn’t ever again be forced to fund EcoHealth’s wasteful and treacherous virus hunting and animal experimentation that can prompt pandemics and create bioweapons. We’re immensely proud of the progress we’ve made with Sen. Joni Ernst since the pandemic started to expose and defund EcoHealth, the Wuhan lab and other dangerous animal tests at home and abroad.”
HHS suspended government funding for EcoHealth and initiated debarment proceedings after a recommendation from the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in early May. The panel investigated the bat coronavirus research EcoHealth spearheaded at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the facility at the heart of the lab-leak theory of coronavirus origins.
Congressional investigators also recommended the Justice Department criminally investigate EcoHealth president Peter Daszak to determine whether he violated federal laws against making false statements to Congress. Daszak testified before the Covid subcommittee and faced bipartisan scrutiny over EcoHealth’s lack of transparency surrounding the Wuhan lab experiments, as shown by the group’s failure to submit a mandated status report until two years after the mandatory deadline.
At the hearing, Daszak denied having any knowledge of the Wuhan lab’s connections to China’s People’s Liberation Army, and claimed the risky bat experiments did not constitute gain-of-function research, a type of experimentation in which viruses are made more dangerous and/or transmissible. Top National Institutes of Health official Dr. Lawrence Tabak testified earlier this year that taxpayers did fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, according to the widely accepted definition of the term.
Before he testified, Daszak appeared to suggest that senior National Institute for Allergy and Infection Diseases advisor Dr. David Morens use delay tactics to push back his scheduled public testimony. Morens is a high-ranking public health official already under fire for using a private email server to discuss government matters with Daszak and others.
Covid Subcommittee investigators have accused Daszak of intentionally obstructing the panel’s probe into coronavirus origins and how the federal government managed the pandemic.